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“Yes, truth. Forget about the lies. Ask yourself, what is true?”

“And how do I know what is true?”

“The truth, my friend, is that which never changes.”

“What do you mean? Everything changes. Doesn’t everyone have his or her version of the truth? People have different perspectives of the same events.”

“That is not the truth, then. It’s the lies people tell themselves. Truth by nature cannot be two things, especially two opposing things at the same time. Truth, in its essence, is universal.”

My mind is racing with conflicting thoughts. I understand what he’s saying on a very primal level, but this is making my brain hurt. And how the heck did we get to this?

“I don’t know where you’re going with this. How any of these ideas of lies and truth can help me.” I can’t hide the annoyance in my voice. “I’m gonna need an example.”

“Hmm …” He hums, and I can almost see him leaning back in a leather chair and swiveling back and forth. Now that the Freud-Santa picture has been dismissed, his face is a blur in my imagination.

“Okay. Something simple. When we see a ripe strawberry, we can agree that its color is red, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So for us saying that a strawberry is red is true. But the strawberry is not always red, is it? It starts green, and then turns red, and eventually, if no one eats it, it will turn brown and black. All those colors are also true at any given moment in time.”

My mind is whirling, trying to keep up with him. “Which, then, by what you said before, it’s not true at all because the color is always changing.”

“Correct. The colors change. The outside changes, and the flavor changes too, but it is still a strawberry, despite all the changes. The changes are not the truth, the strawberry is. Now apply this to yourself, and that which remains the same is the truth.”

What? What the fuck does he mean by that? I’m no fucking strawberry. I rein in the irritation and press the heel of my hand into my forehead. Massage it for a second.

“But people are not strawberries. Something as simple as red or green can’t define us. And do people really change? Or do they make you think they can change?”

“Yes and no, it depends on the person, and how committed they are to change.”

I cut him off. “That’s a non-answer.”

And he continues as if I hadn’t interrupted him. “We grow, we mature, we evolve and sometimes we change. But our true nature, our true essence, it stays true throughout those changes. So what’s actually changing is not the essence of the person, but their perception and behavior. Much like the strawberry. It is still a strawberry, the colors may change—that’s our perception of it—but that doesn’t change the fact that, independent of its many color changes, it is still a strawberry.”

“I need a minute to mull this over.” I close my eyes and let what he said sink in. It’s all too much. I remember a PSY class in which we had to take two different stances and defend our findings. People can change versus people can’t change. I was in the “can’t” group. Have I been living my life under the assumption that I have no choice all this time?

“I don’t know that I agree with this idea. My mind is twirling.”

“And you don’t have to agree. But I want you to think about it. How does this relate to you and the choices you made up to this point?”

“Me? How does this apply to me?”

“Because the things that happened to you are not you. You are not a result of whatever brought you here. You’re a reaction to it.”

“What?” His words shake me. I’m tittering on a precipice.

“Last time we talked, you said you date guys you feel are safe to be with, and you can have a certain amount of control over, correct?”

I said I hook up with them, have meaningless sex with them, but I’m grateful for the more generous description he gives me.

“Yes.”

“And you said you do this to get a piece of yourself back.”

I nod. Hearing my own words repeated back to me have a weight of their own, and they feel heavier somehow.

“Are you still with me?” His voice is even gentler now.