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Retrospectively, I probably should have been more concerned by my parents’ nonchalance. In all fairness they were just acting the same as they’d always been, though maybe a bit nicer, but it wasn’t a drastic change or anything. Maybe it should’ve been, considering… that, but at the time I’d just been glad they weren’t suddenly hovering over my shoulder. Besides, it was nice that they weren’t being quite so harsh anymore.
But of course, all good things eventually came to an end, because all that nonchalance had a purpose: to butter me up so I’d agree to any ‘grief management techniques’ they decided I desperately needed.
For future reference, acting as though something never happened or claiming that ‘he would want you to do it’ as a blackmail technique? Not a good idea. I wanted to be incensed by their audacity, how they thought they could just ignore my grandfather’s death, but… maybe it was my father’s way of grieving. He had never really been close to Abe Portman, and come to think of it, neither had the rest of the family. It was really just me that had formed a proper relationship with him, and now…
Needless to say, me and my parents had mixed feelings on the subject. Incredibly mixed.
And now, of course, that nonchalance was coming back to bite me in the tail. My father was trying to insist I go to a therapist, some ‘critically acclaimed’ doctor from one of my mother’s magazines. It wasn’t the therapy that I was against; in all honesty, I probably needed some of that, even if I didn’t particularly feel like talking about things just yet. No, it was the fact that my father was trying to take me to a magazine therapist. The man who never once put me before his company, now claiming he was willing to take time out of his oh-so-busy day to drive me to a ‘nice doctor’? Yeah, no way was I buying that.
But if it got him off my back… well, I needed to work on my lying skills anyways, especially now that my parents had somehow decided they needed to finally be involved in my life. I might as well use the opportunities I was given.
Hence how I ended up sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s sedan, driving down the busy highway on a Thursday afternoon on my way to see a man who called himself Dr. Golan.
The car in front of us honked its horn for the third time in less than a minute, and i let out a quiet sigh. My dad gave me a look, and I thought that would be the end of it, but evidently I thought wrong, because he started talking a moment later like we’d been having a full conversation this whole time.
“I just don’t get why you won’t try, Jake,” he sighed, shaking his head. “You could be great if you applied yourself.”
I do apply myself, I thought. You just don’t think I’m applying myself to anything worthwhile.
Oblivious to my thoughts, my dad continued. “You’re lined up to be the next CEO of the company, you know.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Do you? The way you’re going, Jake, you’ll end up sleeping under a bridge and eating day-old tacos before you’re twenty. Maybe this therapist will finally knock some sense into you – get your head out of those silly fairy tales.”
“They’re not fairy tales, they’re history books-”
“They’re not useful. History never got anyone anywhere, and the only place it’ll land you is a day job at McDonald’s. Is that what you want?”
“No, but-”
“Then I suggest you step. It. Up. You’re sixteen, that’s too old to be playing around. When you’re eighteen you’ll be moving out – two years, Jacob, that’s all you’ve got. When are you going to bet up and start doing something with your life?”
“But-”
“No buts.” He sighed, his voice losing some of its harsh tone. “Your mother and I want what’s best for you, Jake. We want a son we can be proud of, and right now, that’s not you. If you really want to get anywhere in life like I did, you’ll follow in my footsteps. Do you understand?”
I was quiet.
“I said, do you understand? ”
“...yes, sir.”
“Good.” And that was that – from growling out insults to suddenly pleasant businesslike. Picture perfect, he’d call it.
It wasn’t long before the traffic started to clear up. WIthout another word spoken, we soon arrived at the office – a tall, rectangular building of grey cement stretching up to the clouds. I had never liked office buildings much; they were the complete opposite of the comforting trees outside my grandfather’s house. I remembered trying to climb those trees time and time again, stopped only when my grandfather asked me to come back down before I got too high up.
“Don’t go too far up,” he would say, “or it’ll only be the trees up there to catch you, and they aren’t as friendly as the ones from my home.” He’d give me one of those insider smiles, the ones we shared when it felt like we knew something everyone else didn’t. Every time I tried to bring it up to my dad when I would inevitably be sent back to him and my mother, he would scowl and start ranting about how his father was filling my head with silly stories again, and how I would never take anything seriously if I thought trees could be ‘friendly’. As if it was so bad to believe in something fanciful at the age of six.
Before I knew it, the door of the office building was swinging open, my father giving me a rather pointed look to get inside or else, you agreed to be fixed and you’ll follow through whether you like it or not. I followed him through the carpeted first floor and to the elevator, allowing myself to be shuffled inside first before the doors closed with only us and one other inside, a balding man in a suit with eyebags for days. He barely spared us a glance as he mechanically pushed a button on the panel, my dad mimicking a second after.
A pop song I vaguely recognized drowned out the electrical whirring of the elevator moving upwards, punctuated moments later by the ding that indicated we’d reached a floor. The other man exited, and I shifted uncomfortably as the doors hissed shut once again. Then, there was another ding, and before I knew it, my dad had shuffled me out of the elevator and into an uncomfortably quiet carpeted hallway.
