Matt (heyitsmatt) wrote in mcdermott_game, @ 2010-11-27 18:40:00 |
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Current mood: | anxious |
Entry tags: | auden, auden/matt, matt |
Who: Auden and Matt
What: Comparing notes on therapy
When: Tuesday, November 23
Where: The health center on campus
Rating: PG
Status: Complete
It threw Auden to be at the health center on a Tuesday. For the past several weeks he’d been seeing Tamara every Wednesday, like clockwork; after creative writing and before work. He was so used to it that having to schedule an appointment on Tuesday completely screwed with the rest of his day - if only because he kept forgetting what day it actually was.
However, this week, Wednesday marked the beginning of Thanksgiving break, not to mention it was the day that Auden would be heading out to California to spend the holiday at home. His choices had been to either skip his weekly session, or come in on a different day. If it were totally up to him, Auden would have opted for skipping, but Tamara had persuaded him to come in a day early so that they could “touch base.” What she really wanted was to get him to talk about how he felt with James spending the holiday with them and to dissuade him against drinking that weekend. Not that she came right out and said it, but Auden knew anyway. He was figuring her out, learning to read her the same way that she read him.
He was early - ridiculously early. He’d skipped his Comparative Lit class because he’d been too on edge to focus, but he hadn’t had time to go back to his dorm so he’d headed straight for the health center. Now he found himself sitting in the waiting area, which was always too quiet. The receptionist sat behind her desk, her attention on her computer; Auden alternated between glancing at the clock on one wall and the array of pamphlets on the other, colorful brochures with titles like “Depression: Discovering Hope” and “Beating Anxiety.” Every week when Auden came in, he was always curious enough to want to pick up some of the pamphlets, but could never quite bring himself to do it. This week was no different. He studied the titles for awhile and then he turned his attention to his iPod, pulling it out of his pocket and flipping to his Beatles playlist. Before he had a chance to turn it on, though, he was distracted by the sound of a door opening and someone else coming in to the waiting room.
The only day that Matt could have fit in seeing Tamara was in between his classes on Tuesdays - it really was the only free thirty minutes to an hour that he could have offered her that fit within her own hours. Matt didn’t know how he felt about seeing her. He supposed she was nice, but the way she always seemed like she was pushing him without really pushing him made him uncomfortable. She’d been pleased with the progress he’d seemed to be making with letting people in and telling them about his issues, but he still hadn’t told Olivia yet - it really was a combination of busyness and nerves - and Matt knew Tamara was going to make that a point. All in all, though, he was glad that he was going home because at least for a few days, he could act like he was normal.
He walked into the health center and checked in with the receptionist, sitting down and then noticing he was not alone. This wasn’t necessarily unusual, except that Matt hadn’t seen this guy in here whenever Matt had come for his sessions. The other guy looked vaguely familiar to Matt, but he couldn’t place why; while he racked his brain, trying to remember where he’d seen him before (because Matt knew he’d seen him before), he crossed the room, trying not to look so obvious as he took one of the bright pamphlets about anxiety that had caught his attention. It was much better than staring at the other guy, trying to figure out why Matt thought he knew him.
When Auden had looked up at the person entering the waiting room and determined that it wasn't anyone he knew, he returned his attention to his iPod. He kept the volume low as he flipped around between songs, starting with Let It Be because it was his favorite, and he always had to listen to it first; it relaxed him. After that he began switching randomly, bypassing Dear Prudence and listening to a snippet of Something before settling on Dizzy Miss Lizzy. As he shuffled through songs, he idly watched the other guy's movements; he noted that the guy was braver than he was, at least when it came to looking at those pamphlets. And it was strange, too; Auden intellectually knew that he wasn't the only student at McDermott who needed counseling, but he'd never quite let it sink in that there were other people here for the same reasons he was, either.
