Shy took the last bite of their sandwich before walking through the corporate building’s foyer then onto the elevator and up to the tenth floor. The relaxed nature of the posh crowd of techies and executives passing in their upscale sedans along the well-landscaped streets pulled Shy’s curiosity. Personality and individualism oozed in this part of town, everything that Shy secretly desired. It was a welcomed reprieve from the classic rigidness and conformity one would expect on a military post.
“Shy Cole?” Shy nodded towards the sprightly young woman at the front desk assistant who started approaching them.
“Come this way. Tessa is ready for you.” said the short-bobbed hair woman. She escorted Shy down the sun-lit corridor to a large executive suite situated at the back As Shy walked into the classic, modern office, they acknowledged a well-dressed woman standing center with their arm outstretched toward Shy.
The office alone was telling. It gave a wide and clear view of the southeastern Arizona valley and skyline speckled by deep red, brown, and yellow tree canopies that lined the neighborhoods and shopping lots below. Shy gasped at the beauty. It was breathtaking. Immediately, the tightness in Shy’s shoulder and along their upper trapezius muscles relaxed under their fitted male-cut Polo shirt. The large paned windows wrapped the sides of the office except for the interior wall where Shy walked through the door.
“Hi, Dr. Steadman.” Shy greeted her looking upward. Even with their classic black Timberlands, the therapist slightly towered over Shy.
“Oh please, call me Tessa.” the therapist insisted.
Dr. Tessa Steadman, a clinical psychiatrist, was in her mid-40s. She carried a pleasant and open demeanor and a fit body made her seem a decade younger. Her style is dignified yet relaxed. Draped in a multi-colored pencil skirt with a cream long-sleeved blouse, she wears spiraling sister lock curls, sun-tinged brown, which complement her deep hazelnut-colored skin. Her makeup is nude and flawless.
“Shy, it’s good to see you again. Have a seat?”
Shy took their usual spot on the end of the couch. Tessa sat directly across from Shy in a brown deep back chair. The subtle scent of her fragrance lingered around Shy who felt a slight tingle in the small of their back. Shy had a thing for women who wore soft fragrances. Tessa was certainly a beauty. Shy admired Tessa who clearly held an esteemed position in her practice as they rested their eyes on her wedding band.
“So, are you going to fill me in on this message you texted me? Some kind of accolades at work, huh?” Tessa flashed her business phone’s screen towards Shy.
“I was nominated Instructor of the year.” Shy said flatly.
“Well, that is something to celebrate. Congratulations Shy.” Tessa said.
“Thank you.” Shy barely whispered, their eyes expressionless with a tight smile.
“Ok. We ended up in an interesting place during our last session. Would you like to continue where we left off?” The warm yet astute therapist made eye contact with Shy, crossed her legs, and rested a thin notepad on the small coffee table next to her. Her slight movements filled the delayed pause in the room.
The occasional bubbling from the seawater tank filled with multi-colored fish, seaweed, and sponge rocks added to the relaxed aura. Shy felt like they were a thousand miles away from the stress at the military post.
“Sure.” Shy affirmed and sat straight on the couch. They referred themselves to mental health counseling a month ago after they were unable to resolve their insomnia and panic attacks. Tessa had an excellent reputation for helping military officers combat uncontrolled anxiety.
“In our last session, you described you were experiencing anxiety. How would you describe your emotions this week?
Shy leaned forward, rubbed their temples with their eyes closed. “Anger. Lots of uncertainty. I feel self-conscious…all the time. This has been a bad week for me, Tessa. Really--.” Shy sighed as their voice trailed off.
“Are you at least getting any sleep?”
“No, I’m too stressed out. It feels like I’m playing tug of war with myself. One minute I feel confident and proud, the next minute I feel small and ashamed. I don’t know what to do next. I’ve been here before.”
“You’ve been where before?”
“That place where it’s you against the world and your back is against the corner. Where you are so angry all the time. You get to the point where you just snap. I’m mentally in that same place, desperately trying not to snap.”
Tessa responded with slightly raised eyebrows a Shy continued.
“My commander talked to us about the consequences of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) repeal if it passes. The pressure of wondering who knows and who doesn’t know. The pressure of remembering did I give away too much personal information. The pressure of trying not to look at anyone or smile too long. I realize I can lose my security clearance, my job, and the trust of those I serve. It’s like I’m asphyxiating. Except there is no surface to come up to for air.”
