She was right of course. These meetings were part of my outpatient plan. I didn’t have a choice. But I did have a choice in what I got out of it. I had come a long way in how I thought about therapy and talking about my feelings. I now recognized the necessity of it.

“Okay, well, I got a letter from my parents’ attorney this week. With a check. Basically, they told me to never contact them again,” I said, feeling kind of relieved to talk about it.

Dr. Cary frowned. “That had to have been hard. What did you do when you got this letter?” she asked, making more notes.

I let out a bitter laugh. “Do you mean did I cut or think about using?” I asked hatefully. Shit, would it always come back to this? The answer was yes. It would.

Dr. Cary dropped her pen and gave me a hard look. “Yes, that is exactly what I meant. That had to have been a strong trigger for you. I know in the past your parents have always brought about your most negative and self-destructive behaviors. So lets talk about that. Re-frame your coping mechanisms,” Dr. Cary suggested.

She was right…again. There was a reason she got paid the big bucks to listen to a bunch of crazies talk about their impulses and feelings.

“Yeah, I thought about cutting. That was my first instinct actually. But I didn’t do it,” I finally admitted.

Dr. Cary gave me a small smile. “Well, what did you do instead?” she asked.

I picked at a thread on my jeans. Talking about this shit never got any easier. The need to cut myself continued to sit like a shadow in the back of my mind. Always there, ready to make me feel better. It still whispered in my ear that just one slice would make all the noise in my head go away.

But with each passing day, I was getting stronger and the pull of that shadow was becoming easier to ignore. And I hoped like hell that one day soon I’d stop hearing it all together.

“I called Maggie,” I told my counselor.

Dr. Cary made a few more notes. “Maggie. That’s your girlfriend right?” she asked, pulling a folder off her desk and looking through it until she found what she was looking for. I recognized Dr. Todd’s handwriting on the paper in her lap.

“Yeah, she’s my girlfriend,” I answered, trying to get a look at the notes in her lap.

“I’ve read through your case file from the Grayson Center. There are lots of mentions of Maggie in Dr. Todd’s notes. From what I can gather, in the past, Maggie has also been a trigger for you. Is that not the case anymore?” she asked, still reading whatever was written in the file.

I felt myself get instantly defensive. This was usual response to any supposed criticism of my relationship with Maggie.

“No, she…well…she helps me. She has always been able to help me. Just for a while there, it was all mixed up with my f**ked up feelings. But she gets me. She knows what can set me off. She’s not my trigger!” I said louder than I meant to.

Dr. Cary gave me a sharp look. “It’s important that you be honest with yourself. If she is still a trigger for you and she is someone who is in your life, then we need to address that.”

I shook my head. “No, we don’t need to address that. It’s not a problem. Maggie is not the problem,” I grit out. I was about to add a back the f**k off for good measure but stopped myself.

Crap.

“Okay, maybe there is a problem with Maggie. And maybe it triggers some intense stuff,” I grudgingly admitted. Dr. Cary’s face relaxed and she sat back in her chair.

“Thank you for being honest, Clay. Do you want to talk about it?” she asked gently.

Like I had a choice. She had opened this can of snarly worms, there was no putting the lid back on.

“Maggie goes to college in Virginia,” I started. Dr. Cary watched me quietly, doing that thing that therapists do best. Waiting for me to spill my guts all over her carpeted floor.

“And I’m down here. So it’s been hard. Really there hasn’t been a moment of our relationship that hasn’t been hard,” I said, shocking the hell out of myself for admitting this to a stranger.

“Long distance relationships are tough in the best of circumstances. But given everything you’ve been challenged with, it must make things even more difficult,” Dr. Cary stated as a matter of fact.

I nodded my agreement. She was good. Better than I gave her credit for. Because I found myself unloading all the screwed up and beautiful history between Maggie and me. I told her about how pissed I got over Maggie’s new life. How I felt left out and left behind. How bitter I was that she wasn’t making more of an effort to see me, when if the roles were reversed and I was able to leave the f**king state, nothing, and I mean, nothing, would have kept me from her.

“And now Christmas is coming up and it’s just another freaking holiday where we won’t be together. I know she needs to be with her family but I need her too,” I said angrily.

Dr. Cary clicked her pen a few times and then tapped her chin with the tip, leaving an ink stain on her skin. “Don’t you think you’re being unfair to Maggie?” she asked me. Her statement had me flushing in shame.

“Probably,” I conceded, knowing the doctor was spot on.

“Maggie has stood by you through a lot. She put everything on the line to be with you more than once. She is doing something for her and you have to be selfless and let her. I understand this stirs up a lot of negative self-talk for you. But that is about you and not about Maggie. Which is why the two of you are doing the best thing for each other. You are working on things here while Maggie is building a life outside of your relationship in Virginia. Your life can’t completely revolve around each other. That isn’t healthy in the long term,” Dr. Cary advised and I wanted to argue with her.