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[atypical_echo]

What it says on the Tin

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[atypical_echo]

Alright then. We'll try it.

[heydrb]

Wait... are you sure?
That wasn't me trying to press for an answer, Mark.
You can think about it longer than 5mins.

[atypical_echo]

I'm trying to be sure. Please stop pressing me for wanting or not wanting. Please.

[heydrb]

Sorry.

[atypical_echo]

Get some sleep, Damien. Don't let me keep you up.

[heydrb]

[Fuck.]

Talk to you later, Mark.

[atypical_echo]

You know I look forward to it.

[heydrb]

[No, no, no. Don't do this to him, Mark. It aches.]

Really?

[atypical_echo]

[Yeah, go put some ice on it, cowboy.]

You're about the only one that talks to me regularly beyond Joanie and Caleb and Adam.

[heydrb]

What happened to the rest of them?
Wait.
Sorry.
Not my business.
That's shitty, though. Sorry I'm one of your only options for regular communication.



I don't think that sounds the way I meant it?
Just... nevermind.

[atypical_echo]

Chloe, Caleb and Adam are all off at school. Frank went to his family. Rose has her own life.

Don't be so shocked. Not everyone wants to linger around Repressed Trauma Boy

[heydrb]

Yeah, well, I do. And I guess that's the rub.
They can, but they don't.
I want to, but I can't.

[atypical_echo]

We'd be like a dry grassland and a spark. Consumed in spite of ourselves.

[heydrb]

From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

[atypical_echo]

Yeah given I feel close to having perished twice, I say fuck the fire and stuff the ice.

[heydrb]

Who hasn’t almost died these days though.

[atypical_echo]

Dude, really?

[heydrb]

What?
You don’t hold a monopoly on near-death experiences. Not even on recent ones.
I’m still technically broken.

[atypical_echo]

Just didn't think you had more than the beating.

[heydrb]

There’s a lot you don’t know, Mark.
Your sister ever tell you about the night we met?

[atypical_echo]

Counter to your own flaunting of doctor-patient confidentiality, Joanie tries to respect people's privacy when she can.

[heydrb]

Oh come on, Mark.
Nothing about that whole group was patient-doctor confidential.
We were ALL in each other’s business.
Some of us more successfully than others but still.

[…]

Before I realized she might really know someone like me?
Some of it was an act…same spiel I’d given so many other therapists before her.
But I think… I think a lot about that night. I was not…in a good place when I found her.

[atypical_echo]

Are you ever? When you aren't with the horses, cowboy?

cw: talk of previous suicidal ideation

[heydrb]

Maybe not.
But it was worse, then.

I know people would rather if I wasn’t a real person, just keep me the cartoon villain in your heads, because it’s easier to hate someone who you think of as pure evil.
But I’m not… I’m not the devil’s incarnate. I’m a guy that’s had a really fucked up life.

And sometimes I really think your sister saved my life that night.
Sometimes I wonder if she regrets that.

[…
…
……]

Did you seriously just called me cowboy?

Re: cw: talk of previous suicidal ideation

[atypical_echo]

Without you I would still be a prisoner.

And yes I did.