“Natalia,” she says, “what kind of love do you think you deserve?”
“I don’t really know,” I whisper. “I don’t think I know what to do with love from other people. I barely know what to do with the love from my friends. It just feels like…a wall, I guess. Or they’re sending me all this love but no one is there to pick up the mail. I don’t know.”
“Do you think you deserve good things?”
“No,” I blurt.
I laugh dryly to myself, fidgeting with my fingers and lavender-painted nails.
“Or maybe I don’t want good things, I don’t know. I just… I think I feel comfortable. Like this.”
“Comfortable how?”
“Depressed,” I say. “I’m comfortable with what I have—what I go through. It feels like the best I can do, the best routine I have. I get up not wanting to wake up and go to my bakery. I close and go home and sleep all night. And I do it all over again the next day. But Rowan means I have to get better. I have to let go of whatever comfort I have in it and actually be better and I don’t know why but it’s soscaryto get better.” I swallow. “But I think, maybe, I just need it. For him. For me.”
Dr. Boyd stares intently, waiting, like she knows there are so many things I can say about it, so many things I think about on a daily basis that I do not voice. Things I think about doing.
“But it’s like a friend,” I blurt quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“I lean into it,” I say, unraveling the balled tissues in my hand. “When there’s nothing else there’s that. This...darkness, I guess, for lack of better words. I linger around in it, settle down, and just…stay there. It’s like…”
“You kind of like it,” Dr. Boyd states.
“Kind of?” I huff, tears rolling down my cheeks and neck. “Is that weird?”
“No,” she assures me. “It’s not weird, Natalia. Lots of people feel that way-that their depression is safe for them. It’s understandable that you feel the same.”
I nod.
But the thought that I’m not alone in that feeling seems tobe my trigger today because right after that thought, I shatter in this office. Splintered all over this mustard-colored couch, hugging a pillow to my heaving chest as I gasp for air through the vehement sobs.
“I—I’m—I’m so—sorry,” I gasp.
“Why are you apologizing, honey? You don’t apologize for feeling,” Dr. Boyd says, her words hugging me and reinforcing my safe space here.
“I just…” I wipe roughly at my cheeks and under my nose and push my hair back from my face, behind my ears. “I just feel like…Some days I feel like I’m sorry for existing.”
It takes long, suffocating minutes before I can speak again, Dr. Boyd patiently waiting—her presence a calming, parental kind. I finally catch my breath, tear-soaked tissues crumpled on my lap, my neck and face slippery.
I release one final, shaky exhale, and Dr. Boyd dips her chin. “Whenever you’re ready, Natalia.”
#
After my session, I went to The Black Cat and figured out a way to give myself time off. I handed out extra hours like Oprah and warned everyone I’d be gone for a week, leaving my trusted and amazing assistant manager, Emma, in charge.
Now, I’m in my kitchen, pulling on my Jack Skellington oven mitts. Carefully, I remove the cupcakes from my oven. I don’t know why I baked them, it was just a compulsive thing that my muscles did from memory. The ingredients were laid out in front of me before I could even think twice about it.
I place the hot cupcake tray on the stove to cool off while Ifinish up the frosting. My oven mitts come off and my phone vibrates against the small, granite island.
Rowan’s name appears on my screen with his contact picture taking up the space. Like an idiot, I put the picture he took of us for my dads as the contact photo so now every time he calls, it’s me on his lap with his lips on my cheek and my grumpy face. I think that was the first night I realized I was in trouble.
Snapping out the haze brought on by the photo, I finally answer the call. “Hello?” I mumble.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.” I nip at the skin around my thumbnail, pacing barefoot. “Where have you been?”
