A/N: I've been wrong before, but I think it'll be just the epilogue after this.
And to aldethebeautiful, I just wanted to say thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. I really had no idea that writing this fanfiction decades after The OC stopped airing would result in any kind of audience, but I'm so happy it resonated with you. And I absolutely agree about loving the characters but feeling like there was a bit lacking in terms of looking at mental health. Obviously the show never would've given Seth such a dark and intense backstory, but I always felt like they dropped the ball by neglecting to give Seth much at all in the way of angst. It felt like there were very clear mental health concerns for him present in Season 1 (sailing away in that tiny boat was a bit of a death wish, ya know?), but they pretty much neglected to give him any depth after Season 1. But anyway, I digress…
Chapter 9
There's a soft knock on the door.
"Come in," Sandy calls, sitting up in bed as he hears the doorknob start to turn.
He'd put on his nature shows and then spent a few minutes getting the room ready for Seth's arrival-closing all the blinds, filling up a glass of water for the nightstand, checking to see that the top sheet was untucked, ensuring that Seth's preferred pillows were on his side of the bed-trying in vain to occupy himself while anxiously awaiting news on how Seth's phone call with Summer had gone.
Assuming Seth would even tell him how his phone call with Summer had gone.
When Sandy was in high school, there were a few times when he'd realized that The Nana had been listening in on his calls when he was talking to girls. He'd been furious about the invasion of privacy and mortified to realize that his mother had witnessed-and no doubt judged-his painfully bumbling attempts at flirting.
He now has to admit that he better understands the impulse to eavesdrop, although he'd like to think his reasons for it are a little more justified than his Ma's were.
Seth's slippered feet shuffle down the hallway that leads into the bedroom.
Sandy's lost count of how many times he's heard that sound, how many times he's seen-at varying heights-Seth's mop of curls turn the corner, head bent low, the rest of his lanky body following along.
He fixes his eyes to the tv screen and the baby elephant swinging her trunk in happy circles.
Seth has a small toiletry bag in one hand and a few balled up items of clothing tucked under his other arm.
"Hey kiddo."
"Hey." Seth stands in front of the bed and shifts awkwardly on his feet. "I'm uh, just gonna go get ready."
"Okay."
Seth retreats to the bathroom and Sandy half-listens to the elephant documentary and half-listens to the sounds of Seth's bedtime routine-his belt buckle jangling as it hits the floor, the likely too vigorous brushing of teeth-a habit his dentist couldn't seem to break him of-the sharp flicking of floss attacking the areas between his teeth-a habit his dentist had somehow managed to instill in his restless and highly distractible son-Seth muttering to himself as he worked.
Seth getting ready for bed was a soundtrack that had been punctuating Sandy's late evenings for the past week or two. In that time, it had occurred to Sandy that Seth seemed to be avoiding either spending time alone or spending time in his room, or maybe both. He'd taken to schlepping all of the elements of his nighttime routine down to his parents' bedroom every night-his toiletries and his pajamas and Sandy would bet good money that Captain Oats was stowing away somewhere in Seth's crumpled up pile of clothes.
The differences between the okay times and the hard times could be subtle, and Sandy had learned over the years to read something in the way that Seth related to Captain Oats, to differentiate between when Seth liked having him around and when he needed to have him around.
It wasn't unusual to see Captain Oats and Seth together, The Captain often serving as Seth's goofy sidekick. Sandy couldn't have imagined introducing any of his high school girlfriends to Scraps, the careworn stuffed dog who'd slept in his bed until he was older than he'd care to admit, but every girl Seth dated seemed to have developed a kind of rapport with Captain Oats, and Seth seemed strangely unembarrassed by his attachment to his childhood toy.
And then there were those times when Seth was more furtive with The Captain, skulking from room-to-room and awkwardly clutching him at his hip, seeming to dread anyone referencing his presence, seeming a little more chagrined to be a sixteen year old needing a plastic horse for comfort and companionship and safety and security.
There were times when Sandy could joke and banter with and about The Captain, times when he could say "You two make a cute pair," and get away with it, and then there were the times when he knew he it was best to pretend he didn't notice him standing perpetual guard at Seth's side.
