"Come in!" Miss Hamilton yelled, causing me to twitch in surprise. It sounded like she was just on the other side of the door
I opened the door slowly and walked in. She rested in her chair, arms and legs crossed and wearing a screaming pink shirt. Her smile was easygoing and welcoming. "How are you doing?" she asked and patted on the sofa, signaling for me to sit down. I marched silently over and sat.
"Fucking terrible." My words were what I would describe as cutting. I crossed my arms over my rasing chest and shifted my gaze to the wall.
"That doesn't sound especially good." She was way too cheerful for my desire.
"No way!"
"Wanna talk about it?"
"No!"
"Okay."
After that, she didn't say anything as if we weren't supposed to talk at all. Not even about my dilemmas. Silence swallowed me whole, deliberately, and painfully. "Say something! That's your job after all!"
She beamed. "How are you doing?"
I tossed my head back and groaned noisily. "Don't do that."
"Don't do what?" She almost persuaded me that she was upright confused; almost.
"Seriously! Why did I even come here in the first place?"
"Because your appointment begins in one minute and twenty-seven seconds." Whatever there was going on in her mind, I didn't want to be a part of it.
"What do you want to talk about?" I asked. She settled her hand under her chin as if she was in distant thought.
"I should actually be the one asking that question, but with you, nothing ever goes after the plan." I didn't answer but studied her while she opened a rucksack and drew up a computer from the bag and transferred it over to me. "Can you find your novel on this one?"
I took the computer. Yeah, I think I can, but why should I do it?"
"Because I want to inspect you while you do something that you actually cherish."
"I don't understand, but it's better than explaining my emotions or whatever." I shrugged and found my story. As soon as the words came into view my fingers started gliding over the keyboard like a switch had been turned on inside of me.
However, then it hit me. The one thing I dreaded the most.
Writer's block.
I stared at the screen, the light brightening my face secretly up. My words clashed with nothing but thin air and floated away and out of reach. A heavy cry left my dry and still lips as my fingers were tucked away from the keyboard.
"Something happened, I can read it in your facial expression and body language." She tilted forward. "Why aren't you writing?"
A thick wall tattoed itself inside my brain blocking words and making me hit the table outrage. I was almost finished! Only the ending was missing!
"A writer's block, I can't come up with anything and mainly not with anything good!" I granted her the computer strenuously. "Here."
She took it with care and peeped at the screen before she locked it and put it back down in her backpack. "You don't respond well when you're frustrated," she declared and enveloped her hands in her lap and looked at me like she genuinely cared, but I knew better. "Well, that's just another thing we have to work on."
She reached down for a few papers in her bag and as she showed them to me, it wasn't normal papers, but on one of the sides a painting was formed and I very well knew what she was going to do. "No thanks, I don't like those kinds of things."
"Then it's a good thing that you don't get to decide." She smiled. "Let's begin."
She held up the first painting. It was smudged with soft edges and massive bows outlining the butterfly. "That's a butterfly," I told her and crossed my arms.
"If you say so." She showed me another picture. This time one with more sharp edges, like the painter had only used small and precise brushes.
"Uhm... a pond... a very unpleasant pond."
She leaned her head but didn't say anything. Instead, she found another painting. "What about this one?"
I bit my lip. It was green and smudged with many dimensions like it never ended. "Hills, countless hills. Hills there is high and never-ending, like a task you have to succeed but never can."
Bug-eyed, she took another picture, very similar, but different colors. It was different shades of blue, braiding into each other with strains of white.
"A deep ocean with weaves colliding into each other and mingling their colors."
I was enchanted by every picture she picked up after that, everyone with a new story. Word after word spilled out of my mouth as if a talking spell had been cast upon me. The curves were different every time and just like Anthony's paintings, they told a story deep within the stains of paint and sweat. To many, all of this wasn't there, only layers of color there was supposed to resemble something artistic, however, to others it was definitions, stories, feelings, and much more unfolding in front of one's eyes. Being an artist was much more than just planting paint on a canvas.
"A little house, there has felt the rage of getting older. It stands on a green and desolated pitch and hums for itself in the rude winds there surrounds its landscapes."
She set the last card down and calmly collapsed her hands in her lap and sank back in her chair. She followed me intensely, her eyes never falling. I swallowed. Did I do it wrong? Her head swayed to the left as I took a long breath to calm my wrecking nerves.