“We can only hide our true selves for so long before our truth demands its freedom.” the therapist said.
“This week definitely sent me over the edge. I thought it safer to live under the radar -- minimizing parts of myself I felt were unacceptable. I learned to tame my attractions and avoid dating. I learned to dress inconspicuously as to not attract too much suspicious attention. I thought I was doing everything right.
“It became more important to me to excel as an officer. I wanted to avoid any threats that may derail my career. Then this drama took over everything. And now I’m paranoid. Wondering if I’m going to get outed. I could literally lose everything.” Shy’s eyes drifted outside catching a pair of gliding redtail hawks.”
“Shy, I want you to stay with me, here, in this room,” Tessa said.
Shy looked at Tessa without uttering a word. They nailed their fist and punched between cushions.
“I yelled at my car mechanic this morning. I told him to f-- off.” Shy shook their head. “I hate incompetence. So after I deal with that, of course, I get to work a few minutes later than planned and I have my supervisor in my ear. Not to mention, my mother has been calling me every day since that damn news segment broke about the new DADT repeal. I just can’t...” Shy took a deep breath before blurting, “And, if one more person at work says the word F*G*OT within my earshot, I swear I’m gonna snap.”
Tessa slowly nodded. She didn’t utter not one word.
“I feel like I’m back on the schoolyard again. The kids would keep calling me that, over and over. Like it was my birth name.”
“Am I crazy?” Shy looked for some kind of validation from their therapist, to which her expressions remained neutral.
Shy flopped back on the couch and pounded their fist, once again, into the cushion. Their mind swam in a flurry of unrelated thoughts, before becoming present as a tail of sweat slid along the base of their spine.
“I think you are under a significant amount of stress. But not crazy. I want to dig a little into your workplace where you overheard your colleagues using inappropriate language. Did you confront them?”
“Yes, I did. I confronted a colleague I thought I knew pretty well. He brushed my concerns off and I pissed me off. Needless to say, it turned into a heated exchange. The entire experience triggered an old part of me. There I am, just like in grade school, getting bullied.
“You told me before that sometimes our mind is unable to differentiate the sensation of an actual event from a similar triggering event. Last night, I had a dream that made my skin bubble with rage. Everything was real, to me.
“There was this girl’s face. It was bruised pretty bad. She’s just lying there on the pavement. I’m standing over her. My hands are being tied behind my back. I see flashing lights. Then my mom started shouting at me. Telling me I’m a disgrace. I keep looking across the street. I want to go to the bookstore but I can’t move. Blood rolls onto my tongue, a metallic taste, and I smile and watch the girl being rolled away on a stretcher.”
“Who is the young girl?” the therapist probed.
“One of the bullies I had in elementary.”
“So, this was an actual skirmish you had?”
“Yeah, it was a pretty bad fight that summer.” Shy leaned back onto the couch. “I was at the bus stop directly across the street from Pops’ bookstore. This girl walks up to me and starts pushing me and calling me a F*G*OT. She has me by several inches and is thin-framed. I look at her, then walk away. I feel the sharp tug of my ponytails. My eyes narrow. Blood bubbles beneath my skin. Teeth clench. Let go! I demanded. Make me! she responded.
“I stop mid-stride and turn, overpower her hands gripping my ponytail ends. I swat her arms back, move to face her, and I pounce on her. She falls backward and I hold on as we both descend to the warm pavement.
“Hooking my knees and legs into her sides, locking her in place, I am seething. The mercury-tasting, dark-colored fluid oozes from my lip and onto my tongue. I go ballistic and begin pounding her face. Her tiny hands attempt to catch and thwart my blows but to no effect.
“I grunt and smile through my blood-scarred lips. Invincibility, dominance, and revenge fuel me into a trance that her wailing, high-pitched screams of help cannot break. Stop it! Get off me! she demanded.
“I squinted my red eyes, felt my face light in a slightly crooked grin. Make me, I whispered in her ear. I admit I liked that feeling of asserting my dominance in her face.
