"we will struggle
not the way people do
and you will hurt me
but not the way everyone else can
and you will love me
harder than anything I've ever known
and I will need you
it will be strong and terrifying
and I will listen
even if it's the sadde...
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Los Angeles, California February 16th, 2011
"If I had a second chance in life, this what I'd do I'd buy you flowers Talk to you for hours, give you truth Listen to you when you're hurt I should've went to church with you But my credentials didn't work I still should've worked with you I should've left them little hoes alone and came home But I blamed the moments on you Though I was in the wrong"
"When's the last time you've used drugs to alter your mind or slow your thoughts down?"
Chris' eyes darted up across the room, landing on the dark brown orbs that belonged to his therapist, that he usually spent most of his sessions avoiding. His fingers anxiously twiddled together in his lap, and just like every time his addiction was brought up, he began to get clammy. The office itself was relaxing— cream colored walls with framed black and white photos of young black children running through sprinklers and jungle gyms. The couch underneath him was plush, velvet, and stretched across the entire length of the windows behind him that the orange California sun poured through.
His therapist, Dr. Monet Garrett, affectionately known as Dr. G, was a sweet faced, brown skinned woman— he wouldn't have it any other way. He already didn't want to be here, the least he could have was someone pretty to look at. She always had the same hairstyle, dyed blonde blown out hair that hung down just below her breast in bouncy barrel curls. Chris had spent enough time in salons with Naomi to know that it was all hers from the slight coarseness in the strands and the curl in her roots.
Dr. G was like something out of a Lifetime movie— tailored skirt suits in muted colors, nondescript leather heels, and tortoise shell framed glasses that she subconsciously pushed up on the bridge of her nose between sentences as she sat there and judged him for an hour every week.
"Yesterday..." He confessed, growing less and less shameful every time. "...but I ain't use a lot. I ain't been using a lot."
"What's not a lot?"
"I only had a little coke...and I smoked some weed later on to help me sleep."
This was progress, compared to the days when he'd go on three day drug binges and wake up not remembering a thing, reliving his days through whatever his friends said he did. Last year, he would've been high from sun up to sun down just to get through the day. These days, all he needed was enough to stop thinking so much.
Thinking about Robyn...and Maya...and his career...and Naomi.
"It's not abnormal to have trouble sleeping, especially when you're having anxious feelings. Have you been anxious?"
