1
PROJECTING
August 12, 2016
“You’re not obsessed. You’re projecting.”
“Projecting?” Tessa looked up from the thick coil of long, brown hair that she’d been braiding and unbraiding for the past half hour. She met eyes uncertainly with her psychotherapist, Dr. Regan, sitting on the other side of the bedroom.
“It’s a common defense mechanism,” Dr. Regan said. Her tone remained emotionless as usual—the human equivalent of a white noise machine—but she shifted uncomfortably as she spoke. She sat perched in a low-slung, pink beanbag chair with her legs crossed at the ankles, striving to maintain a professional demeanor. Normally, she only met with clients in her office, but she made an exception for Tessa.
Tessa’s gaze dropped to the older woman’s panty hose, bunching at the knees, and she couldn’t help but feel a grudging admiration. It took serious mental fortitude to brave the heat of the West Texas summer dressed in nylons. Tessa herself wore nothing but a tank top and cotton sleep shorts that barely skimmed the tops of her slender thighs.
“Projection,” Dr. Regan said. “We use that term when an individual takes her own thoughts and feelings and attributes them to another person—in your case, to a celebrity.”
“But I’ve never met Eric Thorn. I’ve never even been to one of his concerts.”
Dr. Regan picked up Tessa’s thought journal and flipped to the beginning. She made no comment on the drawings scribbled across the cover: a hodgepodge of hearts, woodland creatures, and eyeless human faces. Forget projection, Tessa thought, wrinkling her nose. They should probably discuss the fact that she couldn’t even stand her own doodle-people looking at her.
Dr. Regan indicated one of Tessa’s early entries. “Tell me about this. What piqued your interest enough to write something down about him?”
“About Eric?” Tessa reached for the spiral-bound journal, and her eyes swept over the page. “I was watching TMZ, I guess. They’d caught him walking around New York City with some actress from Pretty Little Liars. So naturally they assumed he was dating her.”
“But that’s not what you wrote down.”
“Of course not. Have you seen TMZ? It’s like fan fiction but less believable.”
One of Dr. Regan’s brows quirked upward, the closest she ever came to a real facial expression. She pushed her horn-rimmed glasses up her nose. “Tell me what you wrote instead.”
Tessa pulled her knees against her chest. She felt a vague unease as she remembered how the grainy paparazzi footage had held her transfixed. Eric and that girl… He hadn’t looked like he was on a date. Not even close. The video showed him walking briskly, with a furtive glance over his shoulder as he picked up the pace. Then the camera zoomed in close. Those piercing blue eyes of his had looked straight out of the screen. And the look on his face…
“He didn’t look like some happy guy with a new girlfriend,” Tessa told her therapist. “Not to me.”
“What did he look like to you?”
Tessa closed her eyes. “Like he was scared out of his mind.”
“Good, Tessa.” Dr. Regan rewarded her with a nod. “And what do you think that might say about your own state of mind?”
“You mean I just imagined it? I’m actually the one who’s scared out of my mind?”
Dr. Regan leaned forward intently. She tucked a strand of graying hair behind her ear.
“I suppose that’s possible,” Tessa said slowly. “That’s one of my worst fears, I guess. Walking around some crowded city sidewalk, not knowing if I’m being followed…”
Dr. Regan took the thought journal and flipped it closed. “Excellent. Keep going.”
“It wasn’t just that one time though,” Tessa said, thinking aloud. “Every time he looks straight into the camera, you can see this glimmer of fear.”
“Fear of what?”
“Like he feels haunted by something. Haunted or—” Tessa broke off, searching for the right word. Her eyes slid over the journal cover and landed on one of the baby deer she’d drawn, running for its life. “Hunted, maybe? I don’t know.”
“That’s very interesting, Tessa.”
“Really? It’s interesting?” Tessa couldn’t help but laugh. Interesting. That must be one of those obscure psych terms for when the patient has a total one-track mind.
Every time she sat down to do her mindfulness exercises, she just ended up writing stories about Eric Thorn. Tessa had already filled two whole journals with all the elaborate plots she’d imagined. “It can’t be healthy, right?”
Dr. Regan pulled out a yellow legal pad and recorded a quick note. “You may feel safer exploring your own anxieties by assigning them to someone else. That can be quite useful, actually, as long as you recognize what you’re doing. Try to think how your theories about this celebrity might connect to what happened in June.”
Tessa responded with a choked noise, hugging her knees even tighter. She’d spent the month of June in New Orleans, part of an eight-week creative writing program for teens—or it was supposed to last eight weeks at any rate. Tessa had left the program halfway through and fled back home to the safety of her childhood bedroom. Now the whole summer had nearly come and gone, and she still couldn’t bring herself to talk about why she’d left. “No… You said I didn’t have to…not until I was ready—”
“OK, Tessa.” Dr. Regan raised a calming hand. “Remember your breathing. That’s it.”
Tessa swallowed. The rising anxiety threatened to engulf her, but she focused her mind on her one most trusted distraction. Eric. Eric Thorn. Tessa chanted his name inside her head as she sucked air deep into her lungs. She was supposed to hold her breath for a five count, but she had her own little spin on this particular relaxation technique. Eric one… Eric two… Eric three… Tessa watched her chest slowly rise and fall until the tension in her shoulders ebbed.
“Good, Tessa,” Dr. Regan said. “We can keep the conversation framed on Eric Thorn if that’s where you feel most comfortable.”
