“How has your week been, Marissa?” The doctor asked with a smile as he placed a mug of coffee in front of her. She leaned forward, the steam fogging up her glasses, which she did not often wear, but the thought of putting contacts into her tired eyes hurt already. It was a loaded question, as it had been for many months now. She felt obliged to say ‘it’s fine’, or ‘really great actually!’. But that would be lying, and it would defeat the whole purpose of therapy. She sighed.
“A little better,” she nodded gently as she crossed her legs and leaned back into the couch. “I slept for a few nights this week at the beginning, not-- all the way through, but... Enough to feel rested to some extent. I’ve only had a few hours the past two, though.”
“When you can’t sleep, is it the same place you go? The same thoughts? Or are there new stresses, new paths to walk down?”
“It’s-- I wouldn’t say I was stressed. Everything in my home life is-- normal, I guess... It’s just a lot,” Marissa furrowed her brow and swallowed as she reached forward and picked up her coffee before settling back down. “But yes, it’s more or less the same things.”
“Can you explain what you mean by a lot?”
She sighs again, glancing up at the ceiling as she tries to pick some words out of the hurricane in her mind. “I guess I just... I thought moving here would lift some things off of my shoulders, a fresh start in a city that I had absolutely no ties to, no previous business, no connections, no...” she breaks the sentence with a strategic sip of her coffee, followed by a purse of her lips and a deep inhale. “I didn’t expect to connect with people so quickly, and I’m not sure if it’s a good thing for me.”
“I do know you struggle with being vulnerable, do you think that’s what’s happening here?”
“I’m not... Avoiding. If that’s what you’re insinuating,”
“I never said you were avoiding.”
“No, but...” Marissa trailed off as her eyes drifted from the doctor sitting in front of her to the window to their left. It was a nice day out there; then again, every day was a nice day in California. It had been one of the reasons she came out here when... Well, when New York simply didn’t work anymore. The doctor gave her silence, and even though she wasn’t looking, she could draw the look that she knew donned that face of his right now. The one that she can’t help but open up to. She closes her eyes for a moment, and the gentle sound of birdsong, breeze, and distant traffic fills the room, interluding on their session.
“None of them feel real.” She admits, eyes remaining closed, the nature and wording of the confession running too close to comfort to a past hell loop she once lived through, that ate away over a year of her life. “I know they are, I’m not... It’s not like before, it’s just, these people, they...”
“They’re not your people,”
Marissa’s eyes slowly opened, averted from the window back to the doctor as she gently nodded. “Exactly...” A dry laugh broke the heavy air between them. “It’s not that they’re not... Nice, they’re just... Fuck, Darren, they’re just fucking boring,” she brings up both hands to cup her own cheeks, lightly pushing up the skin as she shakes her head again. “I’m trying to move on, trying to forget what life used to be like, but fuck-- if this is what life is going to be from here on out, just stupid brunches and spa dates and sourdough fucking avocado toast,” her eyes roll, and the doctor breaks his usual stoic facade to fill the room with laughter which is joined, after a short beat, by hers.
“Seriously, though,” he snaps back into his role, the laughter leaving behind a soft, gentle smile lingering. “Marissa, you can’t expect your life to be the same as it was in New York, in Vegas, in Chicago... You’re not that person anymore, you’re not with the same company, in both senses of that word,”
“It’s hard.” He nods. “When you’ve lived a life like yours, when you have still so many years ahead of you, when you have already accomplished more than 99 per cent of us could ever possibly dream of... It’s hard to retire, hard to settle into a normal life, Marissa.”
“What if I’m not... I just...” She adjusted her seat, pulling her jacket around her body as she fell back into the couch. “The last time I was alone, and bored, and... Well, I wasn’t sober, I guess, but the last time I was alone, and bored, I literally lost my mind, so... What if I’m just not meant to be living a normal life? It’s not like those were ever the cards I was dealt, even if I never got Lucky, even if I never met Delilah, never met Nic, I still don’t think I would be living a... Normal life.”
“You don’t know that. Nobody does. Marissa, we can’t go back in time to see what would have happened if that one person had never walked into that bar that one time. We can’t do it, and, you know what? “ Even if we could, I bet you all my world.” He motioned around the room. “I bet people would still ruminate over what could have been... What you’re talking about right now, the hundred what ifs, they’re normal, everybody has them, including me. It’s part of being human.”
