The Only Way

"Please sit down, Mr. Way will be with you in a minute. " the receptionist said, looking bored, barely looking at me.

I bit on my lips, looking at the door, than the lined up plastic chair she was pointing at. All I wanted was to run away and never come back. But run away where? How? My heart was pounding in my chest as i thought about my mom that had drag me here "for my own good" as she had put it but didn't have the time to wait by my side, as usual, she was working on a big case of some sort that she couldn't talk about. I finally decieded it was worth a shot as I sit down the closer I could to the front door in case I'd change my mind. I looked around wondering what kind of people were seeing a therapist. Did they feel as lost as I was ? There was a girl sitting two chairs away from mine, rock music blasting out of her pink headphones. She looked like she didn't give a fuck about the man sitting right next to her, trying to make her lower the sound of her music. It was her dad, maybe, the age difference would have made sense and her attitude kinda confirmed it. She was looking at me, a half smile on her lips. I smiled back nervously and let my head fall backwards as a man entered the room. It was my therapist, I presumed as the receptionist greeted him with a high pitched voice that reflected her interest. I remember laughing at how pathetic and needy she sounded

"Mr. Iero?" Asked the man.

I lifted my head up, suprised at how close the voice was. He was standing in front of me helding out his hand. I shook it as I inspected him throughly. He had jet black hair, shoulder lenght, he was slim, maybe 5'8, taller than me, but that wasn't too hard considering at how short I was for a guy my age. He had a crooked smile, and hazels eyes that I couldn't stop staring at.

"Follow me."

I got up, took my school bag with me trying not to faint as I caught my breath and followed him at the very end of the hallway. I took a good look at his ass as he struggled to open the door. Those black tight pants looked amazing on him and did go well with the white shirt he was wearing. He was casually dressed, so I didn't feel so bad to have put on jeans with holes in them even tho my mom had complained about it the whole damn way over there.

"That damn door always gets stuck.." He said as it finally opened as if he had said the magic words.

The room was well lit because of a huge window and it smelled like a mix of old books and cologne.

"You can sit here" he said pointing a red sofa that was in front of an armchair of the same color.

He sat down at his desk, sorting out some papers as I did as I was told. There was a bunch of framed drawings on the wall, caracters from comic books, I thought, but didn't recognize any of them. His desk looked so messy that I wasn't sure he would find what he was looking fo. It made me think about an argument I had that morning, just like every other mornings, with my mom. She said she had raised a pig cause my room looked like a piggery and that I couldn't go out with my friends as long as I didn't clean it up. I didn't listened to her complaints anymore, I was too tired and exhausted all the time to even care.

" I know it looks messy but I have a great system" he said making up an excuse as if he had heard me thinking.

The "fuck" and something like "I was sure I had put it right there..." I heard pointed out that his system wasn't so great after all. After a few minutes he came out behind a pile of books that threated to collapse with a triumphant smile shouting "Got it !" and sat down in front of me.

I had been less then ten minutes with the guy and I was feeling less tensed. He wasn't threatning like I imagined he would be.

"So my name's Mr. Way but you can call me Gerard if you'd like" "And yours is...Frank, isn't it?" He asked while looking through the file he had in his hand.

I nooded.

"So here's how it's gonna work. We'll start out with the basics, like where you come from, why you're here, what your goals are and then we'll go from there. Is that alright with you?" He put on a pair of glasses, grabbed a pen from his left pocket, ready to take notes.

I nooded again.

"Okay so today I'll do most of the talking, but don't expect it to be the same next session"

"Alright" I said, feeling the urge to say something.

"So who brought you here, cause I assume since you're 17 that you didn't came here on your own."

"My mom"

"Oh and is she still in the waiting room, I don't think I saw..."

" No, she couldn't stay" I answered, interrupting him. "She had a ...thing".

"Alright, so tell me a bit about yourself Frank, why are you here?" He said, looking at me, his glasses on the tip of his nose. He looked like a naughty secretary.

" Cause.." I took a deep breath trying to collect my thoughts. " I'm having frequent panic attacks, like the fact that I'm sitting here right now is a fucking miracle and I feel tired all the time, my grades are bad, my mom's always complaining, my dad doesn't care, they'll probably gonna divorce soon cause they're fighting all the time and I feel like my friends are trying to avoid me cause they're tired that I'm sad and look like I'm dying all the time. I'll graduate next summer and I don't know what I wanna do in life, my stomach hurts, most of the time I can't breathe, I just want to lie in my bed and die in my sleep." I stopped to catch my breath.

" Woah...alright, let's take one problem at a time." He said, running a hand through his hair.

" You said you have panic attacks, when did it start? " he started scribbling in his notepad. I couldn't decipher his messy handwriting.

" I was in class, it was a typical boring day, the teacher was talking about grammar or some shit and I just lost it, I couldn't breathe, I had to get out." "I've been feeling like this ever since."

He nooded, still taking notes. I felt like a laboratory rat. What the fuck was he writing? Probably things like "he's a fucking mess" or "loser alert". He would only be writing the truth after all.