Or maybe not the same; the guy hadn't picked up a pamphlet on depression, Auden noticed. And yet his curiosity was piqued; he almost wanted to say something, except that he didn't know what there was to say. He looked back down at his iPod, flipped another few songs ahead, and rested on Blackbird.
Idly flipping through the pamphlet, Matt frowned. It wasn’t that there wasn’t good information in it; it just seemed so cliché and happy, like people’s struggle was something amusing that could be remedied in a few cartoony pictures, some words of encouragement, and a few phone numbers. Matt supposed it was good that the information was out there, but reading it in this format almost made him not want to absorb it.
Besides, it was only a distraction, anyway. Matt was always on-edge before his meetings with Tamara, not only because they took him out of his comfort zone, but because sometimes they tended to run into his orchestra class. Tamara, thankfully, realized that could be a source of anxiety and did her best to not let that happen, but Matt couldn’t help but be anxious anyway. Even if it was the day before Thanksgiving break and there wasn’t much going on in that class anyway. He threw the pamphlet aside and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, watching the clock.
Auden glanced at his watch, because it occurred to him that he was probably a lot earlier than he'd thought, if someone else was also waiting to see Tamara. For a moment he wondered if he should leave and try to catch the rest of his Lit class after all, but a moment later he dismissed the idea. By that point, he'd be getting to class too late to get anything out of it; he'd only be disrupting everyone else, and Dr. Costello tended to frown upon disruptions. Besides, by the time it was over and he came back to the health center, he'd end up being late for his own appointment anyway.
He really hadn't thought things through, which he blamed on being thrown off by having to be there on a Tuesday. Nevertheless, if he was going to be hanging out for awhile, he might as well feel like he wasn't completely wasting his time. He removed his headphones and reached for his backpack to trade the iPod for his copy of Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, which they were reading in Lit. He'd already read the assignments they were supposed to have discussed today, so he flipped ahead to next week's reading and settled in. It was hard to focus on the words, but it was better than sitting there doing nothing.
Matt admired the other guy’s concentration; he, personally, was unable to focus on anything like homework or musical scores or anything to that effect while he was waiting for Tamara. He wondered, briefly, what his companion was there for. Matt knew it wasn’t his business, but his curiosity was piqued, too; it seemed a bit interesting to him that people went on with their lives able to conceal the fact that something wasn’t quite right with the way their heads worked. Glancing back to look at Tamara’s door - he could see that she was still with someone through its frosted, almost opaque glass - he leaned back and sighed. He glanced around the room yet again and his gaze fell on the other guy’s backpack, in which a blue Powerade bottle rested. And then it hit him.
“You’re the blue Powerade guy,” Matt said aloud, before he could stop himself.
Auden looked up, confusion crossing his face more at the randomness of the statement than at the words themselves. "I'm the what?" he asked; he tried to remember if he'd ever been called that before - or if he'd ever met the other guy before - but he simply couldn't; it had been a long year.
Matt shook his head, flustered. “I’m sorry,” he said, automatically. “It’s just... I work at Harper Cove, and you come in and buy blue Powerade all the time.” Vaguely, he remembered maybe having a conversation similar to this one a long time ago, but the memory was fuzzy and so many things had happened since then. Another memory came to him, but this one not as benign; he remembered spying on this guy when Chris had been hung up on KJ, at their shared birthday party last year. It had been a year since then, though.
He gave the other guy a small smile, to try and smooth over the moment.
"Oh." Auden glanced down at his backpack, where the Powerade bottle was sticking out, and then back over at the other guy. He returned the slight smile because he doubted the other guy meant any harm, but it still seemed pretty random to him. "Well. I guess there are worse reputations to have," he said wryly. Better than being known as the alcoholic guy, at least. "My name's Auden though. I kind of prefer it."
“Yeah, I don’t blame you,” Matt agreed, nodding. “I’ll try to remember that next time I ring you up for the Powerade.” He gave Auden another small smile, which faded quickly. It would be a good moment to introduce himself, but for Matt, it almost felt like it would be uninvited. He was curious as to why Auden was there, but he couldn’t really come out and ask about it.
