“I’ll let your doctor know about that. He’s welcome to come here to see you if necessary.”
I nodded, gripped my fingers tighter, turned the knuckles white.
“And you’ve got your acupuncture session this afternoon. That could improve your sleep.”
I turned my face up, flashed a dubious look. I had no words that wouldn’t offend her.
Thankfully, she seemed amused rather than upset. “You promised to give these things the benefit of the doubt.”
“I did. I will.” Just like I would with the art therapy, the yoga, the nutrition coaching, the equine therapy and the fucking cupping treatments, whatever they were. The only one I wasn’t thrilled about and hadn’t yet promised to try was the group stuff.
“So, yesterday we talked about purpose. You’ve been struggling with that.”
“Yeah.” It felt weird being so…open…about this stuff, the hidden stuff that I’d only ever heard inside my head. My mind’s voice had never told me directly, but it made it known that it was supposed to stay between us. A dirty secret. A silent punishment. I was starting to think it’d lied to me. “I know what I have, believe me. I know I’m lucky, and I’m not just talking wealth, but I have people. Good people. But…what did I do to deserve any of it? Any of them? Why am I here? I…I give nothing back.” I paused, waggled my finger. “And don’t say music. If I stopped, someone else would take my place in a heartbeat. The industry’s fickle, faithful only to money makers.”
“Noted,” Phoebe said with a tilt of the head.
“I’m damaged. Incapable. It feels like there’s a point to everybody. We’re all here for a reason…except me.”
Fuck. That was the first time I’d ever explained it out loud. I wasn’t sure it even made sense. Regardless, it left me feeling winded. Blowing out a rush of air, I reached for the glass of water on the coffee table, knocked back a generous swig.
“Incapable,” was the word she’d chosen to repeat. “You’re capable of love. Maybe that’s the point. Perhaps, the only reason any of us are here is to make someone else’s life a little bit better along the way.”
“You mean Helen?” She must have done. “How do I possibly make her life better with all I keep putting her through?”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I’m here aren’t I? “Every time we get close, make plans, I fuck them up. I put myself first.”
Phoebe tossed her notepad onto the table, crossed one leg over the other. She’d stopped writing a while ago. I imagined she was still analysing, keeping notes in her head for later but, for now, it felt like an informal chat with an old friend. “Why do you think that is?”
“I…dunno. Isn’t that your job?”
“No,” she said, chuckling. “My job is to help you discover what you already know.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” I shifted uncomfortably on the couch. It wasn’t the kind of shrink’s chaise longue you saw on TV, just a regular couch. Brown leather arms, gold velvet cushions. “If I knew what to do, I’d do it, surely.”
“Our brains are very complex machines, Hugo, that contain a lot of information. Like any device, they can suffer processing errors from time to time, succumb to viruses, shut down unexpectedly.”
“So…you’re my IT guy, effectively?”
Phoebe grinned. “Gal,” she corrected. “And precisely. Say we call depression a virus. It’s scrambled some of the data in your mind, so your mind shut itself down. We’ve got the tools here to treat that virus and your sessions with me will help put the data back in the right folders. Could you get another virus in the future? Sure. But should that make you afraid to turn your computer on every morning, or does it make more sense to keep your IT gal’s number on speed-dial?”
Well, when she put it like that… “Everybody has enough eventually.” I blew the sentence like blowing out a candle. Quickly. Before I had the chance to consider the words and change them. “I’m a lot to deal with, I know that. People get tired and…and I don’t blame them, truly I don’t, but it still hurts, I guess.”
I risked a swift glance in Phoebe’s direction, watched her eyebrows knit together before I looked away. “From what you’ve told me about Helen so far, it sounds like she’s loved you through some of the most difficult periods of your life.”
Just hearing her name made me smile, only to shrink with guilt a second later. “Yeah. She has.”
“She sounds like an incredibly strong woman, not someone who tires easily,” she added, finally revealing her point.
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Even considering the possibility felt like a betrayal of Helen, the most loyal and loving person I’d ever known. She’d given me no reason to doubt her, but… “No love is unconditional,” I said anyway. “When you’re too damaged for even your parents, your own fucking mother, to want to hold onto you, what hope has anyone else got?”