[Read] Saraid Taylor - Hassle

The thirteenth psychologist seemed kind. The twelfth had been boring and the eleventh had been a little cruel. The thirteenth was somewhere between the ages of both, but older than all the others. She wanted Blue to do worksheets and breathing exercises. Blue wanted the psychologist to never touch her. ‘I will probably not respond well,’ she explained, ‘if you give me too much sympathy.’ The psychologist said noted. ‘No sympathy here.’ In the first session, when they were in her office, Blue told her about the birds, and the way the birds could prevent the eating. The psychologist suggested alarms. She also suggested mantras. Blue said she would not be looking in the mirror and reciting I am worthy three times every day, fucking hell, woman, but she did it anyway and it kind of helped.

She had been gone for months and now she was back. The psychologist wanted to know how she felt. Blue felt fine. The town was the same: pinched together by ocean and bush, joined to the city by a long quiet road, steady in all its daily rhythms as a heartbeat. The town was still small. It was a very large town, almost a city, and it was so small. This fact calmed her, the same way Blue found towns and cities in other countries reassuring. The world, in comparison, was big and had its own beliefs. It held everything—the vast countries holding the sweeping municipalities holding the many, many people—like tiny seeds. They were all as unimportant and crucial as each other. Returning, Blue found her friends had grown and were the same. They were back from travel too, or had been working, or studying, and growing their own vegetables, and selling them at the market, or trading them amongst themselves. It was Jasmine who had changed the most, but whom Blue still knew the best. She let Blue park the van on her parents’ property, near the orange tree, and use the kitchen, and the toilet, and borrow clothes. When they kissed, Jasmine held almost every version of Blue. When Blue told the recruiter no, Jasmine said, ‘You’re allowed to have your own plan.’

The plan seemed sensible. Blue had never been confident but she had always known who she was. She did not change for others. She could not even change, including on the days she really tried, for herself. It was why the plan was necessary. Her heart needed to practice being alive like other people. With the psychologist, she mapped out a routine. Blue would try to sleep when the sun went down. She would try to remain asleep until the sun came back up. She would eat at least three times a day. If she wanted to take photographs of birds, she would set an alarm. She would increase her shifts at the cafe. She would try to play football.  

It felt strange to tie her feet into boots again. It felt strange to run within lines and whistles. Blue, back cradling the ball, thought how strange that, more than anything, it also all felt completely normal. She had missed it. It had been too dangerous to tell anybody, but she had missed having the football in her hands, sliding it onto the flat part of her boot, clicking it directly onto somebody’s chest. She had forgotten the desire, considered it dead, but it roused again inside her, slick and stirring and hungry. When she stayed after training to watch the seniors’ practice game—their deft touch, the new speed—it pricked her, and when she caught up with an old teammate it sunk teeth into her blood.

‘It’s fun,’ Ava agreed, as they walked down to the river after one of Blue’s shifts. The sun had turned the leaves brittle and they broke under their bare feet. ‘It’s better and it’s fun. There’s so much more support. You should give it a crack again.’
Blue pulled a frisbee from her bag and flung it at her. ‘I’ve just turned down the crack.’

Ava’s body had hardened in the years since they were teenagers. When she leaned forward to catch the plastic toy, the muscle in her arms rippled like water in the sunlight. ‘Nah, the moment you want it, you’re getting another opportunity.’ She said oops, sorry, as she passed the frisbee back crookedly then watched Blue leap up and sideways, snagging it between two outstretched fingers, before rebalancing on the slanting lip of the bank. Ava snorted. ‘You’re too good not to be playing.’

-

Over the next few months, Blue set alarms: for eating, for chores, for reading, for admiring birds. She carried a speaker down to the beach on the mornings she surfed so she could hear the timer sound from the sea when it was time to drink water and eat breakfast, and then lunch, and sometimes dinner. She spoke to the thirteenth psychologist every fortnight. She recited the mantras. She filled out the worksheets. She completed a shift at the cafe every second day. On free afternoons, she sat in friends’ bedrooms and they strummed guitars and tinkered on the drum set and sang old songs together. At night, they rolled dough and made pastas or pizzas then sat outside with blankets to eat, limbs woven like thread under and across each other, as the sun fell. Blue’s body adjusted slowly to sport again. Her mind calibrated. Twice a week, she trained with the reserves team. She let herself remember the game’s shape. She tried to remember her own as a footballer, wincing when the other players raved about her skill or her speed or her instinct. Blue was not close to where she had been, and it was embarrassing, but at least there was more joy. Then, in the first round of the season, she hurt her hand. She felt it crack and strained to not cry out. The club sent her for a scan. On the day the results came back to say her hand was broken, the recruiter called again.