Not Sarah's Number

Chapter 34: Therapy After Therapy

"Well that wasn't too bad," I admitted to my brother as we walked out of the therapists office. "I'm proud of us."

Landon had been a nervous wreck before we went. He had started asking me about stalling methods, and if a therapist knew when he was lying or not. He had also asked me what the therapist would do if he just sat there without saying a word. I knew he wasn't going to do any of those things. He was probably going to open up before me. And he did.

When we had gotten to the doors we were both scared, and we showed it by holding hands and squeezing each other so tight our knuckles were white. We walked in and were greeted by a friendly woman at the front desk who gave us some water and snacks. When the therapist came and got us, we had eased up a little. She seemed nice. Her dark brown hair was held up in a clip and she glowed as she held a warm smile on her face. Her tan skin was smooth and almost glowed as if she was an angel. She walked us to her office.

From there, she gave us the run down. She told us about informed consent to counseling which basically meant that she would share sufficient information with us in order for us to make a knowledgeable decision when it came time for treatment options. She also told us that we could share as much or little as we desired, and that she wanted us to feel comfortable with anything we brought to her attention.

"My role is to help you two feel comfortable," she explained, "and if we work together, we can start working through things you feel may be bothering you or make you upset. I want us to focus on things that matter to you, and since there are two of you, I want to make sure both of you are heard and understood. If I begin to misinterpret, or speak on something that you two would not wish to discuss, just let me know, okay?" We both nodded. "Alright. I know speaking up is hard, especially when it comes to feelings or things that might have happened to you, and that's okay. Everything takes practice, even speaking about emotions. This might take a few sessions, or even more than a few sessions, and I might even ask you guys to do some activities outside of the office."

We talked about a lot of things in the first session. She asked us if we had done therapy before, which we told her we had with someone else. She asked us what we liked and didn't like about those sessions, taking notes of those things for her personal record. Then she moved onto simple things. Landon's performance on the soccer team. The pressure he felt being a sophomore on varsity. My relief that competitive volleyball was over as much as I loved it. They were all questions to break the ice. Slowly, but surely I felt the tight knot in my chest beginning to dissolve as worlds flowed freely from my mouth.

Then we moved on to my college applications. How I was nervous to put things down on paper. I revealed that Vincent had helped me maybe see things differently when it came to writing out my feelings on paper. I had called him a friend. Was that wrong?

After that was, of course, our childhood. Landon loved to reminisce about all the good memories. We mentioned mom a lot. We mentioned each other a lot. We mentioned our dad probably three or four times.

"I noticed you've left your father out of a lot of these stories. Is there a reason for that?"

Landon scoffed. "You can't mention someone that wasn't there."

Boom. Ice cracked.

A bead of sweat trickled down my forehead. I had really hoped he wasn't going to get that comfortable just yet. The therapist, Dalia Guerrero, focused her attention on me.

"And what do you think Jessica?"

"I mean it's not necessarily that he wasn't there. He was working. We can't help that the Navy makes him travel all the time."

Dalia nodded. She had told us just to call her Dalia. I tried to take something, anything away from her face, but it remained neutral and calm. She was going to be handling the entire family. All of our therapy sessions were going to be through her so she could piece everything together. I wanted to pick apart her brain so bad. I wanted to know what she thought about us, and after she saw the mess that our family was, if she thought we were fixable. Fixable was probably a bad word, but it was how I felt. I held onto a single strand of hope that everything was okay, and that hope was Dalia.