“So, again, you initiate?”
I begin tapping my foot because my stomach feels like it has no lining. “I’m sure she has said it first on multiple occasions, I just can’t remember. She’s not a bad mother.”
“I didn’t say she was.”
I close my eyes and shake my head. “I’m sorry. I thought these sessions were going to be about my dad passing away and the grieving process.”
“They are,” Angelina says. “But you cannot hope to understand an end without starting at the beginning.”
“My mum does love me.”
“I didn’t say she did not,” Angelina replies. “I’m saying the opposite, rather.”
Bringing my hands together, I feel my pulse jump.
“I think you know your mother loves you,” Angelina begins, “but your uncertainty may stem from a lack of convention, of the typical. How someone shows you they love you has less to do with you and all to do with them. There are healthy and unhealthy expressions of love and not all of them should be accepted.”
This is meant to be about my mum, but I think about Dad and how I used to believe that if someone loved you, they had to say it, otherwise it wasn’t real, it wasn’t known, but I understand now that’s not the case. My dad rarely said those special three words, whether due to his upbringing, his stoic generation, whatever, but I always knew, inexplicably, that he did.
“Many assume love is straightforward,” Angelina continues, “when really it is the most complicated of things. There is a right way, a preferred way, for each individual, to love and be loved by someone—but there isn’t only one way. I believe the difficulty of life has much to do with understanding and then navigating how the people you love both express and receive love themselves. It cannot be your responsibility, your burden, to reshape people into someone you’d like them to be. Ultimately, you must either accept a person for who they are, how they behave, how they express themselves emotionally, and find a healthy way to live with them, or let them go entirely. Either way, you must release yourself from that responsibility.” She pauses. “What don’t you want to talk about, Maddie?”
“I don’t understand.”
“These questions of yours, whilst insightful, I think are intended to waste time.”
“Are they?”
“Maddie. You are splitting at the seam.”
My eyes are watering. My chest is tightening and my fingers are twitching. “I just don’t want to think too hard or too much today.”
“Why?”
I breathe out. “It’s exhausting, everything is exhausting. Talking, moving, feeling, thinking, living. I could use a break.” I catch her frown. “That’s not what I … I don’t need an eternal break. I just … I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
“Yes! I know everyone must think I’m depressed—”
“You are suffering from depression, Maddie,” Angelina says. “That much is simple to see.”
I look up from my lap and Angelina’s face is still, but her eyebrows are joining in the middle. I hear my heartbeat and want to stick my fingers in my ears.
“Why? Because my dad died? By that reasoning, almost everyone should be depressed. So many people have lost someone.”
“Comparing yourself to others and deeming yourself better off is no remedy for mental illness. The remedy is internal work—lots of it. But acknowledging the issue at hand must come first. You are suffering from depression, Maddie.”
I push my bottom lip into the top one and tears pool in the corners of my eyes. “But I’m carrying on, so I’m also fine.”
“You cannot be both.”
“I disagree.”
“All right,” she says calmly. “For argument’s sake, in what ways are you both fine and depressed?”
“I’m fine because I’m still living, I’m still going to work, returning home and waking up the next morning. I’m not so fine because my dad died right after I moved out, my mum is too difficult to comprehend and attempting to manage her drains me of everything but tears. I don’t know what the fuck my brother is doing. The person keeping me momentarily sane broke up with me, but in his defense, I was lying to him—about everything. I think my flatmate hates me, so I stay in my room most of the time. I think I now hate that room, because I gave up my dad for that room.”
“Maddie—”
“I think my ideas are being stolen by my colleagues, but I honestly can’t tell. I don’t understand what intellectual property means. I want to ask Nia and Shu to drop everything and look after me again, but they have their own lives and maybe they’re tired of feeling like babysitters and … it’s hot in here!” I stand up, pulling at my jumper. “Sorry, I … I just … When did it get so hot in here?”
“Maddie?”
Angelina’s suddenly very blurry. Is she melting?
“Oh, it’s happening again,” I say, stretching my collar. “Panic attack. Anxiety. Something, I don’t know, but I—”
* * *
There’s a blinding light in my eye.
So it’s true what they say about following the light when you die.
“Maddie?”
“God, is that you?”
“No, it’s Dr. Rusher.”
“What?”
The light disappears and someone hoists me up and into a chair. My vision is still fuzzy when someone hands me a cup of water.
I fainted, apparently, induced by a panic attack. Luckily, the doctor who visits the company a couple of times a month, a doctor, who can only be seen by way of an appointment booked a week prior, is in the house. He decides I don’t need to be taken to A&E, but I do need to go home and rest, and that I should book some time in with a GP just to be safe. Ask for something to help with anxiety. “A beta-blocker, perhaps,” he says.
I notice Penny standing in the corner; I wonder if she regrets hiring me.
“I can work from home.”
“No, you heard the doctor,” she says gently. “You need to take today off. I’ll call you in the morning to see how you are. Kris gave your mother a call and she’s on her way.”
I almost frown, wishing she’d called Nia or Shu, but fix my face in time. “Thank you.”
Penny tuts at my sincerity. “Don’t be silly.”
* * *
Mum was very quiet when she came to pick me up. She asked if I was okay, felt my head, held on to my arm as we left the building, but said nothing else in the cab ride to the flat.
I was planning on going straight to bed when we got back, but Mum steers me until she finds the kitchen and sits me at the table before filling a glass with water and placing it in front of me.
“You didn’t have to come,” I tell her when it’s been quiet for too long.
“Of course I came,” Mum says, incredulously. “I’m your mother.” She fidgets as we sit at the kitchen table and I slowly drink my water. “Not your boss Penelope, but your smaller boss—what’s her name? Krissy?”
“Kris.”
“Yes, her. She…” Mum sighs. “She gave me attitude over the phone. All I asked is why you fainted and she said ‘maybe because her dad died!’ As if I don’t know that! They made it sound as if you’ve been unwell and I’ve been ignoring it, but grief happens to everyone.” She shakes herself off. “Anyway. You’re my daughter. I know when you’re fine and she—”