Stay Mine

Chapter 44 - I Want to Taste Heaven

"Fiz, where are you? I'm at your apartment," Alan texted her, barely having time for himself between his clinical duties and commuting to see Fiza. She seemed to be treating his time carelessly.

It was 8 pm, and he had been waiting for over an hour. She was somewhere just off campus, according to the location sharing app. Thirty minutes ago, she had said, "5 minutes," and had not moved from the spot.

Frustrated, he got on his bike and headed towards her. She was with a group of friends, standing next to a tea stall. He was mad! She had made him wait an hour. He narrowed his eyes as he headed to her, but then he remembered that he didn't have much time together with her, so why waste it fighting? He closed his eyes and counted, feeling his anger slip away as quickly as it had come.

He tapped on Fiza's shoulder, and when she turned around and saw him, she squealed. She gave him a forceful hug. "Alan!"

He held her tight. This was what he would have missed if he had let his anger control him.

Just a few weeks ago, he had had a conversation with Fiza.

"I don't think I'm good enough for you. I feel like you have better options," Alan had confessed.

Fiza considered him seriously, "How are they better?"

Alan didn't miss a beat, "They don't get mad easily or don't hurt you."

"Then don't," she said simply. Alan frowned at her; it wasn't as simple as that, was it?

"When you feel angry, just tell yourself to calm down. That it isn't worth it," she suggested.

"If it were that easy, there wouldn't be any domestic violence..." he suddenly stopped, realizing what he was saying. He was equating his behavior with domestic abuse, the one thing that Fiza had always said she would never tolerate. Has that been what he had been doing to her? Abusing her?

Her biological mother had been a victim. For the first time, he realized that it was just a stroke of luck that Fiza survived in her mother's womb after the fall. Her mere existence itself was a miracle, an escape.

"Alan, your anger is not pathological," Fiza reassured him, stroking his arm gently and smiling at him. "You are just hot-headed and impulsive. Mild ADHD, maybe." Alan laughed and rolled his eyes, not wanting to revisit the ADHD discussion again.

"So what do I do about it? The impulse control issues?" Alan asked her, smiling, only half-joking. He was concerned that his anger was pathological. It was as though all rational thought left his mind when he became angry, like his emotions overcame any kind of logical override.

"You identify triggers and you practice replacement behaviors. And if you do get triggered, you can still intervene before you act," Fiza explained.

Now curious, Alan gave her his full attention. "Like what? CBT ( Cognitive behavioral therapy)? You want me to get CBT for anger management?" He was willing to do that for her, he realized. If it would prevent him from hurting her, he would.

"That would be one way," answered Fiza seriously, looking into his eyes, trying to read his thoughts. "You could start with just acknowledging and writing down what triggers your anger."

He scratched his head. It was the thought of losing her, his fear that she would realize he wasn't worth it and leave him. That was his main trigger. No, it was bigger than that. It was the fear of rejection that triggered him. The fear that maybe Aarthy had been right about him; that everything she had said about him being a worthless monster, undeserving of love, was true.

"Then you write down what you are going to tell yourself when you are presented with the trigger. If you start feeling anger, you can try distraction and aversion," she told him. "Counting backwards from 5 to 1 is a distraction. You could also try to remove yourself from the situation when you feel like you are about to lose control." She then described aversion techniques. "You could try putting a rubber band on your wrist and snapping it until your anger subsides, if counting didn't work. That's an aversion technique, so it's something of a last resort. But you should do these under a psychologist's supervision."