The Right to Feel

Theo sat in bed, back against the wall, and tried to find his courage. He didn’t know where it’d gone. It’d been there before, he’d used it to act before, but now for some reason it was gone. Absent. His stomach felt queasy, his hands shook under the covers. He didn’t have a lot of time. Any moment now he’d lose his golden opportunity, and yet his hands refused to move. He clenched his teeth, frustrated beyond belief. 

As if on cue the door opened and he knew he’d lost his chance, for now at least. But the person who walked through the door to his room wasn’t who he expected it to be. It was a woman, she was short with brown hair tied into a neat ponytail. She wore plain clothes and a pair of enormous glasses that she pushed back up the bridge of her nose with one hand. In the other hand she held what looked like journals. 

“Who are you?” Theo asked. The woman closed the door behind her. 

“My name is Dr. Viola, but please feel free to call me Vi,” she said. Theo frowned. 

“You’re another doctor? Why aren’t you wearing—” His frown deepened, he waved a hand as he grasped for the proper words. “You know, a doctor’s uniform. I don’t know if they have a name. The jacket and all that.” 

“I’m not that kind of doctor. Do you mind if I take a seat?” She asked. Theo shrugged and she did so, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. 

“What kind of doctor are you?” Theo asked. 

“A doctor of the mind,” she answered, and he sighed. 

“A therapist.”

“A therapist,” she agreed. He looked up at the ceiling, then back down to her. 

“No thank you.” 

Dr. Viola raised an eyebrow. “No thank you?” 

“I’m good. I don’t need a therapist.” 

“That’s not what your parents have told me.” 

“Well my parents don’t know me very well. I’m fine,” he retorted, anger seeping into his voice. Dr. Viola looked around, raised her eyebrow even higher.

“Oh yes I can tell you’re doing phenomenally.” 

“I didn’t think therapists were supposed to be sarcastic,” he said dryly. The doctor spread her hands. 

“I’m a human first, and a therapist second. Sometimes my human quirks override my professional demeanor.”

“Aren’t you going to apologize?” 

“No.” 

Theo barked a laugh, then clamped his mouth shut. He was surprised she’d made him laugh. She had a wry smile on her own face now too, and that made him scowl. 

“May we start again Theodore.” 

“Theo,” he corrected, and she made a note in her journal. 

“Theo then. I’m here to help Theo, whether you like it or not.” 

“My parents spent a great deal of money on you.” He said it as a matter of fact. 

“Oh an exorbitant amount, I might end up bankrupting one of the richest families in the country. I’m no better than a highwayman with the rates I’m charging them.” 

A smile tugged at the corner of Theo’s lips, but he forced it away. Then he looked away, unwilling to continue meeting her gaze. The doctor’s eyes were intense, they were too big and much too piercing. 

“You must be pretty good,” he said. 

“The best,” she agreed. “But I’m not here to talk about myself. I’m here to listen to you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What are you willing to tell me?” 

“Well, I’m guessing you want to know about this incident.” 

“We don’t have to start there. I’d like to know who you are first.” 

Theo shrugged. “My name is Theo Alkfell,” he droned. “I’m twenty. I’m a spoiled brat, heir to one of the richest families in the country. I have brown eyes. Black hair. Ten fingers and ten toes. ” He paused, trying to think up more useless information. 

“Go on,” she prompted. 

“I don’t know what else to say.” 

“What do you like to do in your free time?” 

“Rot in my bed. I’m a waste of space,” he snapped. His attitude didn’t seem to bother her, she spoke as if he wasn’t being difficult, which he most definitely was trying to be. 

“What about when you were younger?”

“I was the same,” he said, too quickly. She stared at him with those piercing orbs. “I guess I used to like astronomy,” he admitted begrudgingly. 

She smiled and wrote something else in her notebook. Theo wondered about that, wondered what she was writing. 

“I’m an amateur astronomer myself,” she said.” Do you have a telescope?” 

“Dozens, but I haven’t used them in some time.” 

“And why is that, do you think?” 

“I—” He paused, he had to think about that. “I don’t know. I just stopped. It stopped being interesting.” 

Dr. Viola tapped her pen to his lips. “Staring up into the night sky and seeing the vastness of space can be inspiring, but that same vastness reminds one of how small they are. It can be hard to understand or accept that. Sometimes, that only gets harder the older we get. The more our innocent wonder and awe fades away.” 

She’d struck a little too close to home with that one,

“And what, did that happen to you amateur astronomer?” Theo mocked. 

“That’s what happened to me,” she agreed. 

“Oh. Sorry,” he mumbled. 

“That’s ok. Truth be told Theo, you and I are more alike than you think.” 

She rolled up her sleeves and bared her pale arms for him to see. They were crisscrossed with old scars. He swallowed. 

“Should you really be giving me advice?” He asked, and that made her laugh. 

“I think I’m in a position to give you the best advice. My scars are old, and as you can see, I’m still here,” she pointed out. Theo narrowed his eyes. 

“Alright, so what’s your advice?” 

In response, she tossed one of the journals she’d brought in at him. He was forced to bring one of his hands back out from under the covers to catch it. He looked down at the notebook. 

“A gratitude journal?” He asked, incredulous. “Aren’t you supposed to be one of the top shrinks in the country? My mother gave one of these to my niece once, she was nine years old at the time.”

