I wish I had heard her screams (fiction)
"She wasn't alive when writing it. She wasn't alive when I read it. She was long gone. Maybe it was me. I let her die." Anish says holding the letter in his hand, his face soaking wet with the tears that were freshly dripping off his dark brown eyes. The last line on the letter says-
'Maybe it was me. I was too hard to love.
"Do you believe you let her down?" Asks the therapist Aaisha. She is as usual, well dressed in suit pants and her raven black hair tied into a bun that won't come loose with a thousand clips attached to it. Her professional gaze pulls Anish to the ground and back to the room. He speaks again.
"I can't deny it. All those times I thought it was the anger but she was burning herself, little by little every day and I never saw." Aaisha tries to hold his gaze but Anish looks back at the floor, past the letter in his hand.
"Sometimes you can't-"
"Please don't pull that bullshit with me. This was a bad idea." Anish pushes his glasses up his nose and leaves. Aaisha stares ahead at the empty chair in her newly earned office. It's a beautiful office. Much better than her own room of two room flat. It's been a year since the masters of psychotherapy degree landed in her hand and three months since the end of her internship.
During that time she had seen many help seekers, different sorts of patients. Parents who needed help dealing with their children, children who needed help dealing with their parents, teachers with student issues and students with other student issues. Then there were people who needed help dealing with the entire world and she had somehow related to all of them. Now her first client had just walked out on her and she related to him too.
"Life of a therapist isn't as easy as they pretend when sitting opposite to the client." She says as her bag hits the kitchen counter and Syahi looks up from the purple cake she's decorating.
"It was your first day with a client. I made a cake."
"Nice. Thanks."
"Was the first client too much?"
"Too little actually. He didn't stay longer than ten minutes and in those ten minutes, he stared at th—" Aaisha stops mid-sentence and shakes her head. Her hand flies to her forehead and rubs it violently.
"Can't tell you. Doctor-patient confidentiality."
"You know I am a therapist too. And a more experienced one, you can talk to me about your issues whether it's related to your patients or not."
"You made it up."
"No harm, is there?" Syahi crosses the space between them and stand in front of Aaisha, staring intensely. After a few seconds of staring contest, she gave in.
"There's nothing really. I might contact him again though."
"You will find a new client."
"But he could really use help. He is grieving and confused. His daughter committed suicide a couple of months ago, without any reason to explore. I think he wants to find those reasons he couldn't when she was alive."
"Do your thing but don't let your clients take too much space in your brain."
"Suggestion noted." Aaisha beam and poke a finger into the cake and lick whatever stick with one smooth slip of a tongue. "This is good."
"When have I made a bad cake?"
"Never literally. No compliment can do your cooking skills justice."
Later that night Aaisha stays up till midnight, conflicting over the thought of whether to reach back out to her first client or not. She decides over later and the next day, somehow, finds herself on the doorsteps of Anish's house.
She stands and fumbles with her car keys for a long time before pressing the button beside the door and assumes it rang one of those boring tones like a single ring rather than the one Syahi uses of prolonged chirp of a squirrel. After an eternity of a minute, the door opens and Anish appears wearing a mild scruff and white overcoat on a formal suit.
"Were you going somewhere? Did I catch you at the wrong time?"
"No, not really. I was coming to you in fact. I had to apologize for my behaviour the other day. There is no excuse."
"I can't blame you. Can I come in?" He shifts to the side and let Aaisha enter the almost luxurious hall.
"I am sorry for the mess. Cleaning staff have been on break for the past few weeks and I couldn't do it all by myself."
"I get it. You don't have to explain yourself to me, I am your therapist remember?"
"You still want to?"
"If you are up for it, I would like to help you."
"Please sit down. The couch is a bit dusty though." Anish takes off his coat and places it on the single seater couch. Aaisha sits on it. He himself sits on the dusty couch with multiple pen holes at the back.
"You have been having issues with anger recently?"
"Yes. I had an episode recently, after which I gave indefinite holidays to my house help staff." Anish looks down to his lap
"You are trying to deal with a great loss and I am never going to judge you. You are trying to come to terms with your daughter's death."
"It feels so weird to hear it out loud. It feels like a dream that just won't end."
"It's not a dream and I am terribly sorry for what happened but you need to get out of grief. I know you feel responsible and I can't entirely deny it. Could you have done something? Maybe. But it's not something we can dwell on. Your daughter is gone but you are here and my responsibility is to help you."
"I was too occupied with myself, I couldn't hear her even when she was screaming. I was a terrible father to her, wasn't I?"
"Anish, I don't know what your relationship with your daughter was like but if you are not ready to talk about yourself, let me read the letter. Maybe I could help you understand her more." This time Anish looked at her, his eyes searched for the answers that she had no answers to yet. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper and hands it to her.
Aaisha unfolded the crunched up letter, ignoring the sound of it amidst the dead silence of the hall. She looked at Anish one last time. He had his eyes hidden behind his palm and was visibly stiff. "Can you read it aloud please?" He requests, voice strained with unshed tears.
"I don't think I should."
"Please I need it. I need you to."
"Okay. Here goes,
Dead dad
I am exhausted. Please don't think it to be your fault, I know you tried. You did more than you could and I loved every past of it. But, I can't do this anymore.
Remember me from the time we went to get my first basketball or the time you bought me my first set of sketch pens and I drew that stupid sketch of us both standing under a huge red cloud. I want you to remember me as your daughter, not as the stubborn, arguing girl with constant mood swings. I wish I could change that and myself entirely, for you and I tried. Several times. I laughed and hoped to never stop. I wanted to carve the smile on my face just like you wanted but I couldn't. I loved you, I want you to know that but it wasn't enough to stay. Please don't be angry at me. I am scared if I would succeed today but I am more scared of more days like these. If I could live I would have lived but I don't feel alive. Some days I feel like I don't deserve you and some days feel like you don't deserve me. I want you to not hate me when I am no longer there. I want you to understand I tried and it's nobody's fault that I don't feel belonged. Maybe it was me. I was too hard to love.
Arya"
Aaisha looks over to Anish who had tears streaming down his face. She blink and a drop of tear makes its way down on her own cheek. She wipes it quickly with the long shirt sleeve.
"I don't hate you. I can never hate you, my little girl. How do I fix it? Please tell me how to fix it." He cries in his hands.
"You can't fix it for yourself but you can fix it for someone else, Anish. I am sorry but she needed help and you couldn't see it. She struggled alone for long, so be her companion now. I can't tell you how to grieve for her but I can help you let her know you understand the message on this note."
Two years later—
"Sometimes we don't see the hurt beneath the smile even when the hurt is more prominent than the smile itself. As parents, it's our job to see it, not just see but fix it. Our children's smiles must not be for our sake. I learned it the hard way that's why I have been standing here for the past twenty minutes, boring you with my speech on how to deal with difficult kids. It's not kids that are difficult, it's the life we brought them into. Your angry kids are hurting, your quiet kids are hurting and you hyperactive kids are hurting. They could be concerned about their private life or school, college life or the world even. It's all fair. What's not fair is the lonely battle they fight because their parents are too busy preparing them to show as a trophy of their own successful parenting. When you do that to your kids, you know you failed. I know because I did." Anish steps off the podium and spots Aaisha in the crowd of more than a hundred parents. She smiles, her hand holding the fingers of another woman he immediately recognizes as Syahi.
"That was really well said." Syahi says as soon as they find themselves away from the crowd.
"I want her to know I understand."
"She knows Anish. She really does." Says Aaisha.