Reminds me of a hotel, I thought, trying to take in the environment without getting scolded for ‘gawking like an idiot’. Less doors… but I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.
About five doors away from the elevator, we abruptly stopped. It looked no different from any other acacia-orange wooden door, save for the small plaque that read ‘Golan, PhD – Therapy’ . Utterly bland and unassuming, just as I expected from a magazine therapist chosen by my mother.
My father pushed the door open, and with a chilling foreboding starting to swell in my stomach, I followed him inside.
oOoOo
“Good afternoon, Mr. Portman. My name is Dr. Golan.”
“Nice to meet you, sir.” I shifted on the red leather chaise, making myself a bit more comfortable on an utterly uncomfortable surface.
Dr. Golan gave me what was likely meant to be a disarming smile, but really only succeeded in making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I didn’t show it, though, simply returning his ‘polite’ gesture.
You unsettle me. There’s nothing behind your eyes.
…Where did that thought come from? I wasn’t about to deny it, it was true even if it made no logical sense, but what?
“Now, Jacob,” he started, and I could already tell this was going to be an ordeal even if I wasn’t here to practice my lying skills, “first and foremost, I’m not here to make you uncomfortable.” Fine job of that you’re doing. “I just want to help you be the best you that you can be. Do you understand?”
God, how I hated that phrase. “Of course, sir.” Don’t let it show – keep it nice and calm, and for the love of god, don’t give him a reason to think you’re being deceitful.
He smiled again, even worse than before. Completely serene, and yet… it felt viscerally wrong . “Good. So, let’s start off with something easy, hmm? Most of my patients aren’t comfortable jumping into the ‘big stuff’ during their first session, so we can keep it simple for today.”
My thoughts exactly. “Yeah, that sounds good – I don’t know that I’m really ready to…” I let it trail off uncomfortably, leaving it open to interpretation as to what I wasn’t ready for. Let him draw his own assumptions, his own conclusions, and see if he digs his own grave.
“Of course. Would talking about your daily life be a good topic? Tell me, what are your interests? Any hobbies?”
That, I could work with, easily. “Well, I guess I like history. S’not really a career thing, you know, but it’s fun to read the books on it. The library’s kinda sparse, though.”
“History? What a fascinating subject.” Oh, that look. I did not like that look. The worst part was, it wasn’t even anything odd – he just looked intrigued, politely, even, like any other adult asking about a kid’s interests. But for some reason, every move he made only caused my skin to crawl. “What kind of history do you enjoy, Jacob? Wars, perhaps, or do you prefer the everyday life?”
“Um, I guess all of it? I like learning about ancient civilizations, but the recent history’s better – there’s more information on it.”
“Ah, so you like books about the 19th and 20th centuries?”
“Yeah, sure.” Technically, yes, but that was a weird distinction to make.
“Interesting.” I suppressed a shiver. Whatever Dr. Golan found interesting, I wanted to keep it as far away from me as possible.
Unfortunately, i didn’t think that would be possible here. It was me that he found interesting, and with each passing second and scrutinizing question, I felt more and more like a butterfly pinned in a glass case. Trapped under the ever-present watchful eye of a scientist, every twitch analyzed and recorded as I struggled for a freedom I would never be granted.
oOoOo
Every week, I was dragged back to that awful, uncomfortable office, and every week, it felt like I was losing more and more of my spark. Of my soul.
Everything about me felt off, but everything about Dr. Golan felt wrong. Something in my instincts was sending me an intense sense of uncanny valley, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. Every theory I came up with only made me feel like I really was going crazy. There was no reason for me to be so weird about a simple therapist – what was wrong with me?
I didn’t want to be on any antipsychotics, but I was starting to wonder if I really did need them. I wasn’t allowed to use the computer or my phone, both had been taken away ‘for my health’, and I was barely allowed to leave my room, let alone the house, but whenever I managed to score a miraculous visit to the library to exchange my history books, I had started to peruse the section on mental illnesses. Not much of it was helpful (though, I’d expected that), too outdated to be of any use or just missing all of the symptoms I was searching for, but… this seemed like paranoid delusions of some sort.
I didn’t want to be crazy. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life – or any of it, for that matter – locked up in a white-walled room, watched endlessly by psychiatrists and forced into so many prescriptions I wouldn’t feel like myself, trapped and miserable for the rest of my days. I already felt like that, and I had no desire to make it worse.
But there was nothing I could really do, except keep lying. Keep deceiving. Put on the mask I’d crafted, and play it so well that nobody would ever realize it wasn’t my real face.
I was miserable and pathetic enough as it was, trapped in my own room by my own parents, cut off from the few things that I enjoyed because those things wouldn’t make me a son to be proud of, and didn’t I want them to be proud of me? Didn’t I want to be someone successful, someone who could actually do things right? Of course I did. But no matter what I wanted I would never be what my parents wanted me to be, and the most I could do was pretend that I was.
Fake it ‘til you make it. And I would never make it.