“If you’d started a gratitude journal at nine, you might not have ended up in this hospital bed.” 

That remark cut. Theo sat up straighter. He glared at the woman, and she stared steadily back. She tossed a pen at him and he caught that too. 

“I want you to write everything you’re grateful for down in his journal. It can be one thing, or it can be a thousand. Whatever you can think of.”

Jaw clenched Theo obeyed, thinking the sooner he finished this woman’s pointless exercise, the sooner she’d leave. He wrote one word in the book then closed it. 

“May I know what made your list?” She asked, and he reopened and displayed it to her. He’d written a single word. “Wealth,” she read, and she nodded. “That is something to be grateful for. But is that all?” 

“Everything I have I have because of my family’s wealth.” 

“Your love of astronomy is due to your family’s wealth?” She challenged. 

“If I was poor I wouldn’t own dozens of telescopes.”

“Tell me, did your family buy you those telescopes because you already had a passion for the stars, or did you only become interested in the cosmos after looking through your dozens of telescopes?” 

“The former,” Theo admitted, grudgingly again, after a few heartbeats. The doctor nodded. 

“So not everything you have is due to your wealth, nor is that all you should be grateful for.” 

“Fine!” He barked. He was getting sick of this woman. “I’m grateful to be alive too. And for my wealth, and my passions, and my whatever the hell else I need to be grateful for! I’m grateful!” 

“You don’t have to be grateful for everything Theo, it’s hard sometimes to recognize all that we should be grateful for.”

“But I am grateful! That’s not the problem! I know I’m privileged, I know I’m alive, I know I’m healthy I get that I should be grateful! I get that I should be happy!” He was shouting now but he didn’t care. He was angry, angry and tired. So tired. 

“So what is the problem?” Dr. Viola asked, and Theo clenched his teeth again. He felt tears rolling down his cheeks. 

“The problem is that I’m not happy,” he whispered. “I have everything, I have so much. I know that, and I am grateful, but I’m still not happy. I’m wasting it all, all the wealth, and my life. I have the world and it’s somehow still not enough for me.” His voice broke, and he hung his head. The doctor wrote something else in her journal. Other than her writing, the silence in the room was absolute and stretched on for what felt like forever before she finally spoke up. 

“Theo. If a rich man stubs his toe, is he not allowed to cry out in pain because somewhere on the other side of the world a poor man is starving?” She asked. Theo looked up confused, and she continued. “Of course he’s allowed to cry out. He’s allowed to cry and swear and kick the offending object out of spite. Now, it is important that he keeps perspective. Stubbing one’s toe is nowhere near as awful as starving, but that doesn’t make the former any less valid of a problem.” She leaned in closer. “Your emotions are valid Theo. You live a privileged life, not a perfect one. You are not immune to depression, it’s a human quirk we all suffer from from time to time. She tapped her pen to her lips again. “I want you to make another list, on the next page. I want you to write everything you’re not thankful for. Everything that makes you unhappy. 

Frowning, he obeyed. His hands shook as he did it. He wrote about how distant his parents had become, about how he'd lost all his friends when they’d moved, about how isolated and alone he felt. He wrote about how he hated this hospital room, about how he wanted to leave but knew he couldn’t because he was still on suicide watch. He wrote for a long while before he ran out of things to put down on the page. He showed the doctor when he was done, and she smiled. 

“See? Writing that list didn’t make the other suddenly disappear. Both lists can exist at the same time, just as conflicting emotions can exist simultaneously within you. Now, we will tackle that new list in a bit. First, I want to go back to the first list. It needs some expanding,” she said. Theo shrugged. 

“I don’t know what else to put there.” 

“Aha! I knew you’d say that, that’s why I brought my own journal. Use my list as an example.” She lifted her journal up and showed the pages to him. There were three lines on display. 

I am grateful Theodore asked me to call him by his nickname, Theo. 

I am grateful to meet a fellow stargazer, the cosmos are beautiful but cold, and so best enjoyed with company. 

I am grateful Theo failed in his suicide attempt, and that he has not chosen to try again yet by swallowing the pills he’s hiding under the covers.  

The last line shocked Theo, he hadn’t thought she’d known. The doctor returned her journal to her lap and stared at him. She raised an eyebrow and sheepishly, he pulled the pill bottle out from its hiding place. The doctor strode over to him and held out a hand. 

“May I have them?” She asked.

Theo’s grip tightened. He closed his eyes, tried to find the courage necessary to swallow them all, but in the end he couldn’t. Instead he dropped them in her hand, and she nodded. 

“That took a lot of courage,” she said quietly, and that startled him. 

“I was thinking I lacked the courage to take them,” he said, and she shook her head. 

“No. Choosing to live, to keep fighting is much much harder.” 

Theo’s eyes went back to her arms. “How do you do it?” 

“One step at a time. I know I know, it’s a cliche. It’s what everyone says. But sometimes everyone says a thing, because it’s true.” She tapped his journal. “Let’s start with this step.” 

Theo looked down at the journal. He still had the pen in one hand. He thought for a moment, then knew. Vi leaned forward to read what he wrote. 

I’m grateful my parents spent an outrageous sum of money on a pretty okay therapist. 

She snorted and smiled at him, and for the first time in a long time, he smiled back.