Maybe This Is Love, |✔️

Chapter 10

"Good morning Harley, how do you feel today?" Tracy asks. She's annoyingly chirpy.

She is probably trying to create a positive atmosphere so I don't go into shut down mode where I refuse to speak.
It might work.

Today, she decides to don a slim red pantsuit with matching thin red reading glasses. Her hair raised in a tight ponytail.

As a very ginger woman, this colour co-ordination somehow made skin appear paler than normal. She looked like Jessica Rabbit if Jessica Rabbit was a worn-out thirty-something-year-old child behavioural therapist.

I sigh. I did feel mentally prepared to try today but I was afraid that at any moment now, my brain would just decide that today was not the day. I'm still getting used to being able to talk to people again.
I feel like a zoo animal that has just been released back into the wild.

"I feel...good." I finally say and to my surprise, and to the surprise of Tracy too, no stammer. No stutter. A full complete sentence. I mentally pat myself on the back.

She sits up in her chair, her green cat-like eyes widen in shock. "You feel...good?" She repeats slowly for clarification.

I squirm uncomfortably in the little white armchair they make us sit in.
She always made it sound as if me, Harley-Blair Marie Thompson, potentially feeling good was as bizarre as a UFO landing in the middle of Beaumont shopping centre.

I shrug. "Yeah."

"So, is it correct for me to assume that you are indeed ready to talk again?" She asks reaching for her clipboard with her slender freshly painted fingers.

I don't like her tone so I stare at her blankly.
It's not as if I'm not talking on purpose, it's weird how medical professionals always presume that I'm somehow faking my condition and there's especially more conspiracy due to me being a black woman.

"Harley?" She says, waiting for an answer. Her hands still clenched around the clipboard like she was ready to throw it at me.

"Yes." I let down my stubborn demeanour as I really do want to talk to someone other than myself about Parker. "I guess."

"How have you progressed from your last visit?" She smiles sweetly.

"I made a new friend," I speak into my sweater mostly.

Her eyes light up in unashamed surprise. "Hm, are they a boy or a girl?

I raise one of my eyebrows at her, "Does that matter?" I ask plainly.

"No," She writes something briefly on her notepad. I want to pick it up and throw that little thing across the room but I don't, instead, I just watch her. "I just wanted to get some context, that's all."

I pause, contemplating how much I should tell her. "His name is Spidey." I suppose something about patient confidentiality pushed me to tell her his name even if it's somewhat not real.

"Spidey? Hm." She repeats, she chews on the end of her pen a little bit before writing on her notebook again. "That is not his real name, I presume."

I blush, suddenly feeling like a little girl. "That's what I call him."

"I see. This is the boy you spoke about last time, yes? The one you're not sure will last." She smiles to herself. "Tell me more about him. How does he make you feel?"

I think about Parker. His long, pale fingers. His wispy brown hair. His steel coloured eyes. The way he makes me feel...

The way he makes me feel.

"He makes me feel human." I finally say. I say it because it's true. He makes me feel like a person. "He brings out things about my personality that I didn't even know I had, he makes me smile, he makes me laugh, he makes me forget about my stupid avoidant personality disorder. He makes me feel like being me is so great."

I sit back in my chair and close my eyes. I revealed too much to her but she'll love it. Somehow, the sound of her pen scratching the paper is oddly soothing to me; it reminds me of Parker when he draws.

"Have you told him about your AVPD and partial selective mutism?" She asks me while my eyes are still closed.

"No." A muscle in my jaw twitched. I didn't even want to think of telling him my supposed secret. "My selective mutism wasn't 'partial'. I was simply mute and now I am not."

Tracy nods and tucks a strand of red hair that had come loose behind her elfen like ears then leans in to watch me closely, "And why is that?"

"I don't know." I shrug my shoulders and collapse even further into the chair.

"Could it be due to your fear of being negatively criticised by him or you're afraid he might reject you?"

I gulp and could physically feel a boulder-sized amount of saliva falling down my throat. I nod my head slowly. There's no way I could tell him about my AVPD. I don't want him to see me as some socially inept kid who needs a therapist just to talk to you people. He might not want to hang out with me anymore and just like that, I would've lost the first friend I ever made.

"I'm just not like...him, you know?"

"You're breathing, right?"

"Yeah?"

"You're alive, aren't you?"

"Yes..."

"So you are like him. The only thing that separates you is the colour of your skin and your genitalia and even that's nothing."

"You don't understand." She stays silent and waits for me to continue. "...I had a dream about him you know?"

She crosses her legs and leans forward. "And what happened in this dream?"

I close my eyes, trying to remember. "He was there, facing away from me. I tried to reach him but every time I took a step closer he took a step further away."

I feel a tear fall down my cheek and I furiously wipe it away. I'm not crying.

"This is good, Harley. It means you're making progress."

I take a deep breath and continue. "When he finally turned around it was my Papa and... and he was waving goodbye." Okay so now I was crying. "He...he never said goodbye! Why didn't he say goodbye?" My voice trailed off.

Tracy grabbed a tissue from her desk and handed it to me. "It's okay, Harley. You're doing so well."

I sniffle into it and blow my nose rather loudly. "Why didn't he say goodbye?"

I no longer felt sad. I was more angry than upset. Why did he leave? How could he abandon me? How could he not say bye?
He was so selfish, so so selfish. "I hate him! I hate him! I hate him! I hate-" I was shaking.

"It's okay, Harley." Tracy wraps her arms around me and embraces me. I let myself cry this time. "Calm down."

"I hate him." I sniffle quietly. "I really do. He's a coward. I'll never be like him. I don't care if I have the same brown eyes or the same mental illness, I will never end my life and leave my family wondering where they went wrong!"

"People make mistakes, Harley-Blair," Tracy soothes. "And that's okay."

"Sometimes, I feel like I'm a disaster waiting to happen." One day, I'm going to drag everyone down into my self-destructing tornado just like Papa did. "I don't want to ruin him."

"You won't," She lets go of me and grabs some more tissues. "You've just got to trust yourself."

"I just hope if he leaves he says bye. That's all." I think that'll hurt me more than anything if he didn't.

Why couldn't he say bye, Parker?