A year later and therapy isn't any easier

I sit across from Samantha, sinking into the therapy office couch and holding my breath, trying to calm my racing heart. Coming back to therapy sucks more than I thought it would.

She’s asking small talk questions, getting a better idea of what my life is like right now and why I asked to come in randomly.

Yes, I spent the summer in Chicago.

No, I didn’t like my lifeguarding job there very much.

No, Grace and I aren’t living together anymore.

Yes, I like my new roommates a whole lot.

And then she asks a more complicated question.

“Are you dating anyone?”

“Uhhh,” I say. She raises an eyebrow at me, uncrossing her legs so that her toes just barely skim the floor.

“No?” But my eyes get all squinched and she laughs.

“What’s his name?”

She reaches under her chair and presses the lever to lower it. Her feet settle onto the ground.

“Ryan.”

After five years of friendship, two official dates, and seeing each other basically every day since he moved to Utah, I’m still really scared to take things any further with him.

I tug on a random chunk of hair until it falls over my shoulder.

“He held my hand a couple nights ago.”

Her face softens and she leans forward. “Are you happy about it?”

“Yeah,” I say, ducking my eyes, running my fingers down the length of the chunk of hair.

“Buuuut?”

Dang therapist. She knows there’s more to it.

“I’m nervous because it’s not… some lame high school relationship that I can try for a couple weeks and then back out. This one matters. He’s important.”

A stray hair comes out in my hand. I shake it from my fingers.

“Sounds like you have a good friendship.”

“The best.” I twist the ends of the hair around my pointer finger.

I know I have a lot of time to figure things out, but I’m stuck between the idea that he could be you, that you are him... it’s got me paralyzed with fear that he might be and panic that he might not.

“So what’s holding you back?”

Aaand here is where we jump into the crap reasons I came here today. The hour passes with a lot of tugging on my hair and looking for split ends. I’m not good at talking about this. Which really means it’s a good thing I’m here.

We’ve just finished mapping out the exact thought distortions I have around intimacy and sex when something Samantha says catches my attention.

“Well how are we gonna ‘reprogram’ these unhelpful distortions?”

It honestly shouldn’t have taken me this long to realize it.

I have been trying to reprogram ever since Ian.

The two weeks relationships, the ncmos, pretty much everything post-Ian has been a useless and misguided effort to replace traumatic memories with better ones, to reprogram my mind, to undo the damage Ian caused.

It clicks into place and I must have some sort of stunned expression on, because Sam tilts her head and says, “What?”

So I explain and saying it out loud only confirms it more in my head.

I walk out of therapy with a very rubbed raw feeling, a headache, a lot of soon-to-be-spilt tears, and an appointment to come back next week.

Please help me reprogram and know that I love you.