Picking up the pamphlet and walking back over to try and stuff it back into its holder - maybe someone else could benefit from it - he gave the packets one more look and then went back to his seat. “You ever read through those things?” he commented, lightly. “I don’t know but reading through them kind of makes everything seem like a joke or something, with cartoon characters and stuff. I don’t know.” Matt shrugged. “Doesn’t really seem encouraging, I guess, is all I mean.”
Auden looked over at the pamphlets and shook his head. "No ... I've never really looked at them," he said, closing his Bishop book and drumming his fingers lightly against the spine. "I mean, maybe if I thought they'd do me any good, I'd be interested, but ... I don't know." He'd been curious as to whether or not they would do him any good, but if they were just cartoony jokes then it was probably just as well he'd never given in to the urge to look. "I don't really think a pamphlet can tell me anything I haven't already heard from Tamara." It was, perhaps, a too personal thing to say, but it was already out, and there was nothing he could do about it. He shifted a bit uncomfortably, glancing down at his textbook again.
“Yeah, you’re right about that.” Matt didn’t necessarily think it was that personal - after all, they’d already gotten past the notion that both of them were here to see a psychologist. “I don’t really think a pamphlet can push buttons like Tamara can, either.” He relaxed slightly into his seat and sighed. Now maybe that was a little too personal to say.
Auden shifted uncomfortably again, reaching for his backpack in order to put the book away. Of course, now he had nothing to do with his hands. "Yeah, she's good at that," he finally said, automatically glancing at the door to Tamara's office. "I guess it's her job to be good at it, though." Maybe if she didn't, nobody would ever talk to her about their problems. God knew it had taken Auden long enough.
Matt made a face; it still sucked that she made him uncomfortable, but he wasn’t going to tell Auden that. Instead, he offered, “I thought it was just me, that sitting there in her office made me feel like a lousy person sometimes.” Matt sighed; he had nothing to do with his hands, either, so he settled for drumming his fingers on the armrest.
Tamara didn't necessarily make Auden feel like a lousy person, but sometimes she didn't make him feel all that good about himself, either. Mostly it was because he knew that she was right about a lot of things - how he used alcohol as a crutch, how he didn't let people in, how he took the easy roads instead of trying to make things work. The worst part about it was that she did it in a way where it didn't feel like she was attacking him at all - she gently guided him to the problems and tried to help him figure out how to solve them. He couldn't even dislike her for it.
He couldn't say any of that to this guy, but he probably didn't really need to anyway - if he was sitting here, then he knew for himself. Auden folded his arms and settled into his chair. "It's not just you," was all he said, because that was what seemed safe enough.
That was a relief to know and Matt nodded, relieved. He wanted to add that the only other time he’d seen someone like Tamara was right after his sister was diagnosed; they’d had to go to family therapy. Idly, Matt wondered now if they had to do the same thing for him, and it made him more uncomfortable; he didn’t want to have to cause them any more inconvenience than he already had. The point was, though, was that Matt didn’t have that much experience with seeing someone to sort out his feelings and his anxiety, and he didn’t have much to compare it to. He supposed Tamara wasn’t bad at her job, but Matt didn’t know what was considered good or bad, really. He could talk to her, which he supposed was a good thing.
“That’s good to know, then,” Matt replied, in response to Auden’s comment. He paused, and then decided that he should be polite, because that was how he was raised, even though the situation was somewhat different than normal pleasantries. “I’m Matt, by the way.” He would have offered more, but sitting in a waiting room for counseling at the student health center didn’t feel like the right place.
