#therapy and art

[ilovedagain]

A short story about Damian Wayne and what colors mean to him.

"Maybe we should speak in a simpler way," the therapist said to the artist. After thirty minutes of stony silence, she was still trying to get the artist to say a word. "Talk to me about colors. What does blue mean to you?"

The artist's first thought was Richard. A man in black and blue who flew through the navy night sky, untethered by gravity. Skin mottled the same black and blue underneath his clothes. He tried to hide from everyone, burying his hurt deep. As if, perhaps, if he couldn't see it, others wouldn't see it too. He would guard his emotions, guard others—the fool—but he wouldn't guard himself.

"Guardian," the artist finally said about blue. He could talk about colors. He re-crossed his arms for the third time, aware of how obvious his discomfort was but unable to help it.

He knew how to face judgment, harden his heart and list his failings to superiors. But the therapist was nonjudgmental, asking him about colors, and he never learned how to guard against someone without ulterior motives.

"What about yellow?"

The artist swallowed. Yellow was the color of the cape he tried to steal from a boy who needed it as much as him. It was a flash of brightness in an unforgiving world where he had to fight dirty and vicious to earn his place. At least, that was the world before everything changed. Before the world softened around the edges and suddenly he was the dark, unforgiving one.

"Regret."

The therapist hummed. A soft, melodic sound beneath the crashing waves in his ears. Maybe she could hear how loud his heartbeat was because she didn't push him to elaborate. "Pink?"

The artist almost smiled. Pink was the tongue of his cat, stuck out in her sleep.

"Cute."

Unlike him, the therapist didn't hold back her smile.

"Black?"

That was an easy one. The color of mystery. The color of the void in his life; the empty space beside his mother. That void captured his younger self's mind, always wondering what the void was like. What it would make of him. The hard part was saying aloud, to the therapist, what it meant to him.

"Father," he said, and immediately regretted his honesty.

She nodded, not making a big deal of it.

"Red?"

The artist exhaled deeply. He thought of many things. The red of his eye-veins when he was stressed. The red blotches of blood blooming like roses on a white bandage wrapped and wrapped around a head wound, vaguely bouquet-like. The red-chested robins he found in his father's gardens and fed seeds as he sketched their innocence.

The red helmet of a man, who was really a boy, desperate and different from his family. Living despite all the odds saying he should be long dead by now.

"Life," the artist said. He let his arms drop, suddenly drained like a nurse had drawn a liter of his blood.

"Green?"

The artist froze. He stared at the therapist, wondering about her angle. Did she know where he came from—his hometown and its lifeblood? Was this the goal of her little game of colors, how she would finally glean his thoughts about his childhood home?

When he was a young boy, in a kingdom of sand and gold, green was everywhere. The green fields in a greenhouse of extinct plants. In the green eyes of his mother and grandfather, the very same eyes as his own. And in the green pools that restored life, a miracle he beheld almost daily.

He would stand before those miracle waters, anxiously waiting for his loved ones to emerge, contemplating mirages and how it must be a lie to restore life after death. And yet, his pets had survived a plague, his mother had survived a stab wound, and his grandfather had survived cancer. He was a child who believed he was lucky.

"We're finished here." He stood and left, fifteen minutes before the end of the session, disregarding the therapist's soft-spoken plea to wait.

Richard greeted him in the waiting room with a smile that vanished when he saw his face. He sprang to his feet, abandoning the magazine unceremoniously on the chair, and matched Damian's brisk pace out of the building.

"What happened?" Richard took a shaky breath when Damian ignored him in favor of speed-walking to the parking lot. Richard placed a hand on his shoulder as they reached the car. He bent his head to meet his eyes, but Damian stubbornly turned his head away. His eyes were so, so blue. "Dami, what happened?"

Damian knew, and he knew Dr. Dinah knew, that refusing to discuss that color spoke volumes, more than anything he had said during the session.

"Home," Damian whispered, feeling like a child crying on his first day of kindergarten. "Please, I just want to go home."

They didn't converse during the car ride home, though Richard stole glances at him, his unspoken words palpable in the silence. Damian fled to his room and spent dinner there. He was too restless to sleep and too exhausted to study. Tugged between the urge to fight and to freeze.

Like how all roads lead to Rome, he ended up painting. He set up an easel taller than himself and began mixing colors until he had every shade of green. He thought about home. His old home, the one in an unforgiving world where death was both constant and impossible, where pain was as abundant as gold, but at least the world made sense. The strong survived, and the strongest conquered. They even conquered death.

The scene he painted was a view inside a tower. Stone walls stretched up into infinite flights of stairs, with assassins lined up in rows on each level. The pool at the bottom cast a thick, green hue over the darkness. But the pool was an afterthought; the focus was on the walls of the tower.

He knew those walls well. They were made of bulging rocks that lay unevenly. When they were bathed in a green haze, Damian couldn't help but think they resembled cancer cells under a microscope. And that was precisely how he painted them: a tower with walls like tumor cells, splotches of assassins in the darkness, and the gaping green pool at the bottom.

Poison. Green is poison.

[efsungeradam]

therapy

[doodlingant]

This old man deserves some therapy imo 😭

[void-dude]

Bill at therapy! I made more! Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Ignore how inconsistent I am….I just doodle and go with whatever

[kitkinnie]

on colors and being different and not being enough for yourself

(please reblog instead of liking)

[aakiwa]

Yes I’m an Azula apologist—she deserved better; she deserved therapy and love and support and patience 🫶

[otlwoozi]

recent alnst sketch pages

[starfruitsomething]

After Neil said that they kept David Tenant in a box on set I couldn't get this image out of my head...

[miggsboson]

It hurt, but I don’t regret it. 

[mstrchu]

girl help my friends keep trying to do things that will definitely make them insane

[proxycrit]

LINKTOBER DAY 23- MIPHAS COURT

Birdsong is not the sound of the sea, but it’s better than nothing at all.

(Yona may be a mystery to Sidon, but her grief is familiar.)

((The Alchemist’s last correspondence with the Lost Heir was an argument about becoming Van Ruta’s champion a hundred and three years ago. She had called Mipha a reckless fool, and angrily dove deep into her research under the seas of Holodrum, waiting for an apology that will never come.))

-Totk au masterlist (it’s usually goofy)

-Patreon (if you want to see my sketchbook)

[taijahfern]

duck therapy

part two of this post is here

[sabictlali]

…no comments

[void-dude]

I serve you: What if therapy worked a little tiny bit on BILL?

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

I said a little

[mumatsi]

The entire animal kingdom is attempting to rehabilitate this man

And I am all for this impossible task

He is trying his best, Bill