There's the rush of water through pipes as the toilet flushes and then the rush of water from the sink, the signs and sounds that Seth was wrapping things up.
Sandy keeps his eyes trained on the tv as the bathroom door opens and closes and Seth flops onto the bed.
A little smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as his son wriggles around beside him.
Sandy and Kirsten used to laugh about how part of putting Seth to bed felt like watching a dog turn and turn in circles before settling into one spot. He'd roll around, limbs flailing, breathing out little huffs and puffs of frustrated breath until he found the just-right position for his body, which never seemed to be the same from night to night.
And some things don't change, Sandy thinks, recognizing Seth's soft sigh as his body started to settle.
A few minutes go by, father and son quietly watching an elephant family roam the savannah.
"So uh, how'd it go with Summer?" Hazarding a glance at Seth, Sandy spies Captain Oats' face peeking out over the top of the covers.
Seth is curled up on his side, head sunk into his pillow, obscuring half his face.
"Okay," he says softly. "We didn't talk long."
"Are you seeing her tomorrow?"
"Yeah, uh, we're gonna get breakfast or something."
"Nice."
Sandy suspects that that's all he'll get out of Seth on the subject, and decides he can make do with that.
Seth and Summer weren't coming to any kind of abrupt end. Whatever they would be, it was a situation that was ongoing.
More minutes go by, the elephants still on their journey, and Sandy feeling an unexpected calm settle over him as he watches them gambol about the savannah.
There's a hitching inhale of breath beside him.
Sandy looks over at his son.
Seth's shoulders heave, tears tracing down the side of his face not buried in his pillow, a low whimpering sound escaping his mouth.
"Seth?" Sandy scoots a little closer to his son, hesitating as he reaches out to him. "Did...did something happen with Summer?"
Seth shakes his head, even as the rest of his body is wracked with sobs.
Sandy can't hold himself at a distance any longer, tentatively rubbing a hand across Seth's shoulder blades.
"Is this okay?" he asks gently.
Seth nods. He leans forward, the top of his head pressing against Sandy's side.
"Are you sure nothing happened with Summer?"
"I-it w-was fine," Seth manages to gasp out. "I just..." he swallows around a hoarse sob. "It's been kind of a lot, I guess."
"Oh Seth, of course it has been." Sandy closes his eyes, heart sinking and feeling foolish for those fleeting moments of peace.
It would've been nice if telling Summer had felt like an unburdening and only that, but of course it didn't. Of course it must have felt like the start of something else painful and complicated and impossibly confusing. He really couldn't imagine what it was all stirring up in Seth, and he fought against the memories that it was stirring up in him, the way it had felt when he found out, when he told Kirsten, when he saw the hurt that it inflicted, in his son and in his family.
"Let it all out, huh?"
A few minutes pass, Sandy rubbing Seth's back and voicing feeble comfort as Seth's sobs slowly tapered off into quiet gasping breaths.
"Seth, do you uh, do you want me to turn off the elephants?" Sandy asks, as it occurs to him that the soaring soundtrack and the narrator's prattle about the savannah might've been a little jarring.
"N-no." Seth clears his throat and sniffs. "I like them," he adds, maneuvering his head slightly so he can get a better view of the screen, the top of his head burrowing further into Sandy's side.
"Me too." Sandy glances back up at the tv, trying to blink away the hot tears gathering in his own eyes. "Me too."
oooooooooooooooooooooo
Summer stares down at the formica table, biting her lip, and Seth keeps talking.
It would be nice if the waitress would come along with their food, or if the Health Inspector would make an appearance and abruptly shut down the place, but they'd only placed their order two minutes ago and Seth didn't spot anyone bearing a clipboard and a disapproving air about them, so Seth has to keep talking.
It had felt like a good plan, meeting at the diner.
It was bed-free, sex-neutral territory, for one thing.
Unless Summer had gotten a whole lot kinkier in the past twelve hours, she wasn't going to expect him to tear off all her clothes and have his way with her on the table.
