Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (21 page)

She snickers. “Why can’t
it be both?” she asks. “No, I’ve simply found that it does no good trying to
talk a person into believing something they don’t think they have, especially
when they don’t think they
could
have
it.”

“I’ve been depressed
before,” I tell her. “Growing up in my house, I would have been out of my mind
not to go a little out of my mind.”

“Well, let’s try to get
you back in,” she says. “Have you given any more thought to what you were
feeling that night?”

“I don’t know,” I tell
her. “I was feeling detached.”

“Okay,” she says, picking
up a pen from her desk and writing something on a yellow legal note pad, slowly
pronouncing the word “detachment” while she does.

“That’s not really an
emotion, though, is it?” I ask.

“Oh, absolutely it is,”
she says. “What else?”

I’m not sure if I trust
her, but I’m already paying to be here. The least I can do is get my money’s
worth.

“I don’t know,” I answer.
“I just felt really numb.”

“What about just before
the fight, before you started feeling this sort of disconnect. Was there
anything that triggered your response immediately beforehand, or had it been
building for a while?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I answer.
“I really don’t remember.”

“All right,” she says,
writing something else on her paper. Just like with the word detachment, she
slowly speaks the word that she’s writing. “Hypnosis,” she says.

“You think someone
hypnotized me?” I ask.

“Not yet,” she says.
“Hypnosis has been shown to aid with memory and can even put you back to
another time in your life using a process called age regression. The brain is a
pretty interesting thing.”

“So you’re going to
hypnotize me to find out what I was feeling?” I ask.

She ignores the question.
“So, tell me more about your relationship with Ash,” she says. “I’m assuming
that’s short for Ashley or Ashton?”

“Ashley,” I answer.
“She’s great. We get along really well, and we seem to get each other. Things
haven’t been easy, but a lot’s been going on over the past few months. Apart
from the thing with her mom, there’s really nothing I’d change about her.”

“Okay,” Dr. Sadler says.
“When would you say was the last time when there wasn’t a lot going on—when
things were more normal?”

“I don’t think things were
ever normal,” I tell her.

“That’s why I used the
modifier ‘more,’” she says. “When was the last time you really felt like
yourself?”

“I don’t know,” I answer.
“I know it’s been a while.”

“That must be very
difficult,” Dr. Sadler says.

I look at her. “It is
what it is,” I tell her.

“And what it is must be
very difficult,” she says.

“Look, I didn’t come in
here to be judged, okay?” I ask, getting out of my seat yet again.

The doctor doesn’t move.
She barely blinks. “Where did that come from?” she asks in a surprisingly soft
tone.

“You’re sitting there
trying to be empathetic or sympathetic or whatever it is that you shrinks do to
get people to trust you, but you don’t have any more answers than the idiots
they put me in a room with when I was a kid!” I shout.

She just sits there
observing, watching.

“Look, this was a bad
idea,” I tell her. “I told Ash that I’d come see someone, and now I have. I’m
out of here.”

“All right,” Dr. Sadler
says and turns to her desk. She picks up a file and starts leafing through it.

I haven’t moved from my
spot in front of the leather chair that has been my seat for the last half hour
or so.

“All right?” I ask.
“You’re really something, you know that? I come in here asking for help and you
don’t even care that I haven’t gotten it yet?”

She shrugs, but doesn’t
look at me.

“Fine!” I declare and go
for the door.

“If you’d ever like to
turn the anger you’re feeling into a psychological breakthrough, you’re almost
there already,” she says. “Come back when you’re ready to start taking this
seriously and we’ll get you all fixed up.”

“Just like that?” I ask.
“You expect me to believe that you just figured out what’s going on, right when
I’m threatening to walk out of here?”

“No,” she says. “I don’t
expect you to believe anything, though for the record, I would just like to let
you know that I pretty well knew what was going on the last time you threatened
to leave. I’d love to help you—it
is
my job after all—but I made a rule a while back: When a person tries to leave
the office more than once, just let them go. Nobody changes until they become
willing to change. The reason so many people say they can’t change is that
they’re not willing to do it. So, until you’re there, I’m just wasting my time
and there are people in that room out there who’d love the extra time to delve
into their psyches.”

“Reverse psychology,” I
say. “That’s what you’re doing. You’re trying to convince me to stay by telling
me you don’t care.”

Finally, she sets her
file down and turns toward me, saying, “I wouldn’t rule that out completely,
but everything I just told you is true. If you want to stay and finish the
appointment, we can do that, but I’m going to have to insist that you be
willing to listen, that you be willing to be open enough to hear what you’ve
known for a long, long time.”

“Oh? And what’s that?” I
ask, crossing my arms, smirking.

“You don’t think you
deserve her,” Dr. Sadler says. “It’s not your fault. Your whole life has been
all about you finding out just how limited your choices are. I get it,” she
says. “I mean, if I were in a relationship with someone I really cared about
after avoiding that sort of thing for so long, I’d probably be scared, too. Add
fear to the anhedonia, and we’ve got two of the three emotions you were feeling
that night.”

“Why three?” I ask. “Is
there some part of the brain I don’t know about that makes sure you feel
exactly three things at all times, or—”

“Not that I’m aware of,”
the doctor interrupts. “People feel what they feel. Sometimes it’s nice and
clear-cut, but most of the time it’s a jumble of often-contradictory things.
When a person’s graduating from high school, they could very well be feeling pride
in their accomplishment, but most of the people I’ve talked to on the subject
mention this overwhelming sense of dread that they’re one step closer to being
on their own. Then there’s the excitement for the future, the nervousness about
what’s to come, the sadness of knowing a lot of the people who have been such a
big part of your life are going to start going their different ways. You can
feel anger that you didn’t focus better on your school work, or you could feel
anger because you never got out and did anything. There’s never a single
emotion going on, even when it feels like there is. The mind has to navigate a
whole lifetime of experiences, and it’s this process that gives us our emotions
in the moment.”

