Status: In progress.
I Swear I'm Not a Hopeless Case
Chapter 02.
I angstfully looked at the hangnail sticking out of my finger. Who did it think it was? Did it think it could just lie there for all to see, and most importantly, for me to feel? It was a parasite, a pest. In no way was my relationship with this tiny piece of nail mutual.
Little annoyances like this hangnail kill me. Not really kill me, of course, but bother me incessantly. Almost like girls who dumb themselves down in order to attract a boy, or people who are so utterly involved with themselves that they think anyone even minutely interested in them will eventually fall head over heels in love with them; which brings me to another irk of mine. Stupid little sayings like, 'Head Over Heels', or 'Tis better to have loved and lost, then to never loved at all'.
Why? Because firstly, if you fall madly in love with someone, wouldn't it be 'Heels Over Head'? I mean, if you fall 'Head Over Heels', it wouldn't be much of a fall, would it?
Secondly, it is definitely not better to have loved somebody than to have never loved at all. Because, when you love someone, everything else is dimmed down; the volume is lowered. You can't focus, you can't sleep, fuck; you cant even think for yourself. If the person you love actually loves you back, that's wonderful. You can be idiots in love together. But, for the rest of us, the ones living in reality, the ones who aren't hopeless romantics, but are just hopeless in romantics, it's one step lower than hell itself. Because most of the time, that person doesn't even realize you exist, or if they do, they think you're scum.
And if you are lucky enough to find someone which you share requited love, losing them and dealing with that gut-wrenching, suffocating feeling of emptiness that overcomes you when you deal with loss of the one you love, it certainly is not better than never meeting them. The pain is so ever-present, so engulfing, your senses begin to falter. You smell colors and see sounds and they are all so ugly and harrowing. It's almost like some type of insidious Synethesia.
You just want the pain to be gone, you want to feel something other than hurt. At that point in time, anything, even the thought of never meeting the person you lost, seems enticing.
"Olivia."
I sighed loudly, making it evident that I didn't want to talk, or that hadn't I been paying attention to what my coarse-voiced therapist had been saying. She crossed her tan leg over the other. The skirt she was wearing rested just above the calf, showing the spider veins that were just beginning to make themselves visible. She must be at least forty-five. I heard a snap.
I shot my head up to see her hand raised and her thumb and middle fingers pressed together. Her blood-red nail polish matched her blouse and her lipstick, as well as her 'No bullshit' personality.
Her brown eyes stared at mine coldly. "I need you to pay attention. Your parents aren't paying me to let you daydream." She adjusted her glasses whilst writing something down, "You should at least take advantage of it."
The pen she was holding was viciously moving along with her hand. I desperately wanted to know what she was writing- it could be anything. Most likely bad, though. With 'Dr.' Alice Milton, it was always bad. I could cure cancer, save ten-million puppies, and donate an innumerable amount of money to charity, but I'd still be the little bitch of a client she HAD to see once a week.
I crushed my eyelids against each other and opened them again. I had to stop over-analyzing things. Especially since somebody whose occupation is over-analyzation was sitting right across from me, looking upon expectantly. I personally believed this is what she wanted. Me to fret and ask her what she's writing so she can use that as some reason to get me to open up.
But I wouldn't open up because opening up involves feelings. My feelings were completely irrelevant to everything at that point. Everything was about getting me to forget, to forgive, to understand. But, I didn't see how it was possible. How can you forget the inevitable? How can you forgive something that has hit you harder than a wrecking ball? How can you understand anything anymore? The answer is you can't.
To all of those. But, people like Alice, my therapist, make a living off pretending you can. So, her being the anti-bullshit' poster child she is, is actually a flaming hypocrite. After all, her job is a bullshit artist. Therapy can't make you feel better when you know that it's all a game. I, the client, am just a pawn on the massive, dysfunctional board that is my mind and I can't make a fucking move. But, if there was any hope of being able to win and move on to the bigger, more confusing game of life, this woman here couldn't help me. All I was to her is a problem to fix; a paycheck.
"I don't need it."
She looked up from her clipboard. "If you didn't need it, you wouldn't be here, now would you? With the trauma you've experienced, you need someone to talk to."
She looked at me with what I imagine she thought was concern, but it made me not want to converse even more. She sighed and continued to take her notes. What could she possibly be writing about that took that long? I'm not that interesting, not that fucked up. Her arrogance, her insensitivity disgusted me.
"I was forced against my will," I clasped my hands together, ignoring the stab of pain from my hangnail, "you're aware of that."
She glanced up once more, with one of her overly-thin eyebrows arched. She pursed her lips and placed her clipboard on the side table right next to her water, which was of course, placed neatly on a wicker coaster. "I am indeed. But, sometimes it takes being forced to do things to realize the problems we have."
I narrowed my eyes involuntarily. If I dare challenged her, she would throw me some cheap, rip-off Confucious shit. It didn't fool me. I had actually paid attention in World Religious Studies, despite my teacher's belief. "Sometimes being forced makes the problems worse."
She folded her hands together and placed them on her knee. "That is true, but rarely."
She sighed, leaning back further into her seat. "Olivia, I'm not here to argue, or challenge you, and I very well know you understand that," She took off her designer frames, placing them on top of the infamous clipboard, "So, I'm simply going to ask you- is there anything, anything at all you would like to talk about before this completely useless session comes to a close?"
