AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Find me, and show me the way out
This maze has no left side
The stars are hidden from me
Jeremy, please forgive me
I can’t do this without you
CHAPTER SIXTY
AGE 21, OCTOBER
Rehab. Take two.
“And so you see, the vicious cycle continues,” I say dryly, attention honed in on where I pick at a loose thread on the sleeve of my black hoodie. “Are you exhausted of me? Because I am.”
And I’ve never hated myself more, which says a goddamn lot, all things considered these last four years.
My vision blurs until I’m not really seeing anything but the mental replay of everything that led me here.
Cleo, my therapist at New Horizons, sighs from the armchair across from me. “Mason.”
Jaw working, I flit my eyes up, meeting her gaze through my lashes.
She tips her head to the side, and offers me a small smile. “Healing isn’t linear. You know this.”
Chewing my lip ring, I nod. “Yeah, yeah, it’s not a destination. It’s a journey.” There’s a mocking sort of bite to my tone, but she ignores it, nodding encouragingly.
“Exactly. It’s a state of being, and given that we are not inanimate objects…”
“States come and go,” I finish, exhaling harshly. Like happiness…
It’s one of the first things we talked about when I did my first stint, and she asked me what I wanted from therapy.
“To be happy. Isn’t that the whole point of therapy?” I’d said, more sarcastically than anything. After all, I didn’t come to rehab to get happy. I came to get clean and figure out how to function like a human again.
“Some would think so, yes,” she’d told me. “Perhaps, that’s what we should work on first. Figuring out more realistic goals.”
And I remember scoffing. “So what you’re saying is I’m a lost cause.”
“No, Mason. It’s not unreasonable to want to be happy. But accepting that you won’t always be happy—that it’s just as fleeting as the bad days—is the first step.”
“The first step in what?”
“Healing.”
Now, in her office once again, two years later, she tells me, “What you’ve been through…it’s a little more complicated than what most experience when they lose a loved one.”
Throat thick, all I can do is nod.
She’s got that right.
“I just…I feel like I’m failing her, you know?” I say roughly. “Like I’m giving up, because it’s…it’s easier to give up and move on at this point. I just…” I shake my head, and look down at my hands, brows furrowing. “It guts me to think of her out there, waiting for someone to find her. And here we are just…going about our lives.” I shake my head a little harder, still finding it difficult to talk about, even after all this time.
It’s as if there’s this block in my mind, making it not only unbearable to consider, but hard to put words to. Up until recently, I never really considered why that might be. I just…didn’t.
Didn’t talk about it.
