I don’t need a fucking counselor.
Mike looked around the room. An older lady in one corner, rocking back and forth, humming to herself. An older man on the other side of her, looking harried and tired. On the couch, a goth girl. The receptionist puttered away behind the glass.
He wished he’d told Scott. He would have been here. For what, holding his hand? Same thing with Kael–
A woman peered around the corner. “Michael?”
Mike got up, glancing around the room. Nope, no one else was coming forward. “That’s me.”
She smiled and offered her hand. “I’m Lyn.”
“Good to meet you.” When he asked for a counselor, some smarter part of his brain said, “A woman” when they asked him what sex he wanted.
“Just follow me?” They went up a spiral wooden staircase, then down a hallway, doors closed and shut, leading into different offices. She pushed open a door, on which was just her name.
Inside, there were bookcases with assorted psych books as expected, along with toys. Blacksmith’s puzzles, rubik’s cubes, things that looked like putty in bowls. He stared curiously at those for a minute.
“Please, sit down.” She offered him a chair that sat across from her. Her desk was set flush to the wall, and her chair was turned facing the chair.
“I expected a couch,” he said.
She laughed, “This is your first time with a counselor?”
“With a real counselor, yeah.”
“What do you mean?”
He took the chair and sat in it. “When I was with the Thorns, they had counselors there too, to make sure you were still on the straight and narrow.”
“Thorns? Circle of Thorns?”
“Yeah.”
“How long were you with them?”
“Four years.”
She nodded. “Well, what brings you here today?”
He leaned forward on his knees. “There’s something wrong with me, or everybody else.”
“Why do you think that way?”
“I hate people. Certain people. With unbridled and unbelievable hatred. I love my boyfriends to death. Other people who are in between, I could take or leave them. If I have to take them, I’ll find a way to use them.” He let out a breath.
“You’ve been holding that in a while.”
“I’ve been rehearsing it, trying to explain it to myself. But the problem is, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”
“Uh huh.”
“Then I read something about sociopaths.”
“Well, let’s see.” She turned around and grabbed a huge blue book that had ICD-X on it. She flipped open to a page and said, “Dissocial Personality Disorder is characterized by three of the following. Ready?”
He nodded.
“‘Callous unconcern for the feelings of others and lack of the capacity for empathy.” She looked up.
“Sometimes.”
“Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.”
He looked thoughtful. “Not really.”
“Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.”
“Yes. They all leave me.”
She nodded, and continued, “Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence.”
“Sometimes. A lot.”
“Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience, particularly punishment.”
“Yes.” He didn’t care much for that answer.
“Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior bringing the subject into conflict.”
“No, not really.”
“‘Persistent irritability.'”
“Yes.”
She looked up. “You have three of them, but from something you said about relationships, ‘They all leave me’. I think you might have something else.” She flipped a few more pages. “Let’s try this:”
“Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.”
“Yes.”
“A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.”
“Huh?”
She laughed. “In your relationships, you idealize the person some days, but then think they’re stupid other days.”
“Isn’t that everyone?”
She smiled and continued, “‘Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.”
Mike stated quietly, “Yes.”
“Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving).”
“Yes.” Mike perked his head up. “That was three.”
“Oh, no, this one you need five.”
“Oh. Okay, go on.”
“Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself.”
“No.”
“‘Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).’ In other words, fast mood swings.”
“Yes.”
“Chronic feelings of emptiness.”
“Yes!”
“‘Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger.”
“Yes!”
“‘Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms.'”
“I’m paranoid, yes.”
She closed the book, “Probably not in a clinical sense.”
“What’s that called, that you just read?”
“Borderline Personality Disorder.”
“Borderline?”
“It’s a misleading name. The alternative definition is ‘Emotionally unstable personality disorder’ or ’emotional dysregulation’.”
“What does it mean?”
“You don’t control your emotions very well. And you really can’t, because you don’t have a true sense of self.”
“How does it happen?”
“Usually child abuse, some sort of trauma, even genes. Did you have any of that?”
“My aunt died when I was young. And my brother. My mother died when I was 15.”
“You’re twenty…seven now?”
“Yes.”
She stopped to look at him. He was staring for a moment out into space. “What are you thinking, Michael?”
“That other people think like me.”
“Many other people think like you, Michael.”
He got up. She looked up curiously. “Where are you going?”
“I want to research this Borderline Personality Disorder.”
“You have plenty of time left, though. We can still use it.”
He sat down. “Do they have any books on it?”
“Plenty of books. But the most important thing that will help you is mindfulness.”
“You sound like Kael. My boyfriend.”
She smiled. “Is he Buddhist?”
“Not…uh, really.”
“Oh. Being mindful, present in the moment, helps. It gives you a few minutes of breathing, and space.”
“It sounds like a waste of time.”
“You should try it sometime.” She turned around, and pulled out a magazine sized red book. “This was written by someone who suffered from Borderline. It looks outdated, but some of the things are still important.” She started writing down the name and author. “She started the whole DBT movement.”
“DBT?”
“Dialectal Behavioral Therapy. It’s for keeping track of your emotions. What makes you sad, mad, or brings you joy.”
“There isn’t a medicine for this?”
“Oh, there are a few. Do you really want to start with meds first?”
He frowned. “No, I guess not.”
She handed him the paper. “From there, other books will get referred. Like ‘The Angry Heart‘ is a good one or ‘I hate you, Don’t leave me‘.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“So, what I want you to do is do some research, and then come back with any questions. Think you can do that?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
She smiled. “Then you can leave now, if you like.”
“Do we still have time?”
“Yes, about ten minutes.”
“Well, what do I do in the meantime? How do I stop this?”
“It’s going to take some time, Michael. Do things a bit at a time.”
“That’s what the Thorns said,” he stated angrily and got up. “And you know what happened to them?”
“What?”
“I killed them.” He threw open the door and walked out.