“I…I see what you mean.”
I haven’t been stifling myself by using these routines so religiously, but I haven’t been trying to break the habits I’ve grown so used to either.
“I want to do this. The sixty days. Do you think my father will agree?”
“Well, let’s bring him in here to discuss,” she says, standing up to go get him herself. “But take comfort in knowing that he’lldo what’s best for you. We’ll go over everything with him and take it from there. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Just like Tiffany says, we take the time to go through everything with my father. The program and the process especially.
“You never showed interest in inpatient before,” Dad says warily, having waited for his turn to speak. “What made you decide this?”
Feelings and desires that I couldn’t articulate if I tried.
“I need to take the next step,” I breathe out nervously. “A lot of people make hospitalization or inpatient care their first step. But you know that wasn’t an option for me. I was terrified to be anywhere but home.”
I was terrified to be home too, but less so.
“I’m doing a lot better, we both know that. But it’s not enough. I’ve been taking it easy for too long…I want to grow and heal faster. I think my routines have kept me stable but they haven’t given me the opportunity to go further.”
“How do you mean,dochen’ka?”
“I want to be able to leave the house without worrying that I’m going to be taken again.” He almost flinches, so I grab his hand. “I want to meet other people who have felt like me and gone through bad things and healed. I want to startlivinginstead of just trying to keep myself alive.”
“I want to dance again, maybe…” I trail off, thinking about what Matteo told me. “Maybe I want to teach it—ballet. To young kids who love it as much as I used to.”
Andlove, I want more of that.
“I…I might want to fall in love. To do all the things I used to dream about as a girl. I think I could get there some day if we kept going as we are, but I don’t want to wait for someday anymore. I want to chase it down and make it come sooner. I want to feel like Anya again, not Anya the girl who was raped.”
He doesn’t balk at the word, but his eyes…a father’s eyes can never truly lie. I see the despair in them. The pain he feels about what happened to me. Sometimes I think he feels just as much as I do.
“Okay,moya devochka.Whatever you need,” Dad says.
And it quickly becomes clear that he means it.
When planning with Tiffany and my father has finally come to an end, I have a deep understanding of how the program runs and what my life will look like for the next two months. But there’s still a couple things I have left to do before I’m ready to go. And calling Matteo is at the top of my list.
He picks up on the second ring, despite the fact that I didn’t text him beforehand. If I texted and asked for a call, he might assume I mean a video one. And I don’t think it’s possible for me to say what I need to say while looking at him.
“Hey, Anya,” he answers happily. “This is a nice surprise.”
“Hi,” I reply, feeling his warm greeting wrap around me like a hug. “I’m sorry, but it might not be a nice surprise after you hear what I’m going to say.”
The air around me goes tense and it’s as if I can see his face drop.
“Is everything okay?”
“It will be.”
“Anya?” he asks, confused.
“I…I’m going to do an inpatient PTSD and OCD recovery program.”
Silence.
“It’s sixty days, and I won’t have my phone.”
