My therapist asks why I don’t take care of myself when I so blatantly do so for others.

He asks why it is so hard for me to eat, exercise, and maintain boundaries.

He asks when will I say, ‘Enough is enough?’

That eventually everything that I keep inside will come bursting out.

He asks when will that breaking point be. What will that look like?

I breathe and I think: if I continue to do nothing I can kill myself without actually lifting the blade, or the pills, or the gun. It wouldn’t be my fault for dying, it would be the world’s.

But is that really true? He asks, reading my mind. Or maybe I said it out loud. I sit with my hands folded in my lap, staring at my last hope.

You are intelligent, compassionate, empathetic. You endure more than most. You are all of these things and more, so

Why can’t you see it? Why do you need to be convinced that you are just as worthy as the people you cry for? The people you are dying for? 

You could be anything you wanted to be, but you don’t want that, do you?

Silence.

So why are you here then, sweetheart? You show up, you are prompt even, you take care of your appearance, you crack jokes and pretend to listen for fifty minutes every two weeks smiling softly and nodding your head as if you’re taking it in. And yet to even fathom the likelihood of getting better, that is unimaginable.

I feel too much.

No, he replies.

I am suffocating

Go on.

I am a failure.

Closer.

I think that if I get better, I will hate it. I will hate who I’ll become. I’ll hate that it took me this long to heal. I’ll hate being forever broken, always watching how I’ll react to something that usually fucks me up, is now an irrelevant whisper in the wind. 

And?

I am afraid.

Yes. Almost there. 

I am afraid to get better because who am I without my illness?

You will be who you were meant to be before your trauma, but better. You will be wiser, happier, and even content.

But what does that mean?

It means that life will go on. But with you in it. 

I don’t want to.

I know, but aren’t you terrified of dying?

Yes, more than anything.

Then, isn’t it easier to find out what it’s like to actually live? To not be afraid?

I think… I’m willing to try.

Now, finally, let’s begin. 

But what if we fail?

What if we don’t?