Auden responded to that with a nod of acknowledgement; he didn't think it was necessary to repeat his own name, but he did offer the obligatory, "Nice to meet you." It seemed a little absurd, polite introductions while they were both sitting there waiting for counseling - it would have been really funny, if Auden had the presence of mind to think of the humor. Instead, he just fiddled with the watch around his wrist, and then glanced from Tamara's door back to Matt. "So …. how long have you been seeing her?" he asked, some of his curiosity winning out despite himself.
Matt hadn’t really been expecting that, but he was glad that there was something to talk about instead of sitting around and waiting awkwardly for Tamara to be done. He frowned as he tried to remember. “A month or so?” he decided, finally. “Right after fall break, since that’s when everything kind of... happened.” Matt sighed, and then glanced back at Auden. “What about you?” He didn’t want to pry, necessarily, but he figured it was a fair question, especially since Auden had initiated the conversation anyway.
It must have been nice to be able to point at a solid starting place and say, That's when everything happened. Auden envied that a bit. "A couple of months," he said, in response to Matt's question. "Since September." As to when everything had happened, Auden was still trying to figure that out. The more he came to counseling, the less sure he was that he really knew anything. But he didn't say so to Matt; they were treading a very fine line between common ground and the too-personal, and Auden didn't want to cross that line. As curious as he was about how someone else had ended up in the same sort of position, he also knew that to ask would be opening himself up for the same kind of questioning - and that just wasn't something he was willing to do.
Matt nodded, absorbing that. Auden had only been coming maybe a few weeks before Matt had; he could definitely sympathize with having to go through something that was taking an extra toll. But, like Auden, Matt did not want to cross the line and make this more into a support group for those who needed therapy, because Matt could barely talk to two people on campus about it, and the more people he told without telling his girlfriend, the less fair it was to her.
“So I guess you just see Tamara, then,” Matt commented, because he really didn’t know how else to go about talking about it without assuming things. “I mean, I have to see her, but there are other people I have to see, too.” He sighed; he didn’t like his medications being adjusted very much, but thankfully, there hadn’t been too much tweaking that had to be done. Still, it felt humiliating to have to see Dr. Valen and be asked about how the medication was working, how he was getting used to the fact that he needed it to be ‘normal’.
Auden began playing with the watch around his wrist, fiddling with the band. "For now," he said, glancing at Tamara's door again. Then his gaze flicked back to Matt, measuring him for a moment before he said, "I'm supposed to start seeing someone else too, but I haven't yet." He didn't mention Dr. Valen by name, nor did he want to say that it was because Tamara wanted to put him on antidepressants. It was too ... it was embarrassing, yes, to have to admit that he was so bad off that counseling alone wasn't enough and that there might be something inherently wrong inside of him that he needed pills to fix. He hadn't told anyone about the antidepressants, even if Charlotte and Jeremy knew now about the counseling.
Embarrassment wasn't why he didn't tell Matt, though; it was part of it, and at the same time, since Matt was sitting there he was obviously going through the same thing, and so it was harder for him to judge Auden. Or so Auden assumed. But whether or not Matt would have understood was beside the point; the fact was that Auden just didn't know him. They may have been in the same position, but that didn't make it any easier for Auden to share. He had to wonder why that was. "All of it kind of sucks," was all he said.
Matt looked at him, giving him an empathetic glance; it really did suck, and no one was able to put the kind of quantification needed in those words than the people that were going through it. He nodded. “Yeah, it does,” he agreed, fervently. But before he could elaborate, the door to Tamara’s office finally opened, and Matt looked back instinctively at it before he turned back. “I guess it’s my turn now,” he said, sighing a bit, both in relief that he hadn’t had to wait that long, and paradoxically, with the impending anxiety of the forthcoming meeting. He paused to pick up his bag and then let his gaze rest on Auden for a moment. “Good luck with everything, man,” he told Auden. “I hope things look up for you soon.”
Auden nodded, giving Matt a slight smile that faded again almost as quickly. “Yeah. You too,” he replied. He really did hope things looked up, for Matt and for himself. For then, all there was left to do was wait for his own session with Tamara.