Chapter 5
Esther is sharp. I have to be careful in my response to her questions. She has an uncanny talent for reading people and I can’t let her read me. Not today.
There is hardly a clear space on the wall with all her degrees displayed in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. She is also a general practitioner with a specialty in neurology. Yet she works for MUST Inc. as their in house therapist. I wonder what the story there is.
I’m used to her spacious office but I never understood the reasoning behind the lavish décor. It’s exquisite. All the walls are pickle green in color, except for three hollow interior doors decorated with a wallpaper mural of brown trees, roots and branches. It matched well with the brown furniture and beige couch. She had ornaments of the same tree branch theme as the wallpaper. The entire office has the feel of a peaceful forest. I guess that’s what they were aiming for.
There are no cameras leading to her office. It’s a part of the MUST Inc. privacy policy. They want to encourage employees to have therapy as a way of improving their quality of life. It’s mandatory for all employees at some point in a three month cycle. Obviously I had a bit more problems than the average. I came weekly of my own volition but I am not sure if I could negotiate stopping my therapy, based on what I have revealed so far to Esther. MUST Inc. is big on safety and having a panic attack on the job is a serious matter. She would be obligated to make a report, if she didn’t think I was capable of functioning effectively at the workplace or if I was a danger to myself or others.
I’ve benefited greatly from the behavioral and thinking exercises. I am nowhere close to where I need to be but I have seen some progress. For example, team meetings would scare the living daylights out of me, now it’s just an uncomfortable situation. Changing my thought processes and repeated exposure to the fearful task and situations have yielded results over time. Of course the anxiety pills had a part to play as well because they prevent my panic attacks. But I haven’t taken any since the conference and I feel fine.
I don’t have to wait for her long after I was told to come in by the lone receptionist in the lobby. I’m a bit nervous about our discussion today but they structure of the meeting mostly stays the same. She would start by asking me questions about recent events in my life and the way I am coping with them. Then she would ask deeper questions about my childhood and past relationships. Rafferty is always a topic of discussion at our meetings. She instructed me to report him if his annoyances got out of hand so I don’t want it to slip that he assaulted me. I need to avoid the topic of Rafferty as much as possible. She is also obligated to report instances of harassment. I don’t want that.
I’d like to tell her to secure her recordings of our sessions but I can’t because then I would have to explain the altercation with Rafferty. No doubt he hacked her computer and retrieved them after he realized that I come for weekly visits. My entire bodily chemistry changes at the thought of him touching me.
I hear the familiar sound of her high heels. She enters the room and I stand up to shake her hand in greeting.
Esther is tall and slender with grey-black hair swept neatly in a bun behind her head. She has a pointy nose and she surveys me with little beady eyes as we both take our seats. She adjusts her knee length black pencil skirt and fixes her light blue business blouse before taking out her recorder and notepad to begin our session.
“How have you been?” She begins.
“I’m OK… For the most part.” .
“Would you like to tell me about the part that wasn’t OK?” She sits up slightly.
“Don’t you remember? I had that presentation I told you about.” I’m a bit surprised she didn’t bring it up to me first.
I’ve been stressing about it for the past month in our sessions. I practiced a few of the exercises she gave me for when I was on stage. They helped a great deal.
“Ah yes. Your big presentation. How’d it go?” She leans forward a little as she listens for my answer.
I think about how best to phrase my response so that I wouldn’t give too much away.
“Well I was really nervous but it didn’t come off too bad…especially in the beginning. The audience understood my content and they weren’t bored. So that should count for something right?”
“It should.” She nods her head. “And what happened at the ending?”
“There was a Q and A session.” I confess.
“Ouch.”
We both laughed a bit at her outburst. I think she is the only one who truly understands what I face daily. How difficult it is to carry this weight around and the things I do to simply function in society.
“I ran off the stage in tears.”
She nods her head as she listens to me.
“And the Rafferty appeared out of nowhere to rub it in my face by laughing.” I left out his racist banter because I didn’t want trouble.
“And how did you respond to that?”
“I yelled at him…at least I think I did. I wasn’t paying much attention to my tone at the time.”
She seems surprised.
“That’s new. Why did you yell at him this time?”
“I just told you, he came to gloat after the conference.”
“But Rafferty has always been…a difficult person, what changed?
I could tell she wanted to say ‘a jerk’ instead of ‘a difficult person’ but she needed to be politically correct and maintain her professionalism.
“Well I guess he caught me at a bad time. I had no time to filter myself in that emotional state. I was angry and in tears.”
She pauses to make a note in her notepad.
“And who were you angry with?”
“Everyone! Claudette for making me do the presentation in the first place, Adrian for asking those annoying questions and Rafferty for taunting me on top of everything else.”
“Who’s Adrian?” I almost slip and tell her about how he just protected me.
A vision of him flashes across my mind and blush.
“He is the one who asked all the questions at the Q and A to break me; making me run off the stage.”
She makes another note in her notepad.
“I thought you and Claudette got along?”
“We do, I just hate being put in that position. I guess I’m not really mad at her …or Adrian?”
“Oh… who are you mad at?”
I pause for a while. I already know the answer. In a way I’ve always known. Esther knows it too. It’s her job to have patience while I figure it out.
Tears brim in my eyes.
“Myself.” I croak. “Why do I have to be such a coward all the time?”
I break down.
She offers me a napkin and waits for me to compose myself while she writes in her notepad again.
It takes me a while with all my nose blowing, eye rubbing and face wiping but I eventually come around.
Her tone is soft and soothing when she speaks again.
“We still have some time left, would you like to continue or would you like to stop here for today?”
“I’m good to go on” I sniffed.
“I think we’ve made some headway here.”
I take a mental note. Crying equals headway to shrinks.
“Why, because I cried?” I ask sourly.
I hate being vulnerable. Even with her.
“No, because you finally stood up for yourself. Yelling at Rafferty is probably not the best way but at least you did something. Think of your mental state when that occurred. Try to remember what you were thinking about.”
She thinks yelling at Rafferty is standing up for myself. If she found out I just kicked him in the groin and slapped him in the face. She’d probably say I am cured.
“I was thinking my life is over and I don’t need Rafferty to be anywhere close to me.”
That seemed to interest her she writes in her notepad.
“So you would stand up to Rafferty, only if you are about to d
ie?”
“There’s a lot I would do if I knew I were about to die.”
“None of us will live forever Sapphire. I have an exercise for you to practice. Next time you’re in a fearful situation, I want you to think about your life and your mortality. Think about your mental state when you’re most brave and you may find patterns in your behavior and thinking.” She checks her watch. “OK. That’s our time for today although we didn’t get a chance to talk about Nanny and Sarah. Were they forthcoming with any information on their past.”
“Not in the least. They are a closed vault.”
“Well just be patient. I’m sure they will tell you soon enough.”
Esther always seems to be interested in my family history. Probably more than I am.
The Rejected - Episode 1 of 9 (Urban Fantasy Dystopian Serial) Page 6
