Hollow footsteps echoed off tile apartment floors then bounced, like a radar, in the direction of the bathroom. Somewhere between me and the silence a voice shouted to tell me who I’d find inside.
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“There was a point,” he said, hanging on to the disbelief that he had ever felt this way, “where I didn’t care if I lived or died.”
The man on the other side of the computer screen looked at him with those sad circle eyes.
“I remember driving down the highway, I was going fast, making reckless moves—passing everyone—I wouldn’t have cared if I lost control. I wouldn’t have minded if it ended then. I didn’t ever plan on taking my life, but I wouldn’t have cared if it was taken. I pictured a future where it happened, one without me, and felt okay with it. Everything else felt taken and I felt like I couldn’t have gone on being who I was then.”
“What changed?” asked the man, taking notes to the left of his keyboard.
“I did,” he said. “I found myself again. Somewhere through all of it I realized that seasons end but that there was something within me that didn’t.”
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The door to the bathroom was cracked open, the lights were on, and somewhere from the bedroom a Ben Howard song played on bluetooth speakers, his Labrador retriever puppy jumped off the bed next to a nightstand that had Fear by Thich Nhat Hanh sitting on it, bookmarked. Before I had a chance to look over to the floor next to the shower, to see where he was, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror.
“You’re not worth it,” said an imprisoned voice from my past, its words ushering in a rushing stream of degradation.
“The world doesn’t need anything you have.” The insults lingered in the air over where he collapsed. “Love doesn’t exist for people like you.”
“You have your grandfather’s eyes,” said another, a sentiment my mind clung onto to make all the time seem worthwhile, like history really did lead to this moment where we were—where I was.
Pressing them all down, I turned to the weakened heaves on the floor.
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“I took my dog for a walk the other day,” he said, watching the man on the screen’s reaction. “For whatever reason, I was walking and this feeling kind of crashed over me, I think it was gratitude. Or love.”
“Can you describe it?”
“It felt like a deeper version of happiness, or joy. But it didn’t feel circumstantial, I felt connected to myself underneath all of the labels, and titles, and accolades. I feel like for the first time in my life I felt proud to be me separate from the accomplishments, separate from all the noise.”
“That must feel good,” said the man, his glasses reflecting the screen light.
“It does,” he said, letting a smile breakthrough. “I think for a long time I stopped trusting myself, or my instincts, and I think I’m beginning to be able to do that again. For a long time, I couldn’t get the thoughts out of my head, they became my default way of thinking, but I’m learning to think in a different way.”
“What were the thoughts?”
“Shame,” he said. “A lot of them were based around shame that I received from the outside world and from myself. I think I tried sharing myself in a way that I thought would make other people happy and when it didn’t transpire the way I thought it would, it turned into shame. I didn’t give myself the space I needed to learn who I am, or what made me happy. For most of my life, my mind took in everyone else’s opinions of me and I tried to create my identity from that.”
“What did that look like?”
“It looked broken,” he said. “It looked like someone that was lost and broken. The world became the darkest parts of my mind and for a long time I lived life unconscious. I was afraid of triggering another attack.”
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Collapsing to the ground next to him, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders knowing he would have no idea I was there.
“You’re okay,” I said, “everything is going to be okay, just hold on. We need you here.”
A breath filtered through his nose and onto my arm, his empty gaze stared between bent knees. Eyes swollen, years of shame and mistrust dripped onto the cold floor.
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After staring at the screen for a while, he spoke again. “It’s interesting, going through this process, through therapy. The dark thoughts and the anxieties have gotten quieter, but somewhere underneath it, I’ve felt a sense of grief. It’s almost like I’m mourning the anxiety, like I want the ego to be in control again.”
“That can be normal,” the man said. “Sometimes our minds get used to functioning in a certain way. We get used to certain thought patterns and to change that we must quite literally rewire how we think and experience emotions, and that change can come with a feeling of loss.”
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“You’re going to see beautiful views,” I said, holding him. “Stay with me, good things are going to come.”
His head collapsed into the side of the tub.
“Good things are going to come. You just have to stand.”
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He watched his reflection in a smaller square to the top right of the screen as the man spoke again.
“There’s a grief process in the transformation, even when it was a mental state that isn’t helpful, you still grieve the loss of it, the change.”
Tears started pooling in his dark hazel eyes.
“What are you experiencing?” the man asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “For the first time in my life I feel free, and at peace, and I think I’m feeling guilty for not allowing myself to feel this way for so many years.”
“You were doing the best with what you knew at the time,” said the man.
“I know, I just wish I could have known better.”
“You did, you’re here.”
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A hand on the porcelain edge, the other on the floor, he tucked his legs around and then, wobbling, he stood. Keeping quiet so his mind would be too, I watched as he walked bare to the bathroom mirror. With a tight grip on the sink, he kept his head cast downward toward the drain. Then shifting, a feeling taking over, his eyes flickered up.
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“It’s a death in a way, a goodbye to an old way of being and thinking,” he said. “The death of the ego.”
The man on the screen sat in silence.
“I think what I’m learning is that it’s okay to give myself permission at a new way of being. Unlearning and then relearning, a better way of existing.”
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They were the same eyes he had seen his entire life, but instead of looking through them, he was seeing them. He was seeing me, the piece that didn’t end even when the seasons did and because of that, I died to live again. Because of that, I could live after he chose to stay alive.
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Great content! Keep up the good work!