LIABILITIES

Chapter Ten - A Wrong Choice of Words

"I do listen to them." I snap, but then roll my eyes at myself for being an asshole. "But they want me to stay seated all the time and give up."

"They don't want you to give up, Ellis. They want you to recover."

I scowl. "Recovering is giving up. If I'm recovering then that means...that means that something bad happened. That means that there was a bad situation that I need to heal from. I'm not ready to face the fact that. I don't wanna accept that any of that ever happened because if I do that, and I start recovering then that means moving forward and forgetting the past." I take in a huge breath, "I don't want to do that, Rose."

She speaks so quietly like she doesn't want to say the wrong thing. "You don't want to forget the accident?

"I can't explain it." I say, giving up. But she doesn't let me -

"It sounds like you're trying to."

"I can't." I snap. "I don't wanna talk about the...accident."

Hadley looks at the floor and shakes her head. "I'm going to be honest here -" She looks up at me, "I wish I could understand what it would be like to want to hold onto the past. If I could, I would do anything to have my memory wiped clean - A fresh slate, something... unscratched. So I don't really know what it would be like to want to hold onto something." She pauses, "- but, I do know fear and I know that right now you're scared. And, when you're scared, it's hard to see things for how they really are because right now all you see is all of the things that might go wrong and all of the things that have gone wrong," She shakes her head at me, "but you're not seeing the between."

"The between?"

"Yeah. You're not seeing the bigger picture because you're holding the frame too close to your eyes. You need to breath and take a step back. Try and see things for what they are now. You can visit the past so many times but there's nothing new to see there. Stop looking back at the 'what ifs' and the 'whys' and focus on that picture in front of you without being scared of it."

I search her eyes, "I don't understand how I can just ignore fear."

"You don't ignore it." She shrugs, "You inhale it, welcome it in with open arms and just deal with it. Cry, scream, do anything! Anything is better than what you're clearly doing right now."

"And what is that?" I sigh.

"You're avoiding your feelings, El." She shows a weak smile to show me that it's okay. "But they're only going to keep building up until you can't take it any longer."

I take a huge breath in because I know she's right. "It's just hard, you know?Just accepting what happened. Accepting that it was my..." No, I'm not talking about this now. I can't and Hadley seems to know that, somehow -

"Hey, I get it. Acceptance is hard and I really shouldn't preach what I don't practice..." She sighs, "But you gotta talk to someone, Ellis."

"What?" I shuffle back from her.

"I'm not saying you have to I just think it would help. There's clearly a lot more going on that what it seems."

I'm trying not to snap at her for accusing me of needing help but at the end of the day I think she might be right. I can't keep this facade of being a man for much longer. "Isn't therapy, like, really traumatizing? I've never had anyone close to me have to do something like that."

She drops her head to the floor and hesitates on what she's about to tell me. "I, um -" She clears her throat, "I have."

"You have?" The words come out more shocked than I hoped. I don't want her to think I'm making a big deal out of it. Or should I be making a big deal? I'm not too sure.