This is a spin-off of several works I have completed or are currently underway.
This series of short stories will follow a few of my characters through the rehabilitation process until they have their moment of clarity.
Some issues dealt with in thi...
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Serenity Bay was beginning to feel like my second home. And not in a good way, where I feel warm and comfortable in my surroundings. Just in the way that I spend way too much time here.
"How many days have you been clean, Lee?" Alison asked me.
I clasped my hands together in my lap. "Three."
She nodded. "And can you explain the emotions that you're feeling with that?"
"Just mainly frustration."
Cutting had been my emotional outlet. And now that I was going clean, or at least trying to, I felt every emotional rollercoaster that I'd come to suppress.
The highs, the lows, all of it. And it usually just ended up frustrating me, because I didn't know what to do with all the feelings that were bottled up inside of me.
"