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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 15, 2016 0:08:11 GMT -5
Lyra sat nervously on the couch, twisting her fingers as she stared blankly at the wall full of books. Her heart was beating so furiously in her chest that it made her eyes water. She bite her lower lip.
Is he ever going to speak?
Lyra breathed raggedly as she looked up the man sitting across from her. She felt a tightening in her chest. “What am I supposed to say?” she asked nervously.
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 15, 2016 0:12:12 GMT -5
Rohan sat in an arm chair, watching the young woman in front of him panic. It was common. Many patients were nervous for the first several sessions. She didn’t know it, but she was responding as expected.
“Whatever you'd like," he answered. Lyra continued to look silently at him, so he prompted her. "Why don’t we start with what brought you here?”
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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 15, 2016 0:17:30 GMT -5
“I don’t know,” she said almost out of habit. Lyra had become accustomed to pretending everything was fine. She knew it wasn’t, she could recognize that now. But Dr Nadeer sat so calmly as she sat panicking, it made her put up the walls once more.
Still he didn’t speak and the pause extended much longer than she was comfortable with.
“My friend said I should see someone. Well, he’s not my friend, really. I mean, maybe he is. I don’t know. That’s not the point,” she scolded herself under her breath for veering off track.
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 15, 2016 0:20:45 GMT -5
“It sounds like he cares about you,” Rohan commented. The label on the relationship wasn’t important. He wrote a comment on his notepad as he continued.
“Why do you think he wanted you to talk to someone like me?”
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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 15, 2016 0:25:56 GMT -5
“Because he’s tired of me crying in front of him,” Lyra said exasperatedly as she rolled her eyes. She, too, was tired of crying in front of Nicolas.
Lyra glanced up from her hands and saw Dr Nadeer’s quill scribble something on the notepad in his lap. She craned her neck to see what it said but she couldn’t read the tiny scrawl.
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 15, 2016 0:29:28 GMT -5
“Do you cry in front of him a lot?” Rohan continued, not commenting on her attempt to read his notes.
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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 15, 2016 0:38:02 GMT -5
“No,” she said shortly, but after a pause she recanted. “A few times. It’s not so much the frequency as the volume. I sort of…break down. But it’s not my fault,” she said with a bit more gusto than she had shown previously in their ‘conversation’. “Nik’s always pushing me. If he’d just leave me alone I wouldn’t be such a mess in front of him.”
“How do you feel after you cry with him?” Dr Nadeer continued.
Lyra hesitated. She didn’t have answer ready to go, she had to actually think of how she was going to respond. “Tired mostly,” Lyra said. Her tantrums were rather exhausting and so far Nicolas had gotten the worst of it. Dr Nadeer didn’t say anything and there was another pause that went on longer than Lyra was comfortable with.
“I feel better afterwards, I guess. Like someone cares about me.”
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 15, 2016 0:39:32 GMT -5
Rohan made another note as he looked contemplatively at Lyra. Rohan’s voice was soft and his words gentle. “You say that as if you don’t have many people who care about you.”
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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 15, 2016 0:45:31 GMT -5
“No, that’s not true.” She wasn’t being combative, but his assertion was incorrect. “Julian cares about me. And Sam.”
She realized after she closed her mouth that Dr Nadeer didn’t know who Julian or Sam were, so she explained. “Sam’s my best friend. And Julian’s my boyfriend.”
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 15, 2016 0:50:34 GMT -5
Rohan nodded slightly and made another note. Lyra craned her neck again in attempt to read it.
“Are most of your friends male?” His tone was flat, without assumption or implication.
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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 15, 2016 0:58:29 GMT -5
Lyra looked at him curiously, tilting her head to the side as she struggled to find where his question came from. “Oh,” she said suddenly. “No, Sam’s a girl. Samantha. Although, she is really my only girlfriend. I suppose Christine is my friend, too, but that’s newer. We don’t hang out much without Sam. They’re cousins.”
“I guess I don’t have many friends,” she said with realization in her voice. “I used to have loads of friends when I was in school. Mostly boys. All boys, actually, except for Sam.”
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 15, 2016 21:04:50 GMT -5
Rohan nodded and made another note on the pad that sat in his lap. Lyra was an attractive girl, she worked at a fashion magazine, she showed up for her therapy appointment in a dress and heels. There didn't seem to be a hint of tomboy in her. Having mainly male friends at such an age was not necessarily odd, but perhaps it was something to be looked into further.
