Answers are...

Bailey had never really talking in general, much less about her problems. She generally usually avoided the subject by asking sporadic questions that invoked thought on the part of her fellow converser, allowing her to be closed from being asked analyzing questions and/or talking about her problems.

But alas, here she was, sitting on a shrink's uncomfortable leather sofa, being asked revealing, if though-provoking questions.

How she hated her parents.

Her teachers had said she was dark and troubled. What they really had meant to say was that she was clever, charming and sarcastic. Somehow, though, it had come out as vain, shallow and malicious.

How she hated parent-techer conferences.

She could feel Dr. Goldenstein's eyes on her, even as her head was tilted down, avoiding his gaze.

"I'm sorry," she thought aloud. "I really am, but I don't have anything meaningful or significant to say that will help you figure out what's really wrong with me."

She looked up expectantly, waiting to see if she'd get the reaction she was hoping for.

"You're trying to get me to say that there's nothing wrong with you and that everything's going to be fine, aren't you?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Is that a rhetorical question or are you asking me?" she asked, trying to look genuinely surprised and less suspicious than she felt.

"This doesn't have to be as bad as you're making it.,” he said, looking her in the eye. “We both know that you have to be here and don’t want to, we can try to make it better than this.”

“I just don’t know what you want me to say,” she said honestly.

“I don’t want to hear what you think I want to you to say. I want to hear your own voice, your own thoughts, your own fears,” he replied.

“I don’t remember anymore,” she said softly, before she could help herself.

“I’m sorry?” he asked curiously, thinking that this could be the first honest statement she had made in the past forty five minutes.

“When you lie for so long and so much, you lose a bit of yourself each time. With ease falsity, each fabrication, you start to forget a bit of yourself and start to believe the things that you say instead of what’s true. And I can’t remember anything about myself anymore,” she answered nonchalantly, as if she were discussing the weather.

He remained silent, unsure of whether it out of shock or not knowing what to say. His eyes dropped to the floor, and he wouldn’t meet her crazed gaze.

“You must not be that good at what you do, the revelation I just made usually merits some sort of answer and/or drug prescription,” she went on, not wanting the room to fill with silence. When he didn’t make a move to say anything, she just rambled on.

“Aren’t you supposed to hold some divine truth that will make me better? Aren’t you supposed to have the answers?”

He finally looked up, and she could finally see the pain in his eyes. “Answers are what we have for other people's problems,” he said quietly.

And it was at that moment that she realized that maybe he was hurting as much as she was.