“Mom told you all that.”
“She thinks very highly of you, Michael. She worries about you.”
“Then she should tell me. Please don’t defend her.”
“All right. I’m just saying that you have solved a lot. You feel like you can’t face anything, that it’ll crush you, but you’re here. In this room. All those things you’re facing, and you still said to someone
– said to your mother, no less, who I know you don’t regard as a natural ally – that you needed help.
Doesn’t that sound like someone who’s looking for solutions?”
“…Maybe.”
“I’m going to ask you a question. What if everything did fall apart? What then?”
“I don’t understand.”
“If you didn’t do these things, if you stepped out of the loop before finishing it the ‘right’ way, what would happen? Would you survive it?”
“I don’t know. That’s kind of the whole deal.”
“Let me ask the question another way, then. Haven’t you already survived everything falling apart?”
“…what?”
“Melinda nearly died.”
“She did die.”
“Either way, if that’s not everything falling apart, then what is?”
“I don’t want it to happen again, though.”
“You said yourself she was doing great.”
“But Meredith is–”
“You’re responsible for Meredith, too? Everything fell apart at that concert and you all survived that. If I were to ask Melinda whether you were the least wanted, I doubt she’d answer like you have.
Meredith, too, and I would bet money that your friend Jared would say the same.”
“They’re just being nice.”
“All of them? All the time?”
“Because I’m the broken one.”
“Is that true? Is that really true? You said they all have other stuff to deal with. I know exactly the difficulties your sister has faced, for example–”
“Yeah, but… She’s doing better now.”
“Perfectly?”
“Well. No.”
“But you’re measuring yourself against her?”
“Why are you coming at me so much?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. I’m only trying to say that there might be other ways of looking at things. Ways that don’t make you so afraid. Ways that don’t make you wish you were dead.”
“…”
“Do you cry a lot when you’re on your own?”
“Almost never.”
“Then obviously you need to, Michael. It’s okay. There are some tissues there if you need them.”
“…I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well. I feel like I’m way down this deep, deep hole and I’m looking up and all there is is this little dot of light and I have to shout at the top of my lungs for anyone to hear me and even when I do, I say the wrong thing or they don’t really listen or they’re just humouring me.”
“Because they couldn’t possibly care about you.”
“…It’s hard to feel that. They tell me. They show me. And I still don’t feel it.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“The fear gets in the way. And I get stuck in a loop.”
“Because if you can just get the loop right–”
“Yes. If I can just get it right, it’ll all be okay. I’ll, I don’t know, save everyone. And the world won’t fall apart. And it’s getting harder to do.”
“I bet it is. All the stuff that’s going on for you.”