“And why do you think that is?” he asked evenly.
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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 15, 2016 21:18:53 GMT -5
“Why were most of my friends boys?” she asked for clarification. Dr Nadeer nodded.
She thought about it, then felt embarrassed by the answer that came into her head and she looked back to her hands in her lap. Lyra enjoyed getting her way and boys were easy to manipulate. She could bat her eyes or trail her fingers lightly along their arms and she would get most anything she wanted. As she got older her tactics surpassed simple flirting.
She appreciated the attention boys paid her and allowed their eyes, their hands, and other such things to linger on her body so long as she got what she wanted from them. Sometimes it was tangible rewards like answers to the homework assignments or gifts, but other times it was simply just company. Boys could be such good listeners if they thought it would get her into bed. And Lyra did like talking.
Thinking back on it now Lyra realized that the only friend she hadn’t slept with was Ethan Drake, not for lack of trying. Ethan was too much of a gentleman, he didn’t want to take advantage of Lyra.
She shook her head silently. She wasn't sure how to answer Dr Nadeer's question without making him think she was a strumpet, she already felt like one as it is.
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 15, 2016 21:26:20 GMT -5
Rohan sensed her apprehension in answering his question. He never pushed his clients into talking about things they found uncomfortable. Eventually, after they had built a rapport, most everyone came around.
“Your boyfriend obviously cares about you. As do your friends Sam and..." Rohan looked down at his notes. "Nik," he finished.
"What about your parents. Where are they?”
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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 15, 2016 21:33:14 GMT -5
Lyra’s eyes shifted away from his as she bit her lip again. Her chest tightened again. She hadn’t realized until now that it had released its earlier pressure, she’d been too busy talking to notice. Lyra liked talking, especially about herself. But the topic of her parents made her even more anxious that the topic of her promiscuity.
“They disowned me,” she said quietly. “They don’t care about me anymore. Maybe they never did.”
Dr Nadeer was silent again, so she continued. “I was supposed to find a husband or at least a likely prospect by the time I graduated. But things…sort of…went astray.”
She spun her ring around on her finger a few times before looking up. “I don’t really want to talk about my parents. That’s not why I’m here.”
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 15, 2016 21:44:32 GMT -5
Many more notes. It nearly always came around to the parents in some way. Too smothering. Too distant. Absent. Ever present. Overly affectionate. Overly dominant. It was nearly impossible to have children and not ruin them in some way or another. But Rohan didn’t push Lyra. They’d get back around to it eventually.
“Why are you here, Lyra?” he prompted.
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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 15, 2016 21:56:15 GMT -5
“I told you, I don’t know.” There was a bit of sass behind her words, more so to hide the fact that she knew perfectly well why she was sitting in a therapist’s office but was simply ashamed of the reason. She sighed loudly and leaned against the back of the couch, slouching.
“I have these episodes. Attacks. I don’t know what you’d call it. Everything gets bigger and smaller at the same time and I can feel something inside start to throb.”
Lyra hadn’t ever described her attacks out loud before. The words she chose didn’t really seem to describe it properly but as she thought about how to phrase it she realized there was no good explanation for what she felt. It was simply anguish and terror ripping through her body and pulling her into a darkness. But how do you say that to someone without getting sent to the mental ward at St. Mungo’s?
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 17, 2016 13:48:15 GMT -5
Rohan adjusted himself in his chair as Lyra described her panic attacks. His quill wrote several sentences on his notepad.
“What is happening before this?” He tried to keep his curiosity out of his voice, replaced instead with compassion that he truly did feel.
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Post by Lyra Newbury on Dec 17, 2016 13:51:15 GMT -5
“Different things,” she admitted thoughtfully. “Nik pestering me a few times. A fight with my boyfriend. I had one right after waking up once. And sometimes I have them when I’m reading or watching a muggle movie. It’s hard to tell what’s going to set me off but it hurts so bad. Not like a normal kind of hurt. I’m not sure how to explain it.”
Lyra frowned and looked back to her hands.
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Post by Rohan Nadeer on Dec 17, 2016 13:56:46 GMT -5
“That’s alright. These things can be difficult to express.”
Lyra’s head shot up. “Do other people feel like this?” she asked, almost hopefully.
Rohan nodded. “It’s called a panic attack. Something triggers the fear or anxiety and your body’s response is to freeze. The sensation has nowhere to go and you become overwhelmed. It’s very common, Lyra, I can assure you.”
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