I sat up, looked to my watch and gleefully shook my head. She let out another exasperated sigh, and showed me the door, to which I happily walked through and didn't look back at.
In the elevator, I came to a sudden realization. I am that hangnail.
Little annoyances like this hangnail kill me. Not really kill me, of course, but bother me incessantly. Almost like girls who dumb themselves down in order to attract a boy, or people who are so utterly involved with themselves that they think anyone even minutely interested in them will eventually fall head over heels in love with them; which brings me to another irk of mine. Stupid little sayings like, 'Head Over Heels', or 'Tis better to have loved and lost, then to never loved at all'.
Why? Because firstly, if you fall madly in love with someone, wouldn't it be 'Heels Over Head'? I mean, if you fall 'Head Over Heels', it wouldn't be much of a fall, would it?
Secondly, it is definitely not better to have loved somebody than to have never loved at all. Because, when you love someone, everything else is dimmed down; the volume is lowered. You can't focus, you can't sleep, fuck; you cant even think for yourself. If the person you love actually loves you back, that's wonderful. You can be idiots in love together. But, for the rest of us, the ones living in reality, the ones who aren't hopeless romantics, but are just hopeless in romantics, it's one step lower than hell itself. Because most of the time, that person doesn't even realize you exist, or if they do, they think you're scum.
And if you are lucky enough to find someone which you share requited love, losing them and dealing with that gut-wrenching, suffocating feeling of emptiness that overcomes you when you deal with loss of the one you love, it certainly is not better than never meeting them. The pain is so ever-present, so engulfing, your senses begin to falter. You smell colors and see sounds and they are all so ugly and harrowing. It's almost like some type of insidious Synethesia.
You just want the pain to be gone, you want to feel something other than hurt. At that point in time, anything, even the thought of never meeting the person you lost, seems enticing.
"Olivia."
I sighed loudly, making it evident that I didn't want to talk, or that hadn't I been paying attention to what my coarse-voiced therapist had been saying. She crossed her tan leg over the other. The skirt she was wearing rested just above the calf, showing the spider veins that were just beginning to make themselves visible. She must be at least forty-five. I heard a snap.
I shot my head up to see her hand raised and her thumb and middle fingers pressed together. Her blood-red nail polish matched her blouse and her lipstick, as well as her 'No bullshit' personality.
Her brown eyes stared at mine coldly. "I need you to pay attention. Your parents aren't paying me to let you daydream." She adjusted her glasses whilst writing something down, "You should at least take advantage of it."
The pen she was holding was viciously moving along with her hand. I desperately wanted to know what she was writing- it could be anything. Most likely bad, though. With 'Dr.' Alice Milton, it was always bad. I could cure cancer, save ten-million puppies, and donate an innumerable amount of money to charity, but I'd still be the little bitch of a client she HAD to see once a week.
I crushed my eyelids against each other and opened them again. I had to stop over-analyzing things. Especially since somebody whose occupation is over-analyzation was sitting right across from me, looking upon expectantly. I personally believed this is what she wanted. Me to fret and ask her what she's writing so she can use that as some reason to get me to open up.
But I wouldn't open up because opening up involves feelings. My feelings were completely irrelevant to everything at that point. Everything was about getting me to forget, to forgive, to understand. But, I didn't see how it was possible. How can you forget the inevitable? How can you forgive something that has hit you harder than a wrecking ball? How can you understand anything anymore? The answer is you can't.
To all of those. But, people like Alice, my therapist, make a living off pretending you can. So, her being the anti-bullshit' poster child she is, is actually a flaming hypocrite. After all, her job is a bullshit artist. Therapy can't make you feel better when you know that it's all a game. I, the client, am just a pawn on the massive, dysfunctional board that is my mind and I can't make a fucking move. But, if there was any hope of being able to win and move on to the bigger, more confusing game of life, this woman here couldn't help me. All I was to her is a problem to fix; a paycheck.
"I don't need it."
She looked up from her clipboard. "If you didn't need it, you wouldn't be here, now would you? With the trauma you've experienced, you need someone to talk to."
She looked at me with what I imagine she thought was concern, but it made me not want to converse even more. She sighed and continued to take her notes. What could she possibly be writing about that took that long? I'm not that interesting, not that fucked up. Her arrogance, her insensitivity disgusted me.
"I was forced against my will," I clasped my hands together, ignoring the stab of pain from my hangnail, "you're aware of that."
She glanced up once more, with one of her overly-thin eyebrows arched. She pursed her lips and placed her clipboard on the side table right next to her water, which was of course, placed neatly on a wicker coaster. "I am indeed. But, sometimes it takes being forced to do things to realize the problems we have."
I narrowed my eyes involuntarily. If I dare challenged her, she would throw me some cheap, rip-off Confucious shit. It didn't fool me. I had actually paid attention in World Religious Studies, despite my teacher's belief. "Sometimes being forced makes the problems worse."
She folded her hands together and placed them on her knee. "That is true, but rarely."
She sighed, leaning back further into her seat. "Olivia, I'm not here to argue, or challenge you, and I very well know you understand that," She took off her designer frames, placing them on top of the infamous clipboard, "So, I'm simply going to ask you- is there anything, anything at all you would like to talk about before this completely useless session comes to a close?"
I sat up, looked to my watch and gleefully shook my head. She let out another exasperated sigh, and showed me the door, to which I happily walked through and didn't look back at.
In the elevator, I came to a sudden realization. I am that hangnail.