Iago Incarnate

Perception Becomes Reality, Part 25

Your face, it haunts my once pleasant dreams
Your voice, it chased away all the sanity in me

Michael had become a confusing dichotomy. While he was steadfastly committed to Bianca, he had noticed himself increasingly allowing impure thoughts of both Emelie and Mona enter his imagination. Yet at the same time he grew more vigilantly frustrated with his imaginary reality in which Bianca was sleeping around on him. What made the situation all the more interesting was that in reality, neither Mona nor Emelie had any interest in sleeping with Michael, and while he would never push for it to happen, the chances are fairly good that if presented with the chance to sleep with either, he would. On the other hand, while Bianca might actually want to sleep with Nick, she absolutely never would because of her love for Michael and loyal allegiance to her dear friend Emelie.

“Do not imitate my behavior but obey my instructions.” That ancient ‘do as I say, not as I do’ concept has been attributed to many, most notably John Selden, though it implies the one guilty of the contradiction is aware that they betray their own outward philosophy. While Michael’s actions and mindset seem thoroughly detached, he was never able to see it. While the clueless scoundrel acts without intentional malice, the actions themselves do not come free of blame or fault. Ironically, it is Michael who ultimately does more harm to his relationship with Bianca (without ever realizing it, or intending to) than Nick, who consciously subverts conventions of trust and friendship to poison the very essence of their love for one another. Without question, Nick influences Michael, but as it is accomplished with such relative ease, it seems reasonable to imagine it could have also happened without any effort from Dr. Malvagio.

As the driving punk music spilled from Dr. Malvagio’s office into the hallway colleagues passed by and grinned or laughed as they looked in at Nick making comically angsty expressions and flashing the devil/rock horns with his fingers as he sang along. It was all meant to be amusing to everyone else, but as always, his carefully curated playlist was intended for Michael, who came around the corner to give his colleague a hard time about his musical choices as Nick sang along with the song on his stereo. “Do you ever think back to another time? Does it bring you so down that you thought you’ve lost your mind? Do you ever want to breed a long trail of destruction and mow down any bullshit that confronts you? Do you ever build up all the small things in your head? To make one problem that adds up to nothing?” Michael shakes his head as his arms folded across his chest while Nick strums his imaginary guitar. “I’m not throwing my panties at you, if that’s what you’re going for, Rockstar.” Michael teased.

Before Nick could deliver a poignant and sarcastic retort, Mona came by and leaned in. “Dr. Cassius, you have a patient. She’s new, previously with Dr. Malvagio…” Michael was immediately puzzled as nobody ever left Nick’s treatment, so when she explained it he looked to Nick who nodded and leaned forward on his desk. “Sydney… she’s got trust issues, some terminal paranoia. We worked through some things and she faced some unpleasant truths and wasn’t sure how to deal, so she stopped coming. I’m guessing she just needs to hear from another professional that she’s not a horrible person, but her trust issues need dealing with so she can exist without sabotaging every relationship she has. You got this, Magic Mike…. wait, no, keep your clothes on, but you’ll be what she needs. Plus, I have a drum solo coming up, so do your thing, Doc.” Nick explained with a palpable confidence that inspired his colleague, who only gave a thumbs up followed by a middle finger on his way out.

“Thanks for seeing me.” the curly haired brunette woman said with an almost apologetic shyness as Dr. Cassius joined her and introduced himself. “Dr. M helped but I don’t know if I was ready to get into what he opened up… I know… I know I gotta face things, and I will, probably. No, I will, but I have just never actually been able to look into myself and it’s scary.” she added, looking up at Michael, an expression of uncertainty inspired fear emblazoned across her face as she tried to resist her eyes welling up. “Dr. Malvagio is a good friend of mine, and we never talk about patients, so I don’t know what you guys might have been working through, but he told me once that mental health is like physical health. You can’t just hope cancer goes away on its own. You have to cut into the body to find the tumor. There’s no surgery for emotional well being, but those things we have to face are like the mental and emotional version of surgery.” As he spoke, Sydney smiled a bit, feeling a sense of relaxation begin to take over her a bit.

Upstairs, Nick bobbed his head to Green Day’s “Know Your Enemy,” as he could only imagine the conversations taking place between Syd and Michael. While Dr. Malvagio was more direct with patients and got right into things, Dr. Cassius was more deliberate and began to tiptoe around things, hopeful Sydney would voluntarily open up about whatever she felt was causing her struggles. As the hour was nearly finished, she began to talk about her relationship troubles. Michael listened intently, asking open ended, but largely generic, questions that got her off on a stream of thought about trust and infidelity and how she had continually been done wrong by everyone she had ever loved. “It’s scary to let someone in and love them so much because you kinda have to in order for love to work, but to do it you have to let the guard down so far that you can’t prevent them from betraying you.” Sydney explained through a sigh. Silent a moment, Michael could feel her words hit him harder than they should have been able to. Thankfully he was rescued by the timer that let them both know their time was up. “It helps having someone to listen again. I’ll probably be back, but thanks, Doc.” the young woman said as she put her coat back on and walked on, hands in her pants pockets, head drooping a bit.

A few minutes after she left, Michael returned to Nick’s office, walking right in and having a seat, looking almost exasperated as he did. “Did she tell ya about dad?” Nick asked, positive that Michael hadn’t been able to get that far with her, nor did he have the intuition to explore untouched avenues to find sources of pain or trouble. There was a momentary delayed reaction before what had been asked hit Michael. “Wait, dad? You didn’t mention daddy issues.” he replied, pausing mid thought. “She didn’t get into much, just seemed really upset that everyone had “done her dirty,” in her words. Though she made a really powerful observation about the inherent dangers of love and how allowing yourself to fall also opens one up to destruction.” Nick actually began to laugh softly and shook his head. “I’m not about to have any deeper a discussion about a patient, but those who self sabotage rarely realize they’re doing it, and tend to be the first to find epiphanic revelations that explain their misguided perception.” Michael began to speak, but thought better of it and just nodded as he leaned back in his chair. It never occurred to him that Nick’s words were meant for him and not Sydney, but the less he realized the easier it all remained. 

That night at home Michael was fairly quiet. Bianca made a limited effort to engage him and try to help with whatever might be bothering him, but let it go when he seemed resistant. As she grew increasingly frustrated with his increasingly closed off demeanor Michael only took her silence as a sign of something awry. Nothing of his doing, of course, much more likely outside influences. There had to be someone working on breaking down her defenses, someone trying to get her to betray him if she hadn’t already. His delusionally scheming imagination was blind to her cuddled up to his side affectionately, only able to notice her relative silence after giving up trying to get through to him.