#distorted thoughts

Their voices had been raised, forcefully grazing against their throats only to get low again, mere hisses spat through clenched teeth. A duel to prove their superiority, waiting to see who would bleed first. She had insisted, but he didn’t want to hear about it again. He had repeatedly told her that he didn’t need therapy.

How sharing all his problems and thoughts with a person he didn’t know would help, anyway?

The moment Claire had stood in front of him with her fists in balls and her breaths uneven, a thought had come to his mind. Maybe she had had enough. Maybe she couldn’t - didn’t want to - deal with his ragged psyche anymore.

He felt betrayed. He felt relieved. Without thinking about it, he told her to live separately. He would never utter the words if they had stayed long enough in his mouth or his head, but he could keep nothing inside anymore.

Claire had cried a desperate “No!” and doubled up as if he had stabbed her. He had won. He saw her break, there, next to the kitchen table, and knew he was the one who broke her. He, who had promised to keep her safe.

Love made him hate the world. If only she didn’t love him that much. If only she would finally leave him alone.

But she hadn’t. Strange are the ways of the heart. Stabbed and broken and it keeps beating.

Claire had left the house only to come back an hour later, still in her blue scrubs, hugging him as if her life depended on that embrace as much as his did. Saying she was sorry.

Claire, apologizing to him, as if the mistake was hers.

He knew then, that she would never leave him. That he could never win, without her. And he accepted to give psychotherapy a try.

For her. For them.

For him.

He had felt her tears on his skin when he told her, her heart dancing against his chest. Rejoining, for him. Calling to his as it had always done, in their unique rhythm, unbeknownst to the world.

Most of the days, he could feel his heart singing to hers. But then, there were times when he felt his whole existence frail, secured in a bubble wrap; mute, alone, safe. And he wanted it to remain that way. Being with Claire made him vulnerable, made him care. She gave his life a meaning, and with that came the world’s expectations, demanding to be fulfiled, to be carried along. But they were heavy and he failed, time after time, each step getting his feet deeper in the mud.  

So, here he was. Psychotherapy. Asking help from a stranger, to find his lost strength.

He took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. He had decided to try. Maybe Claire was right, maybe these sessions would prove helpful.

Doctor Hildegarde’s voice was soothing. He didn’t know what to expect, but talking to her didn’t feel wrong. She asked him why he was there. He said the truth. His wife wanted him to try psychotherapy. He was already on medication, and he was doing better - most of the days. Hildegard nodded, looking him straight in the eye.

When did you see the first signs?

It had all started when his latest book became a bestseller. When he returned to his desk, away from his editors and his devoted fans, away from book presentations and reassuring pats on the back. The moment he sat alone in front of his computer screen, his breaths were different. It took him a while to realize that he was afraid he could never create something just as good. Terrified, that his much-praised talent was just luck and good marketing.

Every time his fingers crushed on the keyboard, he felt the ghost of inadequacy heavy on them. He used to caress the letters, whisper to them, making them move in a mystical dance forming words. Now it was pure force. He had to find a story, a good one. He had to talk to people’s souls. He had to be good, better, the best.

He spent whole days writing only two sentences. And even in those, the words had been wrong. They didn’t have a heart. They edged towards the margins of each page, eager to leave.

He had been struggling for months. Months, until he wanted to throw up the moment he turned his computer on. The pages, stark white, hurt his eyes. The stories remained hidden. They didn’t itch his fingers, desperate to tumble out.

He was hiding it all from Claire at the beginning. It was stupid, to tell her that he was a writer who couldn’t write. It was insignificant, when she had lost human lives doing her job and yet carried the weight of these memories along the way with grace. It would be okay, he had told himself. It would soon get better.

Only it didn’t.

When Claire realized that something was off, he didn’t admit it. It was a weakness, and he was strong. They had gone through harder times in the past. He hadn’t crumbled when they lost Faith, how could he get worse now, over the ghost of an unwritten book?

It made no sense.

And yet, like a modern Prometheus, he was bound on a rock, waiting for the eagle to feed on his liver every single day. Or, rather, his brain. Ancient Greeks were wrong about that - the liver wasn’t the seat of human emotions, the brain was.

It was when Claire found him crying on the floor, that he asked for her help. And ever since that day, she had been there, patient and strong, loving and caring. And his. She hadn’t left him, even though she should.

How do you feel?

It was a simple, short question. How did he feel? Less. He felt that he wasn’t his best self, that he didn’t give the people he loved what they deserved. He was a disappointment. To them, to himself.

In the following thirty minutes, Jamie replied to her unhurried questions and gave voice in thoughts he hadn’t said aloud even to himself. Claire had never challenged him to explain his situation. She was there when he started breaking, she knew what he was feeling and why.

Speaking to Hildegarde was liberating in a way Jamie hadn’t expected. He didn’t care if his words revealed how broken he was - he wouldn’t affect her life, her day, or her mood by saying the wrong thing. He could just be, shitty as he was, and don’t care about it.

Jamie dropped his facade. He had adopted it almost two months ago, when Claire’s face lit with hope after adopting a new medication plan. Since then Jamie had plastered a smile on his face on bad days, pretending everything was okay. In therapy, however, he didn’t need to try and be something he wasn’t.

“Jamie, the first thing you told me when you got in this room was that you are here because of your wife. But I must tell you now, that If you don’t want to be here, if you doubt psychotherapy, I can do nothing to help you.”

“Aye, I ken,” he smiled faintly, but meant it. He understood now. “I’m here to try,” he said, fully aware of the difficulty of the undertaking. Nothing would change miraculously.

“We will try to connect your thoughts and your emotions. Your brain has adopted certain patterns to react to the environmental stimuli. Cognitive distortions, if you like. I know it sounds complicated now, but we will take one step at a time, and everything will clear up. We will make a crisis plan for you, including stress-reduction activities and the people who will be your social supports.”

He nodded. A plan. Taking things in his hands again. He could do it.

“I also want you to keep a journal, noting down your emotions, your thoughts and the incidents that triggered them. It would help if you included how you responded to it, as well. Could you do that, you think?”

He could.

Distorted thoughts. When the world was flipping. When he heard Claire asking him how writing was going and he felt that she was accusing him of worthlessness. Of not doing what he was supposed to do. Of not being the man she had married.

Jamie looked at Hildegarde and saw neither pity nor compassion in her eyes. He didn’t see the love he saw in Claire’s whisky eyes, the love that made everything worse. The unconditional love that required nothing from him while making him feel he ought to give her everything.

Love made him hate himself. He couldn’t love her back the same way, he couldn’t even be there for her when she needed him.

He had heard her crying more than once and had shied away, terrified of finding the reason behind the tears was he, desperate of being unable to help her. His feet were urging him towards her as they always did, but his heart shrank in his chest, his breaths came faster, his mind focused on just one thing. How much he was hurting her.

What could he say, when he had ruined their world? What could he possibly whisper in her soft curls to console her? What could he say that would not be a lie?

But Hildegarde wasn’t Claire. She was a professional. She wanted to help, but with her he didn’t feel that imminent pressure to get well. He didn’t feel he had to laugh, as he did to Murtagh’s jokes, to make his godfather believe he was getting better. He didn’t feel he had to lie, as he did every time Jenny called him, asking how he felt. He didn’t feel he had to hide that he slept the whole time Claire was at work, not to make her worry.

Maybe Claire was right. Maybe this would work.