But sitting across from each other did create the expectation of eye contact and conversation, each of which had been halting and sporadic and awkward in the ten minutes or so since they'd sat down.
And between the halting and sporadic and awkward conversation had been silence, a thing which was truly unbearable, given the present circumstances, and what he could only imagine Summer was thinking about or picturing in her head, with no witty banter to otherwise occupy her.
Hence he won't shut up now, although he should.
He'd grabbed the salt shaker with one hand and the pepper shaker with the other and just ran with it.
Why were salt and pepper the only spices universally available in shaker form in restaurants? Who decided this? Was there a Big Salt and a Big Pepper lobby at play? But then, of course, pizza places showed some ingenuity with their red pepper flake shakers and their parmesan cheese shakers, although parmesan was not, strictly speaking, a spice. Which then, come to think of it, was salt even a spice, or was it more of a seasoning? What was the difference between a spice and a seasoning? And what other spices and/or seasonings should be readily available on a diner table? Seth advocated for paprika; he loved paprika on eggs and was willing to try them on anything really-
The monologue continues, somehow, and Summer weirdly doesn't seem to have any strong opinions on spices and/or seasonings. She just keeps staring down at the table, probably hoping the food would get there, or wishing she'd never chosen Seth over Zach, who-though of course you could never really know- probably wasn't besieged by the after effects of years of devastating sexual trauma, although even if he was, he totally seemed like one of those annoying kids at the preteen survivor meetings who were just able to be so painfully earnest about the whole thing that he'd probably be sitting across from Summer right now and delivering some feel-good canned speech about it, and Summer's eyes would be glistening with just the hint of awed tears as she marveled at his strength and resilience and how everything that happened to him was just a thing that had happened to him, not a giant neon sign on his forehead or a load of dynamite strapped to his chest.
Or anyway, Zach didn't seem like he'd have strong opinions on spices and/or seasonings.
And Seth is, somehow, still talking about spices and/or seasonings.
There's a lot of material there, if you know how to mine for it.
Seth breaks off suddenly with a frustrated growl.
"I'm sorry," he mumbles, through gritted teeth.
Summer's head pops up swiftly. "Cohen, no." She tries to reach across the table for a hand, but one of Seth's hands is occupied with the salt shaker and the other is occupied with the pepper shaker. She seems momentarily thrown off by this, but presses on valiantly, looking into Seth's eyes. "You have nothing to be sorry for," she says firmly. "Seriously."
"But this..." Seth clumsily deposits the salt and pepper shakers onto the table. "This isn't what you-" He falters. "I mean, you deserve to be with someone who-"
"I don't want anyone else," Summer cuts in, her borderline pissed tone creeping in, a familiar stubborn crease settling in her brow. "I just want you, Cohen."
It should feel good to hear that, but Seth feels like he can't breathe.
He'd tricked her, made her think he was someone he wasn't and could never be, trapped her into loving him, or thinking that she loved him, when she didn't understand what all this really meant, what The Trauma really meant.
"But this is weird," Seth argues. "I mean, I knew this would be weird, but this is weird to a level never before conceived of, like actually physically agonizing on like, a molecular lev-"
Summer leans forward and manages to snatch up one of Seth's hands as it's gearing up for a good gesticulation.
"I think, Cohen," she says slowly, "it's going to feel weird for a while, and then it won't anymore." She gives his hand a long, slow squeeze. "Does that sound okay?"
Seth looks between their clasped hands and the stubborn crease in Summer's brow and the determined set of her jaw, the look she gives him when she's made a decision and that's pretty much the end of it.
"That sounds okay," he echoes.
"Good." Summer releases his hand and sits back in the booth. "It's settled then," she adds, and she nods once, never breaking eye contact.
oooooooooooooooooo
"You seem different today, Seth."
"H-How do you mean?" Seth's shoulders hunch, his body instinctively curling into itself.
He can't help but squirm under Dr. Max's gaze, the leather couch creaking underneath him, the high-pitched abrasive sounds really enhancing the restless embarrassing awkwardness he brought to the therapeutic space-or to any space, if he has to be honest about it.
