I had to keep telling myself that I was enjoying my work, that this was what I wanted to do with the psychology degree I had earned and that the people I listened to, the stories they told were just stories. I couldn’t manage to keep doing what I was if I believed half the shit I was told. It was a job I opted for, one I leapt at the opportunity of doing. Most people wouldn’t look at me, the girl with the dark auburn locks and striking blue eyes that held flecks of gold in them and say “She sure looks like some sort of shrink for psychos!”
But when I looked in the mirror, I saw that in myself.
Maybe it was because I liked to see into the mind of people I was not like, try to understand why they had become what they were. Most of the clients I had were there either on probation or I was taking trips down to the jail and reading people through iron bars. I felt like that was what I was doing…reading people like they were books and listening to tales that no one else on earth could hear. These were novels, creations of the human mind that no one person could fathom and I was getting to hear them. I was the one who was able to hear the gruesome tales of darkness from the people who committed the evil crimes…and sometimes I really had to concentrate to keep my work ethic up.
When you hear murderers try to justify their torturous deeds, sometimes you question your own sanity. It’s worse when it isn’t someone who killed people but rather a drug addict or somewhere along those lines. The people on probation most intrigued me because they were trying to recover from their madness. They wanted to be better…well…most of them. There were several who didn’t care, who didn’t give two shits why they were here telling me their stories.
The one that immediately came to mind was one Ronald Joseph Radke.
I had been having sessions with him for nearly six months now and he was slowly starting to open up. I don’t know if it was the true tale of misery he had been through or the fact that I couldn’t help but stare at him half of the time. He was a sexpot, a gorgeous man with tattoos that painted his flesh with a cryptic narrative I could spend years solving and eyes that held so many emotions that I couldn’t quite keep up with him half the time. There was complexity hidden behind the asshole façade and I wanted to know him. Maybe I was one of the few people in his entire life that wanted to know the real him, try to get him through whatever hurt he was going through…but I was just a shrink.
Besides, I was too shy for that. Perhaps it wasn’t even true shyness but more or less an innate sense of how the world really works that kept me inside myself. I didn’t want to show my genuine colors to people because in all reality, if I did, I might have ended up sitting in the chair across from a therapist.
But you know even sitting at my desk right now, rifling through paperwork and setting times, dates, comments to patients reports I couldn’t help thinking about Ronnie. I could see good in him, feel it blossoming with each sitting but there was a part of him that grabbed at the light and hid it so well from the world that he still appeared to be just a plain old asshole. I didn’t want that for him though, I wanted him to be better. Maybe I wanted the satisfaction of bringing a gem like him back to the good part of society.
Another part of me was screaming that I knew I was falling in love with him.
Stupid of me to even think it. I tapped my index finger on the edge of my wooden desk, studying the grains with intent eyes. Hair was wrapped in a bun to keep it out of my sight, long fingers scratching absentmindedly at the wooden structure before me as my teeth chewed distractedly on my lower lip. I could only see his face ingrained in that desk, see the agony radiating in those eyes.