“Yeah, but what does that
have to do with me?” I ask. “What does that have to do with Ash?”

“That’s just the thing,”
she says. “You’ve been so used to disappointment that when a real relationship
comes along with someone you could actually see a future with—it makes sense
that you’d be at least a little conflicted, though I’d say you’re a lot more
than a little. Do you like that? I came up with that myself.”

She was about an inch
from making a solid point. Then she stopped.

“Very clever,” I say
blankly. “So you’re saying that it’s because I feel something real for her that
I’m screwing this up?”

“I probably would have
phrased it a little differently, but yeah, that’s pretty much what’s going on,”
she says.

“What about Chris getting
arrested?” I ask. “This didn’t happen before then.”

“Is that really true,
though?” she asks. “I’m not trying to discount the upheaval you must have felt
when he was taken away, but I find it difficult to believe that there were no
indications something might happen even before then.”

“So you’re calling me a
liar?” I ask.

“Sit down,” she says
sharply.

I don’t even think about
it; I just sit.

“Now we can keep going
back and forth, but frankly, I’m getting pretty tired of you reacting to
everything with an immediate blast of anger,” she says.

I scoff and chuckle a
little, smiling with one half of my mouth. “I thought you
wanted
me to start feeling my emotions,” I say.

“Yeah, but I could do
without the tantrums,” she retorts. “You think you’re going to win, but you’re
not.”

I’m crying. Why the hell
am I crying? I’m not sad. I’m not hurt. Whatever this feeling is, it’s
terrifying.

“What are you doing to
me?” I ask.

Dr. Sadler passes me a
tissue. “People come from all different kinds of backgrounds,” she says. “Some
are good, some aren’t so good, but all are a mix of the two. Even the worst
childhood isn’t without its joyful moments,” she says. “Even the best isn’t
without its heartache. For you, it became very necessary early on to—forgive
the pun—fight for your place in the house. It wasn’t simply given to you the
way it is with most children, you had to work for every failed compliment,
every quiet moment. I think the problem is that all this time, you’ve been
feeling like an imposter. You feel like you have to win at all costs, but in
the back of your mind, you have this burning question: ‘What happens when I
lose?’”

“This isn’t about
fighting,” I tell her. “Fighting is the only good thing that’s come out of my
life.”

“Yet you insist on
fighting in underground matches,” the doctor says. “Is that because you tried
to go the other way and failed, or did you just not try?”

“Aren’t therapists
supposed to be understanding?” I ask.

“We are supposed to
understand,” she says. “
Being
understanding, on the other hand, only serves a purpose in certain situations.”

“I feel like you’re being
unfair and hostile,” I tell her.

“Good,” she says.

“Good?” I ask. “You’re
glad that I think you’re coming across like an officious nag?”

“Huh,” she says. “Usually
another word entirely follows officious in my experience.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I
tell her.

She rolls her eyes a
little. Smiling, she says, “I don’t think it’s the actual fighting that’s the
problem. As strange as this may be to hear from someone sitting where I’m
sitting, I’d say overall, it’s been a net positive in your life. That is,
assuming the fighting stays in the ring.”

“I don’t get in real
fights anymore,” I tell her. “Not for a long time.”

“Okay,” she says, “but
you used to?”

“Frequently,” I answer.

“So, would you say that
the main way you’ve learned to deal with your problems is by trying to get them
all out by fighting?” she asks.

“I was wondering when you
were going to say something like that,” he says. “It’s not a cover.”

“I’m not saying it’s a
cover,” Dr. Sadler says. “I’m saying it’s a catharsis. Human beings are very
good at transferring their feelings into whatever they’re doing. With something
like fighting where there’s a definite struggle, you can come out the other
side feeling like you’ve just had a hundred sessions talking with a therapist.
The only problem with that is that you get none of the insight, so there’s
nothing to prevent those same feelings from creeping back in, and when that
happens, they’re usually more intense than when they seemed to go away the last
time.”

I’ve actually noticed
that.

“What do I do?” I ask.

“Well,” she says, “we’re
nearing the end of our time today, but earlier you kind of glossed over an
experience with Ash and her mom. I want you to talk to Ash and explain to her
why you felt so strongly about this situation. Did this happen before or after
your brother’s arrest?”

“After,” I answer.

“Okay,” Dr. Sadler says.
“I want you to take a little time before you talk to Ash to do a little
introspection, maybe see if whatever was going on with Chris may have affected
what happened with Ash and her mother.”

“But you don’t know what
happened with Ash and her mother,” I tell her. “How do you even know there’s a
connection?”

“I don’t think there’s a
connection to them,” she says. “I think there’s one to you, though. Maybe I’m
wrong. If that’s the case, you’ll figure it out while you’re introspecting and
you can come back here next week and call me an idiot.”

That sounds pretty
tempting.

“Okay,” I tell her. “Is
our time up, up, or do we have a few minutes?”

“Is there something else
you wanted to cover before we end?” she asks. “We have a couple of minutes.”

“No,” I answer. “Thanks.
I’ll let you know how it goes.”