“How are you doing today, Natalia?” Dr. Boyd asks, sitting cross-legged on her usual chair.
“Good,” I say, and I think I mean it. “I, um, I’ve been trying those meditations we worked on at night. They help me fall asleep.”
“That’s really good, Natalia.”
My lips flinch in a quick smile. “I haven’t really thought aboutthatrecently. I think that’s good. Is it?”
“Is it?” Dr. Boyd tosses back.
“I think so,” I murmur. “I do strangely miss it some times. Is that weird?”
She shakes her head assuringly. “No, many people miss it. It’s a vice. Self-harm is…like an addiction in itself. It’s your comfort—your blankey, your childhood stuffed animal. Something you lean into.”
I nod. “I do that. I mean, did—done. I—I do, do that.”
“Natalia, it’s okay,” she says. “Just becauseyou’re in therapy does not mean you won’t feel the urges. Therapy is to help you work through them—to peel back the layers as to why. I only want you to be safe and well.”
I roll my lips in, sliding them against each other. “I never thought of it as an addiction before,” I rasp. “It makes sense though. And I feel like… I think I am?”
“You are what, sweetie?”
“Addicted to it?” I ask. I take a shaky deep breath and stare down at the weighted pillow on my lap, picking at the furry fabric with my nails. “I feel like after I started, I couldn’t stop. There were some days I didn’t need it, then some days Ihadto do it. I couldn’t function without it.”
Dr. Boyd nods, listening and acknowledging, and scribbles her pen across the notepad on her lap.
“I used to carry a razor in my bag,” I confess quietly.
She looks up from the note pad, her brown eyes soft as she looks at me. “Do you still?”
I swallow. I shouldn’t have said that, but I confess anyway. “Yes. Sometimes.”
“Why?” she asks gently.
“It feels comfortable. Like I have the option there if I need it.”
“Do you feel like youneedthe option lately?”
I shake my head. “No. Not lately.” I roll my lips. “But I feel like I’m just waiting for the fucking shoe to drop,” I mumble. “One day, I’m doing great—you know, I’m happy, I’m cured, I’m perfect. Then there’s a crash and it’s bad again and I just feel like… Like I’ve failed. Like all I’ve done is take one step forward but a thousand back.”
“Healing is not linear,” she says. “You cannot expect totake a road without bumps or potholes. Either way, you’ll get to where you are trying to go, but it’ll require work. You’ll have to stop at a gas station, change a flat, adhere to stop signs and yellow lights.”
“I get it,” I mutter.
“Your path has bumps, potholes, and turns. Just like everyone else,” Dr. Boyd assures me. “If it didn’t, healing would be easy.”
“And probably much less painful,” I say under my breath, picking the lavender polish off my thumbnail. I’ll repaint them later.
“True,” Dr. Boyd agrees.
“Nothing philosophical to add about how healing is beautiful. That the pain is poetic?”
She shrugs with her mouth and shoulders. “I don’t think it is. I just think it fucking hurts. And most of all, I think it’s fucking worth it.”
“Pain is worth…the pain?”
Dr. Boyd shrugs. “Can be. Healing hurts, but when once you’ve realized how much you’ve healed it’s like?—”
“Fresh air?”
