Recovery

“Do you really want to be here?”

Your hands started shaking as you fidgeted. This infinitely sucked.

---

It was Halloween time but unfortunately, this was not a prank. One too many nightmares, a really bad panic attack in front of the team, and a minor slip-up into bad coping mechanisms led to this. Your sibling`s birthday had come and gone with no contact, leaving you agitated, guilty, and on a downward spiral. The loneliness dredged up old memories and trauma, leading to a really bad relapse. Instead of hiding though, you ran to Wanda, sobbing and bleeding. She bandaged you up and held you through the night. In the middle of your most vulnerable, you came to the conclusion that it was time for therapy. You held fast to your decision during morning tea, held tightly to it while Mom and Dad held you close after telling them what happened.

But now? Sitting in front of the best therapist Tony could find who was already employed in the Compound? Being asked about your feelings? Now you were regretting this decision.

---

So far, 40 minutes had passed with you sitting silently, curled up with your knees to your chest in the furthest corner of the couch while your heart beat erratically and your thoughts raced. The therapist, Dr Lia, sat across from you and patiently waited out the silence with you.

“Do you really want to be here?” she asked again, breaking you from your revere. You picked at the threads of the couch, anxious and angry, barely controlling your movements.

You exploded. “I don’t know, I wanted to be but now I don’t want to anymore! I cant do this!” You threw your hands up to cover your face.

“Why?”

You fought back the tears. Why was this so hard? “I don’t know, I want to talk but then I get here and it all seems so stupid. I`m always fine in a session, then bad stuff happens, but I cant remember when I come back and then its useless and stupid. I want to get better but I`m tired of putting all this work in.”

Dr. Lia smiled. “Yeah, its fucking frustrating, isn’t it?”

You stopped, glancing up at her before nodding. She continued. “You`ve been the one pulling yourself through everything your entire life. You’ve never really made any progress though because all your past experience was ruined by the trauma going on around you. So it makes sense that nothing worked and that you don’t want to put in the work.”

You rocked back and forth. “But I cant do therapy without forcing myself to push through, even though that’s the last thing I want to do. Hell, I don’t know if I can do that.”

Dr. Lia leaned back onto her couch and pulled up her ankles. “Tell you what, you bring 20-25% of the motivation and I`ll bring the rest.”

You blinked at her. “This is by far the strangest therapy session I`ve ever had.”

She shrugged. “You’ve had shitty experience. What do you think?”

You considered it for a moment. “Yeah, sure. I think I can do that.” Twenty percent didn’t sound too exhausting.

She nodded. “Awesome. Come with me.”

She stood up and walked across the room to a series of shelves. You followed hesitantly as she perused for something, before exclaiming and pulling a box down from the top shelf. She then sat down on the floor and set the box in front of her on the floor. Looking up, she saw you standing awkwardly, shifting.

“Would you like to sit on the floor with me?”

You nodded, folding yourself down to the floor. Once you sat, she opened the box. She pulled out an unopened water bottle and handed it to you.

“Drink half of this.”

You did as she instructed, watching her pull out a bottle of glitter glue and six containers of different kinds of glitter and gems. While you finished half the water bottle, she began to explain.

“So I was thinking, since its just our stressful first session, we could make a glitter bottle and just talk about random stuff, maybe some word association. Nothing too overwhelming, no debrief on your life history. Just a game.”

You set the water bottle down in front of you and slowly released your knees from your chest to sit cross-legged. You tried for a smile. “Yeah.”

She began to fill her own water bottle with glitter glue as you picked a lavender shade. It reminded you of your first date with Wanda, her lavender halter dress. Everyone associated her with a deep, sexy, and dangerous red but you knew better. Wanda was a soft lavender. She was calm; she was safe; she was home.

As you squeezed the glue into the water, Dr. Lia passed you a paper towel.

“So. The way we`re going to play this is I get to ask you a word and you can reply using one to two words. If it`s too overwhelming at any point, just say noodle monkeys and we can stop.”

You laughed. “Noodle monkeys??!!”

She smiled. “Well, it has to be something totally ridiculous that no one will ever actually accidentally say.”

You nodded, reaching for the container of silver glitter.

Dr. Lia emptied some blue glitter into hers. “Dog?”

“Work.”

“Music?”

“Free.”

“Bread?”

“Heaven.”

“Sunset?”

“Orange.”

“Fruit?”

“Mango.”

“Long?”

“Wait.”

“Sleep?”

“Fear.”

“Love?”

“Lavender.”

“Anger?”

“Pain. Helpless.”

“Family?”

“Stark.”

“Parents?”

“Wrong.”

A moment passed as Dr. Lia paused, waiting for your brain to catch up to your words. You realized the significance of that answer. You briefly made eye contact.

“Noodle monkeys?”

You nodded. “Noodle monkeys.”

You took a few deep breaths as you finished pouring more glitter into your bottle. Dr. Lia squeezed some glue into the inside of your bottle cap before you screwed it on. Shaking your bottle, you watched as the glitter swirled around the inside.

Dr. Lia began to pack up the glitter. “So some of those questions were random, some were purposeful. I`d like to explain some of them to me, okay?”

You nodded, focusing on your glitter bottle.

“Why was dog linked to work?”

You sighed. “My mother wanted to get a dog years ago and I knew it wasn’t going to go well, that she would get tired of taking care of it. No one believed me but I ended up being right. All the pets we had were sources of contention.”

“So for you, pets are linked to extra work, fear, and trauma?” she asked.

“Yep.” You finished.

“Why was sleep linked to fear?”

“Noodle monkeys. Let`s just say I never sleep well.”

She pursed her lips. “Okay, we`ll tackle that some other session. Love and lavender?”

You smiled. “My girlfriend. Her dress on our first date was lavender.”

She smiled with you. “She`s your calm and peace then?”

You nodded. “Yeah.”

“And anger with pain/helpless?”

You twisted your hands in your lap. “I was never allowed to be angry. I don’t know how to be angry. I just get all wrapped up inside and overwhelmed and I can`t let it out. All I want to do is hurt someone and destroy things but I don’t really want to, I know I can`t. Its just really painful for me to be angry because I`m fighting myself. Yeah. That’s it.”

Dr. Lia smiled. “That was really awesome, I`m proud of you.” She stood to put the box back on the shelf. You rose as well, holding your glitter bottle as you made your way back to the couch.

She sat down across from you. “So I`m thinking we should meet three times a week for right now. Obviously that’s going to ebb and flow depending on how you`re doing but since I`m already here in the Compound, the commute isn’t terrible.” You both laughed.

On your way out of her office, you wondered. Maybe this wouldn’t be too terrible after all.