It always felt extra scrutinizing when Dr. Max started to pick apart how Seth was presenting in the moment, like Seth was an exceptionally grotesque bug under an unfairly powerful microscope. He recoiled at the thought that his body language or his word choice or whatever it was that piqued Dr. Max's analysis was out there communicating a bunch of things he had no control over, things that hadn't been thoroughly vetted and approved by the censors.
And, as far as Seth had been aware, they'd been having a pretty standard, nothing-to-write-home-about session.
Of course, it had started off with the news that he'd told Summer about The Trauma, but after Dr. Max had gotten over his initial gape-mouthed astonishment, the ensuing conversation had been pretty predictable, and remarkably similar to the conversation Seth had had with his dad the other night-something something, so brave, something something, you should be really proud of yourself, something something, really blossoming as a person or whatever, something something.
"You seem a little more...settled, I guess. A little lighter."
Seth's eyebrows go up.
He does not, as it happens, feel particularly settled or notably lighter.
"This is the first time I can remember that it's felt like you're really here with me," Dr. Max continues. "It often feels like you've got one foot out the door, like you're waiting for me to turn on you."
"You make me sound paranoid."
"I wouldn't say paranoid." Dr. Max thinks on it. "More like, guarded...cautious."
"Now you make me sound like a paranoid wuss."
"It feels like you say things very carefully here, like you're turning all of your thoughts over in your mind before you speak." Dr. Max tilts his head to one side. "Like you've got an invisible lawyer next to you, advising you on what to say and what to believe and how exactly to phrase things so that you don't reveal too much."
The man truly had a metaphor for every occasion.
Seth's eyes narrow, wondering if all of Dr. Max's oft-invoked metaphors were unique and specific to their relationship and their time together, or if there were a few dozen mental cases in the greater Newport area who were also treated to burning questions like "How do we help you put on the helmet here?"
"Summer, uh...she said it's like my brain is with her, but the rest of me is somewhere else," Seth says.
"She sounds pretty perceptive."
"I know." Seth's eyes flash. "Scary, right?"
"I imagine it would be for you." Dr. Max adjusts his glasses. "And that separation, that disconnect in you, it's part of why I'm glad you're going to the group, and why I hope you'll keep going. I imagine there's a lot you can relate to there, even if you're not quite ready to share those things yourself. Do I have that right?"
"You...could say that." Seth frowns, immediately flooded by the weirdly demeaning sense that his answer was exactly what Dr. Max was talking about when he accused him of speaking very carefully.
And to Dr. Max's question, though he hadn't mustered up the courage to actually interact with anyone in the group beyond the eyes-averted, so-tight-lipped-his face-actually-ached-from-the-strain obligatory smile he flashed in response to the regulars and the soft and warm and empathetic Hey, we've all been there looks they aimed his way, he still sat through the meetings every week.
Sure, he did so while still devoting a pathetic amount of energy to projecting a kind of guileless bafflement as to how exactly he specifically ended up in that specific church basement listening to those specific testimonials from the sexually traumatized, and hoping in vain that his squinting eyes and his wrinkled brow and his puzzled glances around the room were enough to convey the message of-"Wait, is this not the Garden Club meeting?"
Still, although he couldn't bear to speak to anyone or make even fleeting eye contact or act in any way like he belonged there, he was actually trying to be present enough to listen to what people were saying, and trying to let it resonate with him.
For, you know, the most part.
"All those things that you keep to yourself, when you bring them out, they really aren't so different from what others feel and experience," Dr. Max says. "It seems like, when I'm kind or understanding, or when I normalize what's going on with you, there's a part of you that refuses to let you take that in, like you think I might be lying to you."
Seth tries to think of what to say to that, maybe that it's not like he thinks Dr. Max lies to him exactly, but that it did feel like he had some kind of terminal mental disease and his dad and Dr. Max had colluded to bullshit him here and there to help ease his suffering. It was as if, because there was no cure, because he would never really heal, because he would ultimately die from his wounds, there was no point in highlighting or belaboring all of the ways that he was clearly and hopelessly defective.
