Blake Pierce - Face of Fear

Zoe nodded mutely.

“Good. Now, listen to my instructions. I want you to give it a try right now, and then you’ll be able to practice it on your own tonight. Start by closing your eyes and counting your breaths. Try to shut everything else out of your mind.”

Zoe closed her eyes obediently and started to breathe deeply. One, she thought to herself. Two.

“All right. As soon as you get up to ten, you just start again from one. Don’t let yourself count any further. You just want to keep counting those breaths, until you start to feel relaxed.”

Zoe tried, attempting to force other thoughts out of her mind. It was hard. Her brain wanted to tell her that there was an itch on her right leg, or that she could faintly smell Dr. Monk’s coffee, or to remind her how strange it was to be sitting in someone’s office with her eyes closed. Then it wanted to tell her that she was doing the exercise wrong and allowing herself to be distracted.

Was she breathing at the right pace, anyway? How quickly was one supposed to breathe? Was she doing it right? What if she had been breathing wrong for this whole time? For her whole life? How would she know?

Despite her doubts, she kept at it in the silence, and eventually started to feel herself relaxing.

“You’re doing great,” Dr. Monk said, her voice quieter and lower now. “Now I want you to picture a sky. You’re sitting, looking up at that sky. Beautiful blue, just one little cloud floating by above, nothing else on the horizon. It stretches out over a calm blue sea. Can you see it?”

Zoe wasn’t the best at imagining things, but she remembered an image she had recently seen, an advertisement for a travel company. A family happily playing in the sand, an impossibly blue paradise behind them. She put herself there, focusing on that. She gave a small nod to let Dr. Monk know she was ready to continue.

“Good. Feel the warmth of the sun on your face and your shoulders. It’s a beautiful day. Just a light breeze, exactly the kind of weather you would ask for. You’re sitting in a small inflatable boat, just off the shore. Feel it rocking gently in the motion of the sea. It’s so peaceful and calm. Isn’t the sun wonderful?”

Zoe would normally have laughed at something like this, but she did as she was told, and she could almost swear that she could feel it. Real sun, beating down on her brow. Not too oppressive: the kind of sun that made you think you were getting a tan, not skin cancer.

Skin cancer. Shouldn’t have thought about skin cancer. Focus, Zoe. Rocking in the current.

“Look over to the side. You’ll see the island behind you. The beach where you just came from, and behind it the rest of this paradise. What do you see?”

Zoe knew exactly what she saw when she looked over there: another image from a travel advertisement. A place she had wanted to go. Except it had been advertised as a honeymoon destination, and she had been single at the time, and it had only made her feel more alone.

“Golden sand,” she said, the sound of her own voice strangely distant and unfamiliar. “Then lush undergrowth. Behind it, tropical trees reach up to the sky, ten feet and more. The sun is coming down at a harsh angle, shadows only half a foot long. I can’t see beyond them. There’s a tree leaning right out at a forty-five-degree angle over the water, with a seven-foot hammock tied beneath it. It’s empty.”

“Try to focus more on the scene than the numbers. Now, listen. Can you hear the waves gently washing onto the sand? Can you hear bird calls?”

Zoe breathed deeply, letting this new layer of sensation wash over her. “Yes,” she said. “Parrots. I think. The waves come at intervals of three seconds. Bird calls every five.”

“Feel the warm sun on your face. You can close your eyes, stop counting. You’re safe there.”

Zoe breathed, still watching the island in her mind. Her eyes kept straying to the hammock. Who was it for? For herself, or would someone join her one day? John? Did she want him there, on this personal island of hers? It was sized for a man. She was only five foot six herself. The hammock hung two feet above the water.

“That’s great, Zoe. Now, I want you to focus on your breathing again. Count down from ten, just like we did before but in reverse. As you do, I want you to slowly come back from your island. Let it fade out, and let yourself wake up, a little at a time. Gently, now. That’s it.”

Zoe opened her eyes, a little embarrassed to find how much mellower she felt—and now aware of how strange it seemed, to have been away on a little island in her head while her therapist watched her sit straight-backed in an armchair.

“You did really well.” Dr. Monk smiled. “How do you feel now?”

Zoe nodded. “Calmer.” Still, she felt doubt. The numbers had been there. They had followed her, even into that space. What if she could never get rid of them?

“That’s a great start. You’ll find it more peaceful the more you do the exercise. And that’s a great thing, because it can be a calm place that you return to whenever you feel stressed out or overwhelmed.” Dr. Monk dashed out a few notes in her book, her pen making quick and spidery lines that Zoe could not guess at.

“What if I need to shut the numbers out fast? Like, in an emergency situation?” Zoe asked. “Or if I can’t tell the other person why I need to calm down?”

Dr. Monk nodded. “Try just counting your breaths as you did to enter the meditation. We’ll need to test this out in a real scenario, but it’s my belief that counting one thing—your breath—may allow you to stop seeing the numbers elsewhere. It’s a distraction tactic—keeping the numbers side of your brain occupied while you focus on something else.”

Zoe nodded, trying to cement that into her head. “Okay.”

“Now, Zoe, about not wanting to explain to people why you need to shut out the numbers—or the fact that you can see them. Why is it that you’re still determined to hide this gift?” Dr. Monk asked, tilting her head in a way that Zoe had come to recognize as meaning a change of tack.

She struggled to answer that one. Well, no, she didn’t: she knew the reason. There was a fear that had gripped her since she was a young girl, reinforced by screams of devil child and enforced praying sessions that kept her on her knees all night, wishing for the numbers to go away. It was just hard to say that out loud.

“I do not want people to know,” she said, picking a piece of imaginary lint from the knee of her trousers.

“But why is that, Zoe?” Dr. Monk pressed. “You have a wonderful ability. Why don’t you want to share it with others?”

Zoe struggled. “I… do not wish them to think of me differently.”

“You’re afraid that your peers will perceive you differently from how they do now?”

“Yes. Maybe…” Zoe hesitated, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe they might try to—to do something with it. To exploit it in some way. I do not wish to be a puppet for someone else to use. Or the victim of tricks and pranks. Or a performance piece for people to test.”

Dr. Monk nodded. “That’s understandable. Are you certain that’s all you are afraid of?”

Zoe knew the answer. She even whispered it in her head. I am afraid that they will all know—that they will see I am not normal. I am not one of them. I am a freak of nature. I am afraid they will hate me for it. But, “Yes, I am sure,” she said, out loud.

Dr. Monk studied her for a moment, and Zoe was sure that the game was up. Dr. Monk was a therapist—of course, she could tell when someone was lying to her. She would press the point, get Zoe to admit the secret fear she had buried deep inside of herself for so very long.