And yet, every time I saw that woman, it felt so different from my usual flashbacks and nightmares. There was no high-pitched ringing, no screaming. Nothing. She felt like a real person in a real room. And she spoke to me like any other human would.
But what did it matter? She wasn’t real. Maybe it was time I stopped lying to myself about how bad my mental health really was.
I grabbed my MacBook from the nightstand and opened the tele-mental health website I’d signed up for. The landing page was simple. Instant telehealth visits with psychiatrists were available.
Before I could second-guess myself, I clicked on the “TALK TO A PSYCHIATRIST NOW” option. Two hundred bucks. Well, $199.
But what was $199 if it meant I could look Daniel in the eyes tonight, surrounded by all this mess, and tell him I’d already spoken to a psychiatrist? That I was going to start antipsychotics and just had to pick up the meds tomorrow? What was $199 if I could sit across from my therapist later today and tell her that I’d already done the thing she was going to recommend anyway? That I’d taken initiative. That I was trying.
I paid with my credit card, and a video chat window opened.Estimated wait time: 8 minutes.
My gaze drifted back out the window.
Outside, the sky was still cloudless. Light blue and wide.
Chapter 18
“Emily?”
The sound of my name pulled me out of a fog. I blinked and focused on the screen.
Anna, my new therapist, was waiting for an answer on the telehealth video session.
She looked nothing like the profile headshot that had reminded me of Cynthia when I’d browsed therapists. The cropped white hair had been dyed a bold, firetruck red, and a string of chunky wooden beads circled her neck and wrists like something she’d found at a craft fair booth. Her glasses were oversized and rimmed in rainbow swirls. She looked like the kind of woman who’d hug strangers and find beauty in pain.
And she somehow made me feel like I mattered, despite my hammering her with my broken life. I dumped my whole story on her in under ten minutes. Didn’t sugarcoat a damn thing.
The childhood trauma I didn’t remember until recently. Cynthia getting shot. The nightmares, the sleepwalking, the wide-awake dreams. Daniel. A speed-run of our relationship. The dream about the nail and the scar. The woman in the basement.
“So the psychiatrist is starting you on Risperidone for the auditory and visual hallucinations?”
I nodded.
“How do you feel about that?” Anna asked. “You mentioned earlier that you’ve been resisting antipsychotics for a long time. Can you tell me why?”
Her voice was soft, yet steady. She could have coaxed secrets out of a stone.
“It always felt like if I wasn’t on antipsychotics, maybe I wasn’t actually broken. Crazy. Like I could get back to normal someday.” I looked down, then back up. “But I can’t pretend anymore. I’m hearing things. Seeing things. I’m actually talking to a goddamn woman in a basement that doesn’t exist.”
“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with Psychotic Features does not make you crazy,” she said, firm but kind. “Hallucinations—auditory or visual—can happen during flashbacks, under intense stress, or during dissociative episodes. It’s us trying to survive something we don’t know how to survive.”
Her words sat warm in my chest, heavier than anything I took for sleep.
“What happened to your old therapist could absolutely have triggered a flare-up. And your dreams and flashbacks, like the one where your father hurts you, those are trauma responses, not madness. If anything, they’re proof that your brain is doing its best to process hell. That it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.”
She paused, her lips curling into a smile. “Crazy is someone leaving a one-star review on vanilla ice cream because it didn’t taste like chocolate.”
A laugh bubbled out of me. It was tight in my throat, but real.
“You,” she continued, her voice threading its way into some part of me that I didn’t even know was sore, “are a normal human being who has been through a lot. And it’s normal to feel pain. Fear. Shame. Doubt. That isn’t weakness. That’s what being alive means. What being normal means. I actually don’t like using that word here. What does ‘normal’ even mean?” She leaned in slightly. “If none of this touched you, if you felt nothing at all, then I’d be really worried.”
“I guess that means I’m not a serial killer,” I said, managing a half smile.
Anna snorted and pushed her bright glasses up her nose. Her eyes flicked to the corner of her screen. “Oh, shoot. We’re out of time.” She looked back up at me. “If it’s all right, I’d like to see you two or three times a week for a bit. Until you feel more grounded. How does that sound?”
“That sounds good. Really good.”
“And remember what we talked about—the five-four-three-two-one grounding. Five things you see. Four you can touch. Three you can hear. Two you can smell. One you can taste. Keep doing your four-seven-eight breathing, and follow the psychiatrist’s medication plan.” She glanced at her notes. “I’ll help you track your triggers and responses. We’ll keep a journal together, okay? Look for patterns and work through them one at a time.”