Make the patient comfortable as you ease him towards death.
Or something.
He's contemplating how exactly to phrase that when a thought suddenly flickers across his brain, sending a distinctly unpleasant shudder down his body.
"Seth?"
Of course Dr. Max would catch his full-body spasm.
Of course nothing ever seemed to escape his notice.
"Hmm?"
"I'm wondering what's going on for you right now. You look a little shaken up."
Seth finds himself squirming again, the stupid leather couch raising up its undignified racket as he does so. "Uh, yeah, something just kind of popped into my head, I guess."
"Do you want to tell me about it?"
Did he?
When his parents had first made him start going to therapy, there were pacts that Seth had made with himself, things he vowed to never talk about.
There was only so much he could bear to take out of his own head and give to anyone else to pick apart.
Telling wasn't just unpleasant.
It was violent and humiliating.
It was agonizing and unbearable.
It fixed one problem, then created a dozen more in its wake.
No one was ever supposed to know, but then they did, and while everyone tried to convince him that it was like opening up this dam and he could let everything spill out and he'd be all shiny and new and healed, the telling didn't purify anything and it didn't cleanse anything; it just broke whatever it was that had kept every horrible thing at bay and it flooded every previously untouched relationship and part of his life and corner of his brain with The Trauma.
And then it was a mad mental rush to rebuild the dam, to take everything he could salvage and put it somewhere where no one could ever touch it and no one could ever take it from him: not his dad and not his mom and not the police and not the doctors or the lawyers or Dr. Max or anyone.
"Maybe I want to tell you?" Seth's lip curls. "It's just weirding me out a little. It's one of those things I figured I'd take to my grave, I guess."
"You want to tell me, but it also feels like you're giving away something you've been protecting for a long time."
"It's never even been a question, you know, that I would never tell anyone." Seth's voice is raspy. "And I-I don't get why I'd be thinking about it now."
Or why he'd be about to tell Dr. Max about it without engaging in at least five years of back-and-forth deliberation on whether or not it was a good idea, whether or not there was anything he could conceivably gain from it.
Dr. Max gives him that gently imploring the floor is yours look of his that always made Seth's skin crawl.
Seth blows out a long breath. He swallows, feeling a prickle of heat behind his eyes.
"When my dad found out..." Seth stops and takes a long breath. "When they first made me talk about it...I said that he-that Steven-said he would kill me or he would kill my mom and dad if I ever told anyone..."
"I remember."
"I just—I don't remember if that really happened, if he really said that, or if I made it up. Sometimes I think I made it up." Seth's voice cracks. "Like, to give myself a reason that I didn't tell."
"It felt like you didn't have a reason?"
"Not any good reason," Seth says. "I did think he would kill me or like, kill my parents and then find some way to adopt me, but I don't know why I thought that." He swallows. "And I don't know if that's why I didn't tell."
"What comes up for you when you think about it?"
"I just..." Seth breaks off, looking down at the floor and fighting against the impulse to find a crumb to fixate on, or a weird misaligned carpet fiber that he can lose himself in.
He forces himself to look up at Dr. Max, at his steady, attentive, intensely compassionate gaze, and immediately averts his eyes back to the floor, the carpet offering him the courtesy of a neutral facial expression.
"I didn't want anyone to know," Seth chokes out. "And do you know how insanely stupid and fucked up that is, to let him-" his voice starts to raise. "To...to put myself through that because I didn't want anyone to know? Because it was, what, embarrassing?"
"It really weighs on you, that you didn't tell anyone." Dr. Max's brow furrows. "And you say you put yourself through that, like you decided-
"I know it's not my fault," Seth interjects.
"I sense a but."
"But at a certain point..." Seth shrugs.
"At a certain point..."
Dr. Max wasn't going to do him any favors or fill in any blanks or read between any lines.
Seth's mouth opens and closes a few times, struggling for air, let alone to speak.
"At a certain point, isn't it, kind of?" he finally manages. "I could've...I mean...I didn't do anything to stop him." A hoarse ugly sound slips from his mouth and hovers in front of him for what feels like an excruciating eternity.
