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An old sweater will do. It always amazed Maya how even on colder days she managed to sweat through her shirts. Her lower back was always moist, easily warm, but also easily cold. It wasn’t a good hair day and she favors dry shampoo to cover up her lack of trying. It leaves an evident powdery grey streak down the middle of her head and she attempts to brush it away with a hairbrush she’s had since she was eleven. It only makes her hair big and untamable, a rat’s nest of unwashed crap. She reaches for a rubber band with hair already twisted around the elastic. She attempts the first bun and it’s terrible. Lopsided, misshapen. She almost cries from frustration but doesn’t. Attempt number two is better but her bald spot is showing. One more time and this one will have to do. She settles for a lower, more presentable half bun half ponytail thing. It’ll do. It was only therapy.

TRGGER WARNINGS: abuse, child abuse, violence, mental health.

𝐍𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑 𝟐𝐧𝐝, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏. 𝟐:𝟒𝟓𝐏𝐌.

“I’m tired of being ordinary.” The statement makes her therapist’s head cant to the side, curious. Maya looks elsewhere, obviously uneasy with the prospect of being honest. She was still unsure if this was the real her as she was always putting on some kind of mask. She had many depending on the situation.

“Like, plain. Simple. I want to enjoy the taste of champagne and go places. I want to like coffee and make it fresh.”

“What’s ordinary to you, Maya?”

“The same as I’ve always been. A kid.”

“Do you see yourself as a child?”

The question was loaded and perhaps it’s what Maya should have expected. It makes her think, the cogs inside her mind beginning to work. There’s a thread sticking out from her sweater and Maya tries pulling it but it only becomes longer, earning the fabric of her sweater to bunch up and wrinkle. “I feel like I’m still fifteen,” She begins, her eyes never leaving the thread, “I feel like I’m fifteen and fighting. I feel like I’m still young and trying to be like other people because other people are better and I want to be liked by them. Anyone.” Because being liked was important to someone like Maya. Someone like Maya, with a fragile self-image and a warped sense of what friendship and likeness truly was. The idea of rejection earns an impossibly unavoidable fear in her that came from inner depths unreachable. It was like torture and Maya did what she could to avoid even imaginary scenarios of rejection.

That’s a big thing with Borderline, she remembers her therapist saying in passing after Maya expressed, tearfully, of her fear. Her biggest fear. Being rejected. Because rejection is like abandonment, she also said, it’s another word for it.

“I don’t understand how I want so badly to be different but also like everyone else. I hate knowing that there are people out there being amazing, you know? So amazing. So original.” A lump forms in her throat as she speaks. And again, she feels like a child complaining about a scraped elbow or a cut on her knee. This was Maya’s personal boo-boo. “I discovered this singer the other night. Joanna Newsom. And, God, her work was so outstanding. So unlike anything I’d ever seen or heard and I cried so hard not because of how beautiful it was but because I was so jealous. I felt so trumped by her intelligence and her words, it was like I got punched in the gut. Sometimes I can’t stand the idea of living with the idea that someone’s already said what I’m thinking and they said it better than I ever could.”

Maya isn’t certain when she started crying, but her dark eyes suddenly welled up with tears. She’s quick to reach one hand up to wipe at the wetness, looking away once more.

There’s a lapse of silence as Maya reaches for a tissue, blowing her nose.

“Maya,” Her therapists starts, “This is going to be hard to hear, but there is always going to be someone doing something that you wish you created. In a way, that’s the beautiful thing about art. It speaks to us. What we need to figure out is how to build up your confidence. How do you think we can build up your confidence?”

Confidence. Maya almost laughs this time. It would have been a bittersweet sound if she shed her outer layer of fear she was still sporting. Because, even now, she was scared of being rejected by her own therapist. Of course, she’s been told how silly that is and that she would never, ever reject her in that what. But Maya’s brain was cruel, in a state of constant recycling.

“I don’t know.” She finally says after her thoughts and insecurities trample her.

“Well, that’s something we can work on. I’d like to try going over mindfulness with you. I’ll send over some worksheets for you to read and fill out, okay? And we’ll go over everything together next session.” Her therapist turns to her computer, “I’d like to see you weekly, Maya. I don’t like what I’m seeing. Let’s get you scheduled.”

Thirty-six years old and her therapist “didn’t like what she was saying”. Typical. Maya, still tearful and filled to the brim with the kind of sorrow one couldn’t shake, nods and smiles politely. She schedules an appointment every week all through the rest of the year.

“Maya, rejection can’t control your life. This will always be hard to avoid.”

𝟑:𝟏𝟎𝐏𝐌.

A late lunch will do. In an old, torn sweater, reddened eyes, and a head of hair that was slowly coming undone. Maya stops at a corner store and buys a white knitted beanie, putting it on the moment she leaves the shop.

The air is cold, making the tip of her nose chilled and red. At least it matched her eyes. She could blame their swollen nature on the cold, as well. Therapy always had a way of leaving Maya both hopeful and drained. Somehow, she’s convinced that there’s some kind of light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dim it may be. Perhaps it was the fact that someone relatively knew the inner workings of who she was that made her keep going. And, in hindsight, that was cynical in a way that even Maya was aware of. But she’s always been aware of her cynical nature and the fact that being a martyr was all she knew sometimes.

Without a martyr complex, Maya is unsure who she’d be after all this time.

She orders a toasted ham and swiss sandwich with mayonnaise. Maya eats it on the walk home to her apartment, which she immediately regrets. It was cold but walking made her sweaty, her pinky toes feeling crushed inside her Amazon-bought sneakers. At least there was a breeze, a breeze that Maya basks in every time it comes. She wishes therapy was like the breeze. Easy, quick, and cool. Instead therapy was like a car sitting in a parking lot on a warm day. Muggy, sticky, and only sometimes an escape.

It reminds her of the walks she took after arguments with her parents. The ones where hitting was involved, Maya’s cheeks red from slapping and her ego bruised from harsh insults. There was a time where her father held himself over her, his hand balled into a fist while he screamed. The image burns a hole in her mind.

But now she was free of that. As free as she could be, but there was still a shred of doubt within that. This does not feel like freedom. Maybe it was relief.

Was this what relief feels like? Still, Maya wasn’t so sure. She’s read people describe relief in many ways. Some cite that it comes in the shape of sadness at first, your own reality bubble bursting as a result. And others explain how it feels like all the weight has been lifted. Though, Maya still feels a weight, as well as sweat beginning to pool at her back. This goddamn sweater. Maya groans, removing the sweater and throwing it into a nearby trashcan. Now she was wearing only a sports bra in the cold, which was a relief only for a few blocks.

She cries. She had just rejected her sweater. What if someone took it? What if someone took it and now all her memories were gone, never to be remembered? Maya panics, feeling her insides burn. An old man whistles to her on the street and she almost screams but doesn’t. No, she turns back, and speed walks back to the trash where her sweater was. She sweats, walking back four blocks until she spots the garbage. She reaches inside, plucking out her sweater and wipes at the tears on her flushed face. “Sorry,” The woman mumbles and turns back, the smell of trash wafting toward her face as the breeze rolled in. Typical.

A shower will do.

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