"It sounds like you're under a lot of stress at home..am I right?"

"Yeah, my mom's a bitch and my dad, it's like I don't have one." I coughed. Those words sounded harsher than I intended.

" Let's start with not saying things like that about your mom alright? I'm sure there is a lot of ways to put it, like, she complains a lot or she yells at you, but being a bitch isn't specific enough you know, it could mean anything, plus it's not really fair to your mom". He said casually.

"I'm sorry. But it's like we don't even talk anymore. Half the time she's busy with work and the other half she spends it yelling."

"It's okay. So you said your dad was rarely home?"

"Well, yeah, but I meant that he's dead to me and that I'm dead to him. All he does is telling me how disapointed he his, how he wish I was someone else. We barely talk cause when we do.." I stopped, I didn't want to go down that road. Not so soon.

"When you do..." He said, expecting me to finish my sentense but I didn't.

"What does happen when you two talk to each other, Frank ? He asked, his face all serious.

" I don't want to talk about it. It's complicated and...it's not what you think." I said, defending myself.

" It's okay, you don't have to. Do you have any siblings? " he asked, changing the subject.

"Nah, I'm the one and only failure" I answered. Why would he care if I had siblings? To see if they were as fucked up as I am?

"And what does make you think you are a failure ? "

"Everything, I don't even know why I'm here, I'm a lost cause." I answered, honestly.

" I see, you know Frank, sometimes when people feel miserable, they tend to see only the negative parts, like if they had put black glasses on and all that surrounds them is darkness because those glasses don't let the light shine through." He said, putting his pen down and looking directly into my eyes.

" So you mean that I'm blind too." I answered, trying to be funny. Those hazels eyes were captivating.

"No, I mean you are in pain and it taints every aspect of your life. And I can help you change that if you let me." He answered not picking up on my sarcasm.

"Yeah sure.." I said, laughing to myself.

"I know what you're thinking" No he didn't.

"Who's that old fuck and what does he knows about anything I'm going through?" Wow that was pretty accurate except for the old part. He looked in his twenties, tops.
"How old are you?" I asked, trying to change the subject on something that really interested me.

"I'm 37." He said lowering his glance like it was something to be ashamed of.

" Woah dude, you look 17 years younger. And 37 is not that old, you know. I will be glad if I look half as good as you do when I'm your age"

" Well thanks but, let's change the subject back to you" he said, obviously flattered, putting his glasses on the top of his head.

"I don't think anyone can help me" I said, looking at my feet. I felt helpless, I sincerely didn't think that talking could help me. I preferred my method, keeping it inside, pretending it wasn't there and let it all fester slowly into mental illness.

" I've been throught some serious shit when I was your age, drug addiction, alcoolism, self-harming, name it. I didn't think I would live past 25. And when I did, well I had no plan, I didn't know what to do with my life. And I had that idea, that all the pain I had been through could help others. So I decieded to become a therapist and help people like you, Frank. It keeps me alive and happy to know I can make a difference or at least try to make one. Nobody is helpless, it's just a matter of wanting to be helped and be willing to change." He said, smiling genuinely like if he had just made a speech to run for president.

" I guess I'll try?" I answered, raising my eyebrows.

"Well that's a start." He answered, obviously disappointed that his speech didn't have a greater effect on me, but still smiling.

"You said, I need to have goals, like..what for?"

"Good question, well you see, having a goal helps us to determine what subject to talk about, what aspect of your life to work on. And when we'll reach it, we can set another goal. It's to keep us focused." He answered, happy to answer my question.

"So my first goal..would be to stop being angry all the time. I think it sucks all the energy out of me." I said, trying to sound clever.

"That's a good one. For our next session, I want you to make a list of what makes you angry, it could be anything from I woke up five minutes late to my mom's yelling at me."

How could he know I was always late for school? Maybe I wasn't so special after all. Maybe I was just another moody teenager to him, one of those that secretly got on his nerves because of their neverending complaints. Maybe he would think I really was just an useless fuck like my dad often told me. That thought made me sad. I wanted to be captivating for some reason. Man, that therapist had a weird effect on me.

"And make another list for what makes you happy but don't make up things just to please me alright? I'll know it if you do. "

Yeah, he would probably notice.

"Woah, time goes fast when you're in good company ." He said looking at the clock above the doorframe, then winking at me.

He got up and that announced the end of the session. He gave me a note for my mom with a phone number on it. She would probably need it to call him so he could help her make sense out of that scribbled note.

"So it wasn't so bad after all, wasn't it?" He said, a wide smile across his face. His canines looked like vampire teeth and I remember thinking I would let him bite me anytime he'd want.

"Nah it wasn't." I said blushing because of the thought I just had.

"Alright, pleased to meet you Frank, I look foward to our next session." He said shaking my hand with a firm grip.

"The pleasure's all my mine" I answered, smiling like an idiot as I reached for the door.

Those sessions were going to be more interesting than I thought.

Notes

So this is my first story on here. I hope you like it. Any constructive critism is welcome. <3