"You've been carrying that alone for a long time, feeling like it was your fault." Dr. Max's voice is soft and somber and entirely too gentle.
Seth shrugs, bile rising in his throat.
"Yeah, well...you knew though."
"There's a difference," Dr. Max says, "between me knowing and you telling me."
Seth doesn't say anything to that.
"How long has it been your fault?"
"After the first time, right?" Seth's eyes flick up to meet Dr. Max's. "I could've told my dad. I mean, you've seen what he's like." He sniffs. "It's not like he wouldn't have believed me."
"I think it's interesting, Seth, that you describe being very afraid of the consequences of telling, that you not only believed that Steven was capable of violence, but also that he might also find a way to take you away from your parents, to remove the limits on his access to you. But then when you assign this blame to yourself, you only focus on your shame holding you back and downplay your fear."
Seth's jaw clenches. "So this is the part where you try to convince me that it's not my fault, right?"
"To be honest, I don't believe I have the power to do that," Dr. Max says, after a moment's hesitation. "For one thing, I've never gotten the sense that you have that much blind faith in the things I tell you. And aside from that, you're trusting me with something important, feelings you've been carrying alone for a long time. I wouldn't do you the disservice of trying to shut those feelings down. I don't think they'd go away; I just think you'd know not to trust me to be able to sit with them with you."
Seth chews on that for a moment, wanting to find something to take issue with in Dr. Max's words, but coming up empty.
"Okay, so I thought he was going to do something bad," he acknowledges grudgingly. "But I don't even know for sure why I thought that, like I don't remember if he even said that, or if I was just being stupid." Seth's face flushes at Dr. Max's quizzical look. "He used to buy me these books, some series about these kids...their parents died and they tried to run away and live on their own, but then they got caught and had to go live with a relative, their uncle or their grandfather or something."
"And that felt like he was sending you a message?"
"Yes?" Seth groans. "No? I don't know. Like I said, it's stupid. He had to buy me a birthday present or whatever, so he grabbed the first book he saw in the kid's section. I'm sure he didn't think that hard about how to like, terrorize every moment of my life."
"It felt like he did." Dr. Max doesn't phrase that as a question.
"So? It doesn't make it true."
"It's very important for you to know for sure that he made direct threats like that."
"Isn't it important?" Seth demands.
"So that you can know exactly how much blame you deserve?"
"Sure, that," Seth scoffs. "But isn't it important though, what's actually true?"
"It sounds like it feels important to you."
"I just feel like I'm trying to put together the world's most fucked up puzzle and I don't know what any of the pieces mean and how many I'm just making up out of nothing."
"It's hard to trust yourself, to know what's real," Dr. Max says. "What does it do for you, if he did say those things, if he'd said 'Seth, I'll kill you if you tell. I'll kill you mom and dad. I'll kidnap you'?"
There's another surge of bile building in Seth's throat, the only thing stopping him from yelling at Dr. Max to stop, to shut up, to never say another word to him ever again.
He stares at the floor.
It was stupid to say anything, but if he's still and quiet, he can turn into a mist and disappear into the wallpaper and eventually it will be time to go home.
He's done it before.
Minutes go by.
Dr. Max clears his throat.
"Seth, you're also piecing this puzzle together from the way you understood things at very different ages. You were five years old when it started, with no one to help you make sense out of anything that was happening."
Seth scowls.
He'd never told Dr. Max-had never wanted to admit it, had never wanted to give him the ammunition-but he hated every reference to the age he was then. Hearing it said like that, "You were five years old" was supposed to convey the gravity of the whole thing, really highlight his innocence or his helplessness or his lack of culpability, but all it really did was make him want to curl up into a ball and die.
"Seth?" Dr. Max's eyes narrow in concern. "You were kind of floating away on me there, but now you look angry."
"I just...I don't like when you talk about how old I was," Seth mutters.
He can't believe he said that out loud.