I had never spoken so much in my whole life and to be honest, it was a bit unbelievable.
"You are fascinating. Do you know that?" she said without changing anything else about her expression or posture. She was still observing me intensely with her dark eyes.
"Why?"
"Why? I've heard thousands of different ideas of what these pictures imagine." She clapped at the pocket where the pictures could be found. "But I've never heard anything like that. You transform something as simple as a painting into a story in only a few sentences. You have a talent there is not only breathtaking, but remedies to help you find your voice. When you develop a story or talk about a story, you can talk without stammering or hide behind your hair. You're your own help."
"I don't like talking so I avoid it with all costs."
"But we have to talk together."
"Nina." She stared me intensely in the eye. "If this is going to work." She pointed between us. "Then you have to work with me and let me in. At least partly. You know, just enough so I have a little chance of helping you, because I really believe that you need it. Nevertheless, you should talk to someone and since you're here, you don't want to talk to your family, so why don't you talk to me. A completely stranger who you absolute don't care about and defiantly not her opinion."
"You know what, that's the problem. Peoples opinion and my fear for them. I hate people thinking I am anything but a nerd with a mom who works as a lawyer, a father who is looking for a job and a brother who traveled to Europe for college and found his dream job. I don't want to change other people's opinions, I want them to be like they always had, normal and just only flickering occasionally to me. But now, you see, I am not the nerd with a normal family, no. I am the nerd whose mother chose her abusive father over her and whose brother left because he wasn't strong enough to deal with our problems and then when he came back, he hid behind letters and friends. That changes people opinion. That's my fear!"
The thin liquid dripped from the corner of my eyes and glided down my already wet cheeks.
Then what I had just said hit me right in the face and I covered my mouth. Mrs. Hamilton rolled back in her seat, her appearance filled with sympathy, the only thing I didn't want. She felt bad about me and my situation, her opinion about me has changed.
"See even you have to change your opinion about me. I can see it in your eyes, now you'll treat me different, think of me differently and speak of me differently. That's what I am most afraid of."
"Nina, you're right, I feel more sympathy for you after hearing you say those things, but my opinion has never changed. I believe that you want to be strong and get through this in a healthy way, but you're afraid of something you haven't even realized yourself yet. I don't know what it is, but I can see something behind those eyes you have there, they're keeping something from themselves. Nina... you're fixable if you let yourself be fixed. You don't have to be afraid anymore, your father is gone and your mother in some twisted way loves you and your brother in her own way. I can say I know how you feel, but I can help you get better if you're willing to help me. Help me understand your mind, Nina, because it is more complex than I ever thought it would be."
Again, the creepy silent came running over me like thousands of horses. Was she right? Of course, she was right.
"Fine, I am willing to work with you."
"That's all I need to hear from you, Nina. Those words are the beginning of you recovering from everything happening."
"How do you expect me to recover, when I don't even know why I am feeling like this. Feeling so afraid and alone."
"Well just beginning opening up and realize your feelings is getting you closer to your answers and finding peace, however, I still feel like something is nagging you. It's like you still are hiding feelings inside that you need to get out. Need to say to someone."
"But what if I only ruin everything or I get it wrong and can't dig my emotions out and be true to them?"
"You buy a better shovel of course. Just because you don't get everything right the first time, it doesn't mean that everything is over. You can always try again."
"I don't believe in second chances," I told her, bringing her back in thought. I must be the most difficult client she has ever had.
"Because your father never gave you a second chance, am I right?" she leaned forward again and rested her chin on her hand.
"I think so."
"That's normal for abusive parent's, they strike when there is a chance."
"Well, you don't have to tell things I already know. My father was a complicated man, but one thing wasn't, his need to hit me whatever reason there may have been." I bit my lip and she released her body back in her chair as she had done so many times before.
"You said that your father was a complicated man, isn't he that anymore?" she asked and rubbed her chin gently.
"He is, maybe even more than before."
"Would you go as far as to call him crazy?"
Why was she asking such question? what did it matter if my father was crazy or not? He wasn't in my life anymore, I had said my goodbye.
"Yes, I would he could be defined to be crazy."
"Could or can?"
"Can."
"Good." She glanced up at the clock, scratching her nose. "Well your appointment is over for today, but you I know you'll come back, so see you soon!"
We both stood and as I walked away, I could feel her burning eyes on my neck.