“So, let’s circle back to the sleep, you didn’t really answer my question... Where do you go? When it’s the middle of the night, and you can’t sleep, where’s your mind?”
Damn, she was really hoping she’d skirted past that questioning. Not because she didn’t trust the doctor, or because she didn’t want to face some big fear or anything, but just because... Well, she felt like a broken record. Truth was, she’d felt like one of those for a long time now. She shrugs.
“You know... I... I usually wonder what Nic is doing, if she’s--” her eyebrows lifted a little, then furrowed gently. “I hover over her name in my contacts list, wondering if I pressed it, if it would ring, and if it rang, if... If she’d even pick up...” She swallows thickly, eyes coming down to rest on the black coffee in front of her. “Then, when I close my eyes, I’m back at the station, feet just... Glued to the ground, everyone running around me, screaming, rushing,” she takes a long breath. “Then I either just black out completely and get a couple hours sleep, or I kind of like jolt awake and...” she drifts into silence, eyes glazing over as she gets lost in the tumbling thoughts swirling her mind.
“And what?” The doctor presses gently after a minute or so.
“Wish I had a distraction.” The side of her lip tugs up into a brief, sad smile. “A proper one,” she adds on as she looks back up at him. “Actual work, or, or Nic... Or just a fucking stiff drink... All this is just so fucking-- if I could just have a drink, man...”
“Do you think, perhaps, these anxieties you’re having, the boredom -- this is all stemming from a struggle with sobriety?”
Perhaps... Marissa thought with a mental scoff. Instead, her outward reaction was a simple lifting of her eyebrows and tilt of her head, a gesture that said you think? better than any words ever could. “The latter definitely is...” She said with a deep breath in.
“So, do you think going to a bar in San Fran, getting wasted, hooking up, being the old you, you think that would help you sleep? Help you feel normal? Healed?”
“What kind of a question is that, doc?”
“I’m being serious, do you think that would help?”
“It wouldn’t hur-- maybe that’s not entirely true...”
“Marissa, you can’t blame your feelings, your struggles, your emotions, you can’t blame them on sobriety, you can’t make that your enemy because then how are you ever going to continue at it?”
She stared at him for a long moment, eyes trying to read eyes before dropping down to take in his perfectly windsor-knotted navy blue tie, and crisp, sharp white collar, then back to the coffee. Leaning forward, she picked it up and took another sip, glancing back out the window. It really was a nice day out there.
“I don’t blame the sobriety, I blame myself, the decision to move out here, to leave...” Marissa said. “I feel like... What if I had tried all of this stuff before I left? Therapy, sobriety, pilates...” She shook her head. “If I tried, instead of just... Running away... Would it have made a difference? Would it have...”
“There’s those would’s again...”
“I know, I know, hyptothetics and bullshit and whatever, but...” Her sentence was cut off by the three short beeps that came from the doctor's watch. Somehow, even when she didn’t want to be here, 30 minutes seemed to fly by every time.
“Finish your thought, then we’ll wrap up.”
Marissa shook her head softly. “It’s alright... Just more what-ifs,” she sighed as she moved herself to the edge of the couch and chucked back the last mouthful of coffee before placing the mug back on the glass table between them.
“Marissa, I know it probably doesn’t feel like it to you, but you’re making a lot of progress lately, you’re open, honest, talking,” He smiled gently. “You’re going to be okay, and I want to pick some of this up again next time, especially the dream, I’d... I’d like to go back there and see if a couple of techniques might help... Ease it... It’s called EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing - it’s exactly made for... Well, things like repetitive memory nightmares. I can talk you through it a bit more next time. ” He nodded once.
She forced a smile and stood up, brushing down her shirt and adjusting her jacket again. “We’ll see,” truth was, Marissa didn’t know if she wanted to lose that dream, as painful and annoying as it was, it was one of the last things she had left, one of the last ways she could see Delilah, at least for a moment before... But, she knew saying as such would be counterproductive to the therapist's statement of making progress. “I’ll see you Friday, Doc...”
“See you Friday, Marissa. Be good to yourself.”
She nodded, held his eyes for just a second longer, then turned and walked out of the office. Maybe she’d walk home instead of calling a ride, it was a nice day after all...
2087
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