Therapy for the Lost

“Let it go.” He had taken off his coat, and he was sitting very close to her. “You can’t handle it by yourself, and you don’t have to. Just let it all go, and relax. Let some one else be the strong one for once.”
“Like who? I barely know you guys, how can I let that fall on someone else?” She was mumbling now, and the realization fully hit that she was telling him things. She sniffled, and that was it. She was crying, and she tried to get up and walk away from him. She suddenly felt like she was suffocating and knew a panic attack was about to ensue.
He reached out and pulled her back. He pulled her into his arms and whispered; “Any of us, we don’t care. But we want you to make it, Sarah. We’re in too far to let you go…”
“You just-“
“Stop saying I don’t understand. My brother’s been diagnosed with depression, I do understand. So your problems aren’t the same, so what? You’re still suffering like he did,” Mikey cut across her protests.
She really could not think of another argument. Her brain literally hurt from all the thinking and stressing she’d done lately. Instead, for once, she closed her eyes and tried to do as he suggested. She tried to just stop thinking about it for a minute. She couldn’t. She couldn’t stop worrying, and she couldn’t stop crying. Now that she had a warm shirt to cry on and someone who wasn’t going to push her away…it was over. She had no idea how long they sat there, all she knew was that he did not fidget, sigh or complain. He let her go until she was done, and when she finally pulled away from him he asked her if she was ok.
“I…I dunno. All I know is that I’m going to feel really stupid now.”
“Why? You don’t have to explain anything to them. If you just say you see Dr. Corin they’ll understand. They won’t ask. They know better.” Mikey said.
She looked at his shirt and felt really guilty. He was wearing his Anthrax t-shirt, and she knew it was his favorite. It was completely soaked in several places. “Sorry about your shirt.”
He looked down and then shrugged. “It’s been through worse.”
They sat there for a while, just listening to the cd that was on repeat. He was still sitting thisclose to her, and after a few minutes, she leaned her head on his arm. He pulled his arm around so he could put it around her shoulder. No one said anything, and they just sat there, enjoying each other’s company.

It was the next day of Sarah’s meeting with Dr. Corin, and things were only getting worse. They were discussing fourth grade, and Sarah was screaming about how he couldn’t understand how she felt about being molested by a family member.
“Sarah, I may not be able to understand, but you shouldn’t have hid this from anybody. This is not your fault and if you keep thinking it is…Sarah just keep talking.”
This only made her shut up. She was crying, had gone through two boxes of Kleenex, and the teddy bear she had brought with her was frayed in places because of her ripping at it. Her chest was hurting she was slowly feeling more stupid as time passed, and all she wanted was to be at home on her couch with Mikey. He had spent a lot of time at her house; they didn’t always talk or do anything at all. Sometimes they just sat there, not saying anything and just enjoying the fact that someone else was there.
After about ten minutes, Dr. Corin called her name. “Sarah…you’re still not talking. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
“You’re not helping anyway. You just make me feel worse. I hate telling you things because I feel like I’m stupid for even caring if these things happened to me. It makes me worry more, I fret till I’m sick before I come here, and I’ve spent the last three weeks hiding from everyone because I don’t want anyone to know I see you.”
“Sarah, this is not normal-“
“I don’t give a fuck about being normal! I just want to go back to when I never thought about these things! To when I had friends and a fiancée! I want to go back to ignoring it all! Hiding is so much easier than this!!”
Silence greeted these words; it lasted till it was punctuated by Sarah’s cell phone ringing. “Hello?” she asked in a watery voice. She sniffled heartily.
“Sarah? Are you ok? I’ve been worried about you…” it was Jamia.
“Jamia? Oh, um, lemme call you when I get home…I’m still at Dr. Corin’s.”
“Do you want me to come get you?”
“No, no, I’ll be fine, ok?”
“You always say that…”
“I know, but I mean it, I’m okay…”
Jamia giggled involuntarily.
“Trust me,” she added, when she realized what she said.
“Call me tonight, we’ll hang out, ok?”
“Ok…” she hung up, then looked at the clock. “I’m twenty minutes overdue, can I go?”
He sighed, and she could tell that it was very reluctantly that he said yes. She jumped out of her chair and flew out of the room at top speed. She drove home with no real confidence of how she got there, and by the time she had the door unlocked and her coat off, she had Mikey on the line.
“Sarah, what’s wrong?”
“I saw Dr. Corin today, it was a horrid meeting…”
“I’m on my way…” he said, hanging up.
He was there pretty quick, and he didn’t ask any questions when she didn’t even let him to the couch before she wrapped her arms around him in a hug of death. They stood there for a few minutes, Sarah crying and him just holding on; no one spoke until her house phone rang. “Let me,” he said, answering it for her. Whoever it was spoke loudly; Sarah could hear every word. Maybe she needed to turn her volume down…
“So that’s where you ran off to without telling anybody where you were going. What’s going on with her, Mikey? She hasn’t spoken to Frank or I in weeks…we miss her. Jamia said she was letting her come over tonight, I wanna come.”
Mikey looked at her with a worried look on his face. “Gerard wants to come over with Jamia tonight.”
“Um…I…I guess so,” she said. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hide this from them for much longer, and maybe the company would make her feel better.
“She says it’s okay, you can come. You may as well bring Frankie, or he’ll mope.”
Sarah couldn’t help but smile there, and Mikey did too.
“Tell him I said to bring me some Jack Daniels. You guys may not drink, but I haven’t had one in ages, and I need it.”