“Just as quickly as the fight started it ended. I remember feeling someone’s arm whip me up into the air. It was Pops. That wasn’t the first fight she broke up. But it was the last fight before things really changed, everything felt out of my control.
“When my mother walked inside the bookstore to pick me up, she saw Pops tending to my bruises and freaked out. She snatched my arm and berated Pops, threatening her if she ever got within a foot of me my mother would call the police. Then my mother forbade me from ever stepping foot inside Pops’ bookstore. That last fight was too much for my mother. Too afraid that if I disobeyed my mom’s wishes, she would make due on her promise of sending me away. But she still sent me away. I guess as a precaution.”
“After that fight, that was the last straw. I ended up going to a church camp somewhere in eastern Texas. My mom said it wasn’t a punishment but I couldn’t tell. It was supposed to civilize me, you know, remove the demons. It didn’t work though.”
“Up to that point you had a few fights, some discipline issues with your mom, and now you are in a major fight where someone pulls you out before more trouble ensues. Seemed like a pretty eventful summer.” Tessa said.
Shy tapped their foot slowly and clinched their fist inside their lap.
“Shy. Shy, can you tell me where your mind went just now? Hmm?”
Shy bowed their head. “I really miss Pops.”
“I certainly can understand why. Pops was a pivotal person in your childhood,” Dr. Steadman allowed Shy to experience their emotions as the city sounds down the hill from the main highway softly seeped through the office window.
“She never made me feel like I was some monster but a normal kid trying to figure things out. I remember Pops telling me, ‘Shy don’t be afraid of it. That’s you.”
“Afraid of what?” the therapist asked.
“My masculine nature.”
The therapist’s eyebrows raised, but she remained silent.
“But, it was just easier to hide him--.” Cough. “--Sebastian.” Shy finished their thought.
“Sebastian must stay where he is.”Shy replied.
“Where is that?” Tessa asked.
“Here.” Shy cupped their right hand over their gut.
“You need to ask yourself, Why are you hiding him? Is it to protect your veiled self? And from what threat?”
“I just think he is dangerous.”
“Because--” Tessa interjected.
Shy shot forward before standing. “Because I can’t control my -- his impulses and urges. He makes me feel all of these erratic emotions. The bad memories, all of them, are tied to him.”
Tessa tilted backward in her chair which alerted Shy to step away from her and over to the window. Their back remained turned to the therapist.
“Shy, you are showing the classic signs of jostling two distinct identities of yourself. Shy is your veiled self and who you’ve chosen to present in the world. Sebastian is your impulsive, more honest self.” Tessa spoke.
Tessa continued to explain Shy’s need to separate and even erase aspects of themselves they found problematic. This was their coping mechanism.
“A few weeks ago, you had mentioned that you feared a part of yourself sometimes. I presume some time at the end of that summer, your 13-year-old self, decided it was too painful to be that version of yourself. As you stated, you sought relief. You learned to take fragments of that part of yourself and placed them deep into the recesses of your mind so you could forget. That was how you coped with it then, and how you are trying to cope with it now. Over the years, you’ve learned to accept the numbness and you purposefully slipped into a new designer image—Captain Shy B. Cole, warrior, Instructor of the Year, and admired at home. The new, modified Shy, was pleasing and safe. Finally, you convinced yourself that this version of Shy made you feel validated.
“We all like to be liked. The trouble comes when we sacrifice our real selves only to win people’s attention and/or affection. When we constantly crave for others to validate us and our worth. This, what you have endured and, keep enduring—”
Shy turned around as she paused. The therapist’s words had unlocked something within Shy. She really sees me.
“—is too high a price.” she continued. “The real question I leave you with is what version of Shy do you want to be? Only you get to define that.”
Until now, Shy just wanted to survive. They never gave thought to try to define who the real Shy was. No one had ever asked them in such a direct way before.
“Shy, that’s our time for today. Let’s pick it up in two weeks. In the meantime, I really want you to work on staying in the present, get out of your head some.” She stood and concluded the session.
END OF CHAPTER.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental. TWO ROADS BACK TOGETHER (draft version). Copyright © 2022 Shay D. Potter. Written by Shay D. Potter.
Thank you for reading! Share your critiques and feedback by leaving a comment below or emailing me at bebettermediallc@gmail.com.
Editing new sections. The revised version is above^^