Page 38 of Fruit
“How dare you, sir?” I gasp. Sebastián laughs. “Fine, you can join my pack of lions.”
“I’m honoured.”
“And so you should be.”
We dig into the food, the conversation turning to the youth club as it often does.
“I was thinking of doing something related to anxiety. Do a drawing for what anxiety looks like, then for what calm looks like…see what the differences for each person are, or the similarities, even. We can talk about what gets us from one thing to another, share some ideas.”
“That sounds good. Maybe you can make some things that can help them get from anxious to calm.”
“That’d be cool but, like…like what?”
“That putty thing? So they can play around with it when they’re anxious? Or balloons filled with flour. They can be used as stress balls.”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, that sounds totally doable.”
“I’ll get some flour. We’ll have to look up the ingredients for the putty.”
“Okay, I’ll make a list.”
Sebastián nods.
“You really like this job, huh?” I say. Sebastián shrugs slightly.
“Yeah. It’s…rewarding, even though the paperwork gets a bit much sometimes.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
Sebastián looks at me for a moment. “You don’t like your job?” he asks, way too perceptive for my liking.
“No, it’s good. It’s just a bit…meh. But most jobs are a bit meh.”
“Yeah, maybe. I guess it’s trying to find a job that’s more ‘yes’ than ‘meh’. Is there anything you’d rather be doing? If you could do anything?”
“I mean…I don’t know.” I push the food on my plate around. “I do really enjoy volunteering at the youth club. I like…I mean, obviously I like doing art in general, but that’s not a really realistic job. It’d be cool to do art, though, without feeling so…I don’t know. My job right now feels kind of pointless?”
“Well, have you thought of doing a course in something like art therapy?”
“I…I mean, honestly, I haven’t thought about it much. I don’t know what sort of training that’d entail.”
“We can look it up if you want.”
“I mean. Maybe.” I shrug, suddenly feeling uncomfortable, and change the subject.
Thankfully, Sebastián drops it. I’ve half-forgotten about the conversation, but when we move to the living room, as we’ve taken to doing after the meals lately, he wakes up the laptop resting on the coffee table.
“Want to have a quick look at the art therapy stuff?” he asks. I tense up, but he doesn’t push, a neutral expression on his face. There’s almost a lack of expectation, and it makes me calm down slightly.
“Okay.” I shrug.
He googles ‘art therapy course requirements’, and we look at the screen together.
“Well, you need a bachelor’s degree with credits in art and psychology.”
“Yeah, I definitely have credits in art courses. Psychology…yeah, I took quite a lot of the classes in the first two years. They were interesting. So, yeah. Probably.”
“Okay. Well, says here you’d need to do a Master’s.”