It wasn't the "Yeah, well this isn't exactly a fun conversation," that he would've summarily delivered on any other day, and it definitely wasn't letting the time pass until Dr. Max spoke his customary "Is this an okay place to stop?" that signified the end of another brutal fifty minute session.
Dr. Max looks a little surprised himself. "I appreciate you letting me know that, Seth. What feelings does it bring up for you, my saying how old you were?"
"I just...don't like thinking about myself like that," Seth admits.
"You prefer not to think about the little kid part as having been real. Or you prefer not to think about him as having been you."
"I wish he weren't me."
"How do you feel about him?"
Seth shrugs.
Dr. Max found a lot of different ways to ask that question in a lot of different therapy sessions, but Seth always found a way to neatly sidestep having to answer it.
"You said the abuse was his fault. Are you mad at him?"
"I guess."
"Do you hate him?"
"No." Seth bites his lip. "I mean, I don't think so. I feel bad for him."
"What else do you feel about him?"
"I dunno."
"I know this is hard, but you're doing great sticking with this, Seth. I'm going to push you a little bit. What else comes up for you when you try to think of that little kid as you?"
Seth looks down at his sneakers, letting the seconds tick by and recommitting to his always foolproof plan of making himself smaller and smaller and smaller until he became invisible.
"I mean, he's kind of pathetic, don't you think?" Seth asks suddenly. "I guess...I don't think I hate him, but I think I think he's disgusting."
Dr. Max lets him sit with that one for a long while.
"And maybe not just him, but like, everybody in here." Seth gestures down at his perpetually restless embarrassing awkward body. "But you probably knew that too, huh?"
"I suspected, I suppose." Dr. Max gives him a small sad smile. "I can't imagine how heavy that's been and how much that's hurt, feeling that way and carrying it alone for so many years. How does it feel to share it with me?"
Seth snorts. "I don't feel lighter, if that's what you're asking."
"So what do you feel?"
Seth shrugs.
"It's incredibly hard work, coming here and sharing things you were planning on taking to the grave," Dr. Max offers.
Seth makes a pained face. "I guess."
"So this is the part where you minimize how much effort you've been putting in towards getting better, right?"
Seth snickers, bobbing a finger at Dr. Max. "Hey...I see what you did there."
"I know sharing and being authentic about your feelings is very difficult for you," Dr. Max says. "Like right now, as you try to deflect from the intensity of what this is feeling like."
Seth's shoulders hunch, bug under a microscope yet again.
God forbid he tell a single joke amongst the doom and gloom of plumbing the depths of his seemingly endless trauma.
"It would be normal to feel some anxiety or ambivalence about having shared with me today."
"I don't." Seth is surprised at how quickly his answer comes, and how weirdly certain he feels that it's true. "I don't feel lighter or anything, and I kind of feel like I could perish from actual anxiety right now, but I dunno..." he shrugs. "People keep telling me I need to talk if I want things to be different, and I...want things to be different, I guess."
"You seem a little skeptical as you say that, like maybe you don't quite believe that talking will help things be different."
"Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying I believe anything's going to be different."
How acknowledging it was his fault would make it any less his fault.
How acknowledging that he was disgusting would make him any less disgusting.
"But you're giving it a shot anyway?" Dr. Max posits.
"You...could say that." The corner of Seth's mouth twitches into a smirk.
"Well, I appreciate the leap of faith," Dr. Max says with a smile. "And I know it's one thing to say it and it takes a lot more to believe it and to really feel it, but Seth, everything you've shared...I won't lie to you that the work's done or that it'll be easy, but there's a lot here we can work with, places you can go with it."
"Okay."
"Do you believe me on that one?"
Seth mulls it over for a minute. "Maybe it's just that I've given my lawyer the day off, but I weirdly think I do believe you."
"You know, it's nice to get to talk with you without him hovering over your shoulder," Dr. Max says. "Don't get me wrong—I also want to thank him for how he's protected you over the years, made you feel safe here and elsewhere, but he's also made it hard to connect with you." He tilts his head, giving Seth an appraising look. "Sounds like not just for me either."
"No," Seth agrees quietly, looking down at his hands. "Not just for you."