Page 70 of I Think Olive You

“Yeah, I did. I do. But how can I reconcile that man with the man who helped Giuliana’s father? That person left them alone despite having sunk money into a business venture. He paid for my writing degree, even though it wasn’t in the field he would have preferred. There are these glimpses of a man I didn’t know—someone I wish I had gotten to before he died. But it’s too late now. I know I disappointed him but I’m not sure if that’s all he saw me as.”

Don’t try to kid yourself, you’ve always been a disappointment.

“What’s going on? You just tensed up and you seem to be preoccupied about something. Tell me.”

“I… uh, I have this voice inside me that talks to me?”

It sounds fucking ridiculous. Who doesn’t have an internal voice? People talk to themselves all the time. Right?

Wrong. It’s deluded. You’re walking around with a pocket asshole in your mind and you spend so much time telling me to shut up you don’t even wonder why I’m here in the first place. Your brain is fucked, dude.

“And what does this voice say?”

Go on. Tell her how messed up you are.

“Nothing good. Most of it is pretty fucking shitty actually. It just pops up and I’ve kind of gotten used to it. I call it my companion because it won’t go away. It’s mean.”

“Mean to you?”

“Yeah.”

“How long has it been around?”

Casting my mind back, I try to pinpoint it but it’s hard to sift through weeks of internal abuse. It popped up during the funeral, after I heard Alan call my dad a good riddance. The voice agreed.

“Maybe a year?”

“And is it just the voice? What does it tell you?”

Here we go. I’m about to get shrunk.

“Mostly hateful stuff toward myself. Negative. That I’m a worthless sack of shit and nothing I do means anything. The occasional feeling that it might be better if I wasn’t around. There’s been some physical stuff as well.”

“Like?” She drags it out, clearly onto the fact that I’m trying to procrastinate this entire conversation or avoid it entirely if I can.

“Trouble breathing, shakiness, heart racing, dizziness, kind of your general panic. I ended up doing a lot of drinking and vaping to deal with it. Worked sometimes.” I shrug, trying to play it off.

“Same length of time?” Looking up from my fisted hands, I notice she’s writing on her notepad, scribbling as I speak. Great. That can only be a good sign.

“Yes, I guess.”

“And are you still smoking and drinking to help with dulling the voice and the feelings?”

The question is innocuous but it shines a light on how ineffective my coping strategies were. The vaping and drinking and partying did absolutely fuck all to help me. If anything, it added a level of physical pain and anxiety that made it easier to ignore the emotional side of things. But once those things were gone, I still struggled.

“No. Not for a little while now. At least not consistently.”

Dr. Pritchard jots it down and it feels strange to see someone take stock of my life like that. Little scratches on a paper attest to how fucked up I might or might not be.

“Anything significant happen about a year ago?” It’s a leading question. I’ve seen enough courtroom dramas to know this is a trap. There’s no way. It can’t be connected.

“Uh… my father passed away.”

Pritchard stops writing, looks at me—sees me. I’m bouncing my leg, hands balled up. I feel like a caged animal, under scrutiny in a zoo. The enclosure is too small and keeps getting smaller the longer I sit here under her eye. Dr. Pritchard pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath before talking.

“Grief is a funny thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

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