“I just don’t understand why I chose him. Why Eric Thorn of all people?”
“You tell me. Why do you think you’ve fixated on him?”
Tessa felt her face heat up. She’d considered herself a fan since his debut album a few years ago, but her fascination lately had reached a whole new level. It went way beyond the stories in her thought journal. Every time she came across a new picture of him, she felt this overwhelming compulsion to save it to her cell phone camera roll. She had more images of Eric Thorn squirreled away than anyone she’d ever known in real life. Here in her bedroom, Tessa had taken down all the other photographs that used to decorate the pale-yellow walls, but she’d left her Eric Thorn concert poster in its place of honor above her bed.
“I don’t know,” Tessa said. “Maybe because he’s hot?” She glanced over her shoulder at the poster, and her eyes lingered on the familiar scene: Eric performing onstage, with an electric guitar slung across the sculpted muscles of his chest. He had his head thrown back, eyes closed, lost in the music…
Dr. Regan peered over the rim of her glasses at Eric’s sweaty torso. “I’m guessing there’s a little more to it than that,” she said. “But let’s leave it as something for you to think about for our next session. Now, what about your desensitization exercises? How did it go this week?”
Tessa bit at her thumbnail, already chewed down to the nub. Her therapist filled the silence as she hesitated.
“Last week, you were able to sit downstairs in the living room with your mom and your boyfriend, Scott, for half an hour.”
“Yeah,” Tessa muttered.
“And your goal for this week was to try touching the front doorknob of the house.”
“That didn’t exactly happen.” Tessa bit down on her cuticle, tearing it with her teeth. She knew that she’d messed up. It had taken her more than a month of therapy just to summon the courage to set foot outside her bedroom door, but the past few days had felt like a huge step backward. “I’ve just been really overwhelmed this week,” she said. “There’s this…thing…happening. It’s stupid.”
Dr. Regan frowned. “What thing?”
“Nothing. It’s just something that happened on Twitter.”
The therapist stopped scribbling notes and looked up. “You’re on Twitter?”
“I’m really sorry,” Tessa said. She hadn’t mentioned her Twitter account before. It hadn’t seemed relevant. She rarely ever tweeted nowadays. But this past week, Twitter had somehow managed to occupy most of her waking thoughts. “I know what you’re going to say. I should probably deactivate so I can focus on my exercises better.”
“No, Tessa. That would only isolate you further.” Dr. Regan jotted furiously as she spoke. “Any kind of social interaction can potentially hold therapeutic value.”
“Really?” Tessa glanced skeptically at her phone, resting on the bedside table in a red leather cell phone case. She’d left it there, facedown, so she wouldn’t be distracted by any new Twitter notifications during the hour-long session.
Dr. Regan nodded. “Our goal is for you to interact with other people in the outside world of course, but social media can serve as a positive first step.”
“OK. Well, that’s pretty much all I did all week, so…”
“Do you have followers? People with whom you interact?”
Tessa laughed. What a question. If anyone had asked her a few days ago, the answer would have been different: a couple hundred followers, who mostly ignored her existence. But when Tessa last checked her account today, the follower count stood at 30K. Tessa still felt a little dizzy, thinking of it. Thirty thousand followers. Thirty thousand sets of eyes watching her every tweet. Her emotions kept swinging back and forth like a pendulum, from terror at the thought of them all to an irrational desire for more. Her fingers itched to check her phone again. How many more had she gained in the time since she and Dr. Regan started talking?
“It’s kind of intense,” she said, as she picked up the phone and glanced down.
Tessa H @TessaHeartsEric
FOLLOWERS:
30.1K
She showed the screen to her therapist.
“Very interesting.” Dr. Regan pressed her pen against her lips, considering. She wrote something else on her pad.
“My account kind of blew up this week.”
“What happened?”
Tessa ducked her head. She avoided Dr. Regan’s gaze, fiddling with the frayed hem of her bedspread. “It started with a story I’ve been writing. About Eric. I posted one online last weekend.” Tessa watched a row of stitching come undone as she pulled at a loose thread. “I called it ‘Obsessed.’ It was supposed to be a little joke at my own expense, you know?”
“And what happened?”
“I started this hashtag, #EricThornObsessed. Do you know what a hashtag is?”
“I’m familiar with the concept.” Dr. Regan’s tone remained perfectly deadpan but her eyes lit with amusement, and Tessa bit her lip. She generally assumed that anyone Dr. Regan’s age didn’t even know how to download an app, but she must have misjudged her therapist. Tessa’s mouth curved into a shy smile as she continued.
“I was trying to get other fans to read it. So I made all these tweets with sexy pictures of him and the link to my story. And it just…blew up somehow. It happened so fast. First one of the bigger Eric Thorn fan accounts retweeted me. And then @Relatable retweeted. And then @Flirtationship retweeted. And then… I forget after that. I think it was @GirlPosts? Or maybe @SoDamnTrue? One of those big accounts that everyone follows. And then it was everywhere after that. I think it hit number one on Wednesday? Maybe Thursday? Look.” Tessa swiped across the screen of her phone and held it out to Dr. Regan again. “See? These are all the hashtags trending worldwide.”
And there, still hovering third on the list, were the words Tessa had first typed into her phone six days ago, now amplified by more voices than she even dared to fathom:
#EricThornObsessed
21.8 million tweets