Hal and Orin on the phone: JOI's suicide (p. 255)
I accused the grief-therapist of actually inhibiting my attempt to process my grief, by refusing to validate my absence of feelings. […] I told him I’d told him that I didn’t feel anything, which was the truth. I said it seemed like he wanted me to feel toxically guilty for not feeling anything.
Context
The breakthrough session, engineered via Lyle's advice: Hal presents with library-perfect rage, and inside the wholly fraudulent performance sits his one flatly true statement — "I didn't feel anything, which was the truth." The seed of the anhedonic Hal the essay will anatomize: the boy whose genuine inner state is only ever transmitted by accident.