“And has it convinced you? Has watching him be successful made you feel better about your choice to leave?”
“No,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I meant it to. “It makes me feel worse. Every single time.”
“Then why do you keep doing it?”
“Because I can't stop!” The words came out louder than I intended, and I had to take a breath to get myself under control. “I've tried. I've deleted the apps, blocked the sports sites, told myself I'm done. And then I'm lying in bed at two in the morning and I'm pulling up his stats on my phone because I need to know if he played well. If he got hurt. If he's happy. I can't stop.”
Dr. Lin leaned forward again, and her voice was gentle but firm. “What you're describing isn't just interest. It's compulsion. You're using this to hurt yourself, Soren. You're seeking out pain because on some level, you think you deserve it.”
My throat tightened. “That's not?—”
“Isn't it? You're watching the life you think you should've had, the person you think you should've been with, and you're using it to punish yourself for leaving. For surviving.”
I couldn't look at her anymore. Couldn't do anything except stare at the bracelet on my wrist and feel the weight of every word she'd just said settling into my chest like stones.
“When you watch him,” she said quietly, “what do you feel? Not what you think you should feel. What actually comes up for you?”
I had to swallow hard before I could answer. “Pride. Grief. Longing. Shame. All of it at once, and I can't separate any of it out. I see him doing well and I'm proud of him, and then I'm grieving what we could've been, and then I'm ashamed that I'm even thinking about it because I gave up any right to feel this way when I left.”
“You didn't give up your right to have feelings, Soren. You're allowed to miss him. You're allowed to grieve what you lost.”
“But I'm not allowed to keep torturing myself with it, right? That's what you're gonna say.”
“I'm going to say that what you're doing isn't helping you heal. It's keeping the wound open. And I'm worried about what that's doing to you.”
The room felt too small suddenly, too quiet except for the sound of my own breathing. “He was the one good thing I had before everything went to hell,” I said, and the words came out softer than I meant them to. “The one person who made me feel like I mattered. And I left him standing in a parking lot with no explanation because I was too much of a coward to tell him the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That I was falling apart. That my parents were tearing us all to pieces. That I didn't know how to keep my siblings safe and keep myself alive at the same time. That I was so tired I couldn't see straight, and I knew if I stayed, if I let him see how bad it had gotten, he'd try to help. And I couldn't let him do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because he had a future!” The words burst out of me before I could stop them. “He had scouts looking at him, had a real shot at making it, and I wasn't gonna be the reason he gave that up. I wasn't gonna be the anchor that dragged him down with me.”
Dr. Lin was quiet for a long moment, just letting that sit between us. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “So you left to protect him.”
“Yeah.”
“And now you're punishing yourself for making that choice.”
I didn't answer. Couldn't answer without my voice breaking.
“Soren,” she said gently. “I need to ask you some hard questions, and I need you to be honest with me. Can you do that?”
I nodded, even though I already knew I probably wasn't going to be.
“When you watch these games, when you follow all the updates about him—what are you looking for?”
“I told you. I just need to know he's okay.”
“But you're not just checking once in a while to see if he's doing well. You're seeking it out multiple times a week. You're reading comment sections. You're watching replays of games you've already seen. That's not casual concern. So what are you really looking for?”
I didn't answer right away. Couldn't find words that didn't make me sound completely pathetic. “I don't know.”
“I think you do know. I think you're just not ready to say it out loud yet.”
My jaw tightened. “Maybe I'm looking for proof that I made the right choice. That he's better off without me.”
