The girl in the mirror wasn’t me. Her eyes were sunken, cheeks hollowed out, skin patchy. Daily showers and cleanliness routines did little to bring any life to her appearance. She looked like she was dying. Physically healthy, but slowly dying on the inside each day.
Craig was so hot and cold when it came to physical intimacy. When I first shared with him that I couldn’t get pregnant after an infection I suffered from when I was younger, he was understanding. Now his actions made me sick to my stomach. At first, he used condoms; I preferred safe sex that way, as would most women, I suspected. He’d stopped without asking my opinion. What was the big deal? He’d yell,guilting me into giving in. I hated myself for caving in, for letting myself become so disgusted with what I was allowing to be done to me.
It was my body, so why did it feel like I wasn’t getting a choice in what was being done to it?
Chapternineteen
The Phoenix
September 29th 2023
Yawning deeply, I brought my hand up to cover my gaping mouth, as I curled even farther into Kendi’s bed. Ever since 3 a.m., I had failed to go back to sleep, thoughts of my dinner with Daxton racing through my mind, never allowing me to drift off for too long. The way his eyes didn’t just see me, they seemed to pierce through to my very core.
The way he spoke about breaking out the darker parts of me, which I had always strived to keep hidden, sent chills down my spine. Did he really know what he was asking for? No one had ever wanted to see those parts when they accidentally came to the surface, let alone try to make them come out intentionally. Michelle suspected. She had never invaded my privacy and read my journals. The way she looked at me sometimes, almost as if she could tell something wasn’t completely right, she just couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
Never in my life had I considered the possibility that anyone would see a glimmer of that part of me and want to get to know it better. At home, with my parents, with their demons always ondisplay it made it too taboo, too far from being normal, something to be ashamed of and to keep hidden. The only time I ever felt unhindered by what society deemed as acceptable was when I was writing. That was the only time I ever felt unabashedly free.
I heard the toilet flush from Kendi’s bathroom, followed by the sound of running water from her sink. She had been up early as well, more than willing to have company before breakfast, and I was almost positive that was just so she could gloat about dinner the previous night. Unbeknownst to me, she and Thelma decided to watch us the entire meal and were enraptured by the idea of a budding romance, no matter how forbidden I was sure it would be.
“You ran off awfully quickly last night,” Kendi said as she came out of the bathroom, taking a seat on the edge of her bed.
“I was tired. Regrowing skin and trying to fix my spiraling mind has been draining.” I scratched at my freshly changed bandage for emphasis.
“You lie like a cheap Persian rug. I won't keep going about it this morning though. I’ll be damned if you don’t tell me if something happens. Girl code needs to be taken seriously.” She smiled, and she kept her word about not being pushy. For all her joking she never let it get to the point it became too overwhelming.
“I promise I will stick to girl code. All he wanted to talk about was my creative writing from my journals. Boring and mundane stuff.” It wasn’t a lie, not completely. I just wasn’t sure if I couldbring myself to expose that part of myself to her yet. Daxton had made it evident that he shared some of my ‘desires’, Kendi was a sweet ray of sunshine that I didn’t want to darken by proxy. Not to mention it was hard to drop a bomb like ‘Oh did I mention I think I’m falling for my therapist even though I’ve only known him a short while’ casually into a conversation and not be seen as crazy. I needed to see where it was going to go before I told her. I needed to see that I wasn’t crazy and getting my hopes up for nothing before letting her in on that secret.
“One day you’ll have to let me read something you wrote.” Seeing the look on my face, she added, “It’s only fitting since I’ve let you into my art world. I promise, whenever you decide, I can, I won't judge you.”
Glancing around at all the art decorating her walls, I couldn’t help but think that was fair. I had always hidden away parts of myself. Kendi gave me inspiration to bring at least some parts into the light. She didn’t brag about her art; she displayed it proudly and humbly. Unlike what I did with my own writing by keeping it shrouded.
“Then one day I promise I will.” And I meant to keep it.
She smiled, a smile so bright I couldn’t help but smile back. I felt a pull with her, unlike any friendship I’ve ever had, and I wanted nothing more than to honor it.
“I never had an epic romance before,” she mused as she started pulling her braids into a bun on the top of her head. “Boyfriends,sure, but haven’t you ever wanted a romance that was worth writing about?”
I almost laughed, doubting anything I desired now or what lay in my past would ever be worthy of writing about unless it was retold through the lens of a fantasy. Fiction was one thing; I wasn’t a stranger to the genre of dark romance. Those stories just didn’t exist off paper. If they did, they'd be classified under Stockholm Syndrome, or the hot stalker would be in jail by the third chapter, not hiding out in a mirror maze to surprise the girl he was obsessed over once he caught her.
“After what I went through with Craig, I think I’d settle for good old-fashioned stability. Stable and doesn’t try to kill me is where I’m putting my bar for right now.”
“Girl, you need to raise that bar; you deserve something mind-blowing.”
Of course she had to say ‘blowing’ and of course my mind had to start thinking about someone’s body parts I’d like to blow. I wanted to slap myself for even considering it. He was my therapist, for fuck’s sake—I should not be thinking about my therapist that way. Damnit if I didn’t want to, though. A therapist who wanted to get to know my darker fantasies, the little ray of hope tried to bloom, desperate to not let the negative thinking take over.
“I’ll work on that, I’ll even make a list of everything I won't accept fromhere on out.”
“You know, I think that sounds like a great idea! After group therapy this morning, you should. You’re worth so much more than that piece of shit showed you, and I think that would really help.”
“It’s a date then. After therapy, we can come inside, warm up, and make our lists.”
“My stories are nowhere near as horrific as the attempted murder, but I’ll tell you all about my failed relationships when we get back. We need to get going, though. It's almost time for breakfast.” I glanced at the clock and noticed she was right. Without wanting to risk them heading down without us, we got off the bed and went outside in the hall to stand near our bedroom doors for the headcount before leaving the wing.
Breakfast was pleasant. Thelma didn’t bring up dinner with Daxton the previous night. Only that she wished she could live vicariously through us younger girls. She had shared with us a few days ago that her husband had passed away, almost five years prior, and since then, she hadn’t wanted to be with anyone else. Her love for him made the simple line of ‘till death do us part’ look like the beginning of a love story, not the end, willing to keep living for her children and grandchildren, but counting down the days to being reunited with him.
After eating, we were allowed a few minutes to go back to our rooms and get dressed to go outside again. I would never stop being thankful to my sister and all the items she brought me fromhome, as I pulled on one of my favorite dark orange sweaters and a crocheted cream scarf, soft as butter, that I had found stuffed at the bottom of my bag. Per the clinic’s rules, none of the patients’ shoes could have laces in them, suicide risk and all, so I forwent my trademark insane asylum slipper socks and pulled out a pair of black flats to wear outside. Typically, in the fall, I had a wide variety of knee-high boots to choose from, completing the look with fuzzy socks and a matching sweater; those would have been a nightmare to try and pack.
Today, for group therapy, even though we were going outside, we still had two therapists with us. Cindy informed us, as we met in the lounge, that we would still be having therapy, just not in the confines of a room, since the weather had been so accommodating this week. Another bonus was that Brandon wasn’t allowed to go outside with us this time. They used the excuse that he had a medical appointment. I didn’t care what the excuse was as long as it kept him away from me.
