Black (Clashing Colors Book 1) (11 page)

CHAPTER 11

Emotions

Cia

My favorite part of the camp was the food. Back at The Inn, Lee offered me a meal a day, but most days that just meant chicken and noodles, not that I was complaining or anything. But here, the variation and the quality were amazing. The others weren’t as impressed as I was, but I couldn’t get enough of breakfast muffins, fruit, and as many bagels as I could eat. I’ve been hungry most of my life, so I would go through this mental torture for the food alone.

My least favorite part of the camp was the mandatory therapy sessions with the mad scientist. Bruce was sharp and nothing escaped him. I’ve had counselors at school that were easy to distract or fool with lies, but this guy was like a freaking mind reader, and I didn’t like it.

“You had a breakdown yesterday – do you want to tell me about it?” he asked when we sat in his office again.

“Not really,” I said and crossed my arms.

“That’s a shame. I would think that it served to show you something. Something you need to know and accept about yourself to move on and get better.”

“And if I don’t?” I asked.

“The closet is opened and you can look inside. It’s a rare opportunity to clean it out, but if you slam the door shut again, it will just be a matter of time before the skeleton in it starts to rattle and cause trouble in your life.

“Can you speak English instead of that metaphorical BS?” I asked with a bit of Black’s attitude.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“Yeah, I do. You want to know what I was thinking and feeling while I cried and felt sorry for myself.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I wish I could tell you but I don’t know.”

“But if you did know, what would you say?”

The answer popped into my head as clear as a neon sign.

“I was sad because I don’t have a father.”

He waited for me to elaborate.

“We were talking to Mark and Anna yesterday and Mark mentioned G wants some time for himself and offered to babysit me. I think it just made me feel unwanted.”

“Excellent!” Bruce said with eagerness, “Do you see how that could correlate with your five-year-old-self?”

“Not really… I didn’t lose my dad around that time, he was just never there.”

“Ahh… but when did you become conscious of it? When did you start to compare yourself with other children and wonder why you didn’t have a father?”

I bit my lower lip. “I don’t remember. There’s no specific time that comes to mind, but probably around that time.”

“And here you are, finally having a great dad who gives you love and attention,” Bruce said enthusiastically and pointed to Gabriel, “and then it turns out he doesn’t want you either.”

“I never said that,” Gabriel protested.

“That’s not important. What matters is that it brought out a feeling of what?” He looked at me.

“Of loneliness.”

“Of loneliness,” he repeated and left it hanging in the air for a few seconds. “Do you still feel lonely?”

I shot a side glance at Gabriel and thought about how he had been there for me last night and helped me fall asleep. “No,” I answered.

“Good. That’s good. Now let’s talk about your father. Would you like to have him in your life?”

I took a long deep breath. “No, not anymore. I used to when I was a kid and dreamed that he would show up and take me to his house. Of course back then I imagined he couldn’t find me, and that was the reason he hadn’t come already.”

“But now you know better?”

“Yeah, I know he’s an ass.”

“For letting you down.”

“Yes.”

“Do you hate your father?”

“Sometimes.”

We continued on about my father for another twenty minutes and went over my only two disappointing interactions with the man, before I got so upset that I closed the session down and told Bruce I was done talking about my stupid dad.

Bruce pulled out a stack of cards and spread them out on the table.

“Do you see what these are?” he asked.

I read off their inscriptions. “Anger, rage, sadness, joy, euphoria, happiness, and many more.”

“These are all emotions. Yes?” he said and I nodded.

“You have thirty seconds to categorize them in good and bad emotions. Starting now.”

It was an easy task; it only took me ten seconds to separate the twenty cards into two piles.

“Which pile is good and which is bad?” he asked.

I pointed to the stack with anger and hatred. “Those are bad emotions.”

“Why?”

“They just are. Everyone knows that. They make you feel bad inside.”

“All right.” He took the stack. “And I assume the ones in the other stack are the good emotions.”

“Yes.”

He provocatively started to shuffle the cards. “Wrong answer.”

I leaned backed in my chair. “How can happiness be a bad emotion? Explain that to me,” I said skeptically.

“There are no bad emotions, Cia. Emotions are just emotions. They all serve a purpose.”

“A purpose?” I laughed, “You really shouldn’t eat funny mushrooms before our sessions. It makes you say crazy shit, you know.”

Bruce ignored my comment. “You said the emotions are bad because they hurt, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But pain is a useful feeling that motivates us into action. Anger for instance is a very powerful fuel against injustice, wouldn’t you agree?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do. Remember when you told me that you were once arrested for protesting against the closure of a homeless shelter?”

I nodded.

“That’s an example of using anger as a fuel.”

“But that anger got me arrested.” I scoffed.

“I would say that it was your actions that got you arrested. The organizers of that rally should have made sure they had a permit to protest.”

I looked out the window and wished I could be out there instead of stuck inside this office. Bruce’s eyes followed mine and he got up to open a window.

“Let me try to break this down for you, Cia: emotions serve us as a compass. Without emotions it would be hard to navigate what is right for us and what isn’t. But we must apply a filter between our emotions and our behavior. 

Gabriel and I exchanged a quick glance.

Bruce patiently explained. “I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you see Therese and Gabriel flirting.”

“Excuse me.” Gabriel cleared his throat and squirmed in his seat.

“Don’t worry, it’s just an example,” Bruce explained while I narrowed my eyes and wondered what the fucker was up to.

“Let’s pretend that you felt jealous because of the attention your daddy was giving this other woman. It would be very normal for any child to feel threatened by someone else who could potentially steal their dad away. Especially for a child who isn’t sure about her daddy’s love – wouldn’t you agree?”

“Theoretically,” I said.

“Good, so for the sake of the example we’re assuming that you’re jealous of Therese for stealing your father’s attention. What do you think your body is trying to tell you with the jealousy emotion?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you do. How does it feel to be jealous?”

I could answer that right off the bat, as it was a feeling I was very familiar with. “It feels horrible.”

“Yes, and we already established that the pain’s job is to hurt enough to get our attention. Maybe your body is letting you experience the pain of jealousy to remind you that what you have is important to you. Your daddy means a lot to you and you don’t want to lose him. The emotion itself is true, pure, and justified. Does that make sense?”

I nodded, because it actually did make sense.

“Now, what you do with the emotion is up to you. If you’re smart, you’ll use your insight to strengthen your bond to him by telling him how much he means to you. But often people aren’t smart when it comes to jealousy and they’ll blame and punish others for their own insecurities.

I leaned forward. “So what you’re saying is that there are no bad emotions, just bad behavior?”

“Exactly.” Bruce smiled. “You have a wonderful way of simplifying the complicated; I like that about you.”

If he was fishing for me to say I liked him back, he could fish all day – it wasn’t happening.

“So to sum it up,” he continued, “your anger with your dad is a perfectly normal
emotion
, but if you’re actively punishing him by making bad decisions in your life, then that is destructive behavior and the only person suffering would be yourself.”   

My head felt deep-fried when we walked out of the office and to my disappointment I still had to be a girl, although Bruce told me I was now six years old.

“What do you want to do?” Gabriel asked me and the answer was obvious.

“I want to paint.”

It was a perfect escape and a place where I could quietly go over all the things Bruce had brought up.

The mad scientist might actually have a few good points. How he knew about my jealousy of Therese I would never know, but it just showed me that I was right. The guy had an eerie ability to look into my brain and read my thoughts.

It made sense that the meltdown I had yesterday would have been a natural response of a five-year-old who acknowledged that her daddy didn’t want her, and if I remembered right, I probably never cried like that at home. My mom would have flipped out on me and beat me to make me stop.

I made a sketch of the image I had in my head and transferred it with pencil strokes to a big canvas while thoughts roamed around my head. 

So I had a shitty dad, but lots of people were in that situation and still made the most of their lives. Why would I let his failure define me?

I wouldn’t. Not any longer.

“What are you doing?”

The voice made me look back over my shoulder to see Anna watching me.

“I’m painting.”

“Oh, cool, I want to paint too,” she said.

It annoyed me, but I couldn’t really say no, since it wasn’t my private place or even my articles.

“Suit yourself.” I focused on my own painting.

“What should I paint?” Anna asked in that annoying little-girl voice.

I didn’t answer so she started calling out to her dad, loudly. Mark was talking to Gabriel at a nearby table. He made a few suggestions and Anna finally decided on a dog.

It was hard to focus with her constant chitchat.

“Daddy wants to know if you want him to babysit you… you can come with us to the forest, if you want,” she said.

“No thanks.”

“Why not? It’s fun, and there are so many good games we can play there.”

“Like what?” I said dismissively.

“You know… Daddy-daughter games.”

No, I didn’t know because I’ve never played any daddy-daughter games and had no clue what she was referring to, so I lowered my pencil to look at her. “What do you mean?”

She winked at me. “My favorite game is when I’ve been a naughty girl and Daddy disciplines me. We call it the P game.” She lowered her name to a whisper. “You know, P for punishment.”

“Your daddy hits you?” I asked with concern – surely that wasn’t part of the program.

“Yes,” she purred and it had me so confused. “But afterwards we play the… ehh…” – she looked thoughtful – “let’s call it the snail game… and he gives me lots of kisses to make me happy again.”

“The snail game. What is that?”

She rolled her eyes and stepped close enough to whisper in my ears. “You know, the snail between your legs, the one that tickles when your daddy kisses it.”

I was stunned and didn’t answer. Was this woman seriously calling her clitoris a snail and telling me that her “pretend” daddy licked her after spanking her. It’s not that I’m a prude, but I honestly don’t care for other people telling me about their sex life. Unfortunately, Anna misread my stunned silence and kept talking. “Have you ever seen your daddy’s snake?”

She turned her head and looked over at Gabriel. “Your dad is gorgeous; he can babysit me anytime he likes.”

That’s it!

I slammed down the pencil and marched right out of there.

“Where are you going, honey?” Gabriel called out, but I was fuming with anger and didn’t stop to answer. Instead I went straight to the common area where I found Bruce, who was with a young man around twenty and his mom. The guy was wearing the black and yellow baby jumpsuit and looked miserable sitting close to his mom on the couch.

“Bruce, can I talk to you for a second?” I said and tried my best to conceal to the newcomers how angry I was.

“Certainly, why don’t we step outside?” he said and excused himself to the mom and son.

Gabriel caught up to us and we all went outside to the empty playground.