Chapter twenty-five
And that is exactly what happned a week later.
I was sitting in a therapy office that Whitney had suggested for me.
Kelley offered to come with me, but I told her I was okay. In honestly though I knew I needed to do this alone for my own sanity.
I sat there in the waiting room for a good fifteen minutes when a woman called me back.
I followed her through the hallway to a door at the end. She closed the door and then proceeded to shake my hand.
We both sat down and she smiled sweetly. "My name Dr.Armstrong, but please call me Vera."
I nodded towards her. "My name is Ashlyn, but you probably already knew that."
She laughed and started to speak. "I did, but it is nice to meet you Ashlyn. I like it when my patients actually introduce themselves instead of them thinking I've looked into their whole file."
She looked down at the paper and then looked up at me and continued to talk. "Since we got the whole awkward introduction out of the way. Why did you decide you wanted to come and see me?"
I took a deep breath, and thought how I wanted to peice this together. "Um.. well I have thought about seeing a therapist for awhile, but last week I told my girlfriend I was going to see one and I knew then I actually had to come see one, and my friend Whitney suggest you and well here I am."
"You said that you thought about it for awhile. Why didn't you decide to see one earlier?"
I didn't know how to answer it. Why didn't I ever go earlier?
"I suppose I was scared."
"Scared?"
"Scared of being judged for what happened over there. I know I won't be judged because I have told my friends and my girlfriend about most of it, but scared that it will get out to the public and everyone else will judge me."
"Did your friends or girlfriend judge you when you told them?" She said looking straight at me.
I shook my head, thinking about when I told them. "No, I don't think they did, Not even Kelley.."
"Kelley?" She asked very curious.
"Yeah she is my girlfriend."
"How did she handle you being deployed?"
"We just recently got together, but had been dancing around out feelings before I left."
All I could do was think back to almost a year ago. "But she didn't handle it well at all.. She created a very destructive nature while I was gone. She ended up with a slight eating disorder, a addiction to alcohol and energy drinks, had really bad insomnia and really just ate pizza when she wasn't in national team camp and was harming herself somewhat."
"Did she ever receive professional help at all?"
"Not really I guess. I mean our fitness person Dawn did contact some doctors to get their opinion on the situation, and how to handle it, but that was about it."
Dr.Armstrong wrote some notes down in here notebook and then looked back at me
"Do you ever regret leaving Kelley when you joined the military.
All I could do was sit and stare at the wall.
Did I regret leaving Kelley?