“Maybe,” I grunted before I kept going, closing the door behind me.
I had an hour to have dinner and then to the meditation class they taught. Dr. Kearns believed it was one of the things here that I could incorporate into my coping strategies, as he put it. Mindful meditation or whatever the fuck it was. So far, it only served to piss me off. Who had time to sit and listen to their own breathing for an hour?
Besides, whenever I tried to do it, all that ended up happening was flashbacks to the memories I was trying my damndest to forget. Of course, Dr. Kearns said that was good, that the memories not being suppressed were a good thing. And that eventually, they would stop coming on as acutely. But I had to be open to them at first.
I sighed and opted to go out for another walk around the trails instead of having dinner. I’d just grab one of the protein shakes they had available afterwards. It was cold as fuck outside due to it being winter and all, but I wasn’t in the mood to sit still and eat and then have to put up with meditation after that. And as a last minute thought, I grabbed the notebook and pen from off the chair in the corner of the room.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Grace
“Journey, how are you?” I answered the phone excited as I pushed my way through my front door. I was just coming home after a swim, after getting off of a twelve hour shift. I was tired but I needed to swim to make me even more tired so that I’d sleep that night. That was the only way I could sleep lately. And yes, it had everything to do with the fact that it’d been almost two full weeks since I heard Jacob’s voice, or any word from him at all.
“I’m okay.”
I frowned because her response sounded weak at best. I shouldered out of my coat and hung it up on the rack next to the door before switching the phone from my right to my left ear.
“What’s wrong?”
Journey sighed on the other end. “I hate being different.”
“Because of your bipolar?” I didn’t want to sugarcoat things with Journey. I chose to be honest and open about her illness and I still got the impression I was one of the only people she could fully be open with. My father and step-mother had come around to acknowledging Journey’s illness but she still came to me when she needed a dose of realness.
“Yes, because I’m sick and I always will be.”
“Journey, where’s this coming from?” I pressed the button to put the phone on speaker and placed it on the bureau in my bedroom, so I could strip out of the sweatpants and T-shirt I put on after my swim.
“Josie got engaged last week.”
I nodded, recognizing the name of one of her close friends from back home.
“Her fiancé, Darwin, is great. He just completed his first year as an associate at one of the top law firms in the city. He’s handsome and comes from a great family.”
“Okay, sounds like you should be happy for Josie.”
“I am. That’s the problem. Who’s going to want me when I’m this screwed up?”
My shoulders sagged at the sadness in her voice. I moved across my bedroom, completely naked, and grabbed my phone. When I turned around, I came face-to-face with my body on display in the full-length mirror. I looked over my body, my eyes finally settling on the right side of my chest where my scarred breast remained. I scanned the scar I’d avoided for so many years. And then I remembered Jacob’s lips caressing my scar so tenderly that it made my insides quake.
He seemed to relish that part of my body more than any other. Repulsion had never been evident in his eyes when he stared at my body. And nor was the trained look of a plastic surgeon either. He didn’t view me through the lens of a doctor, inspecting the body of a patient. He was a man fixating on the body of his lover.
“Journey, I thought the same thing, too,” I said after a long pause.
“Why?” She sounded so confused that it made me giggle as I took a seat on the edge of my bed.
“You know I never got reconstructive surgery after my mastectomy, right?”
“You didn’t?”
I could just envision her face scrunched up on the other end of the phone as she tried to figure out why not. I had never talked to her much about my recovery process.
“I just assumed you did. Most women do, right?”
“Yeah, many do. Probably most, but I chose not to. I was tired of being a patient and wanted to heal as quickly as possible. I wanted to get back to caring for others instead of the opposite way around. Also well … I don’t really know. I just didn’t want the surgery.”
“Okay.”
“Somewhere along the line I started to believe that it made me different from other women. That men wouldn’t value me or wouldn’t fully love me because of it. And because I was never really one for relationships or want to get married and have kids, that was fine with me. Then I met someone who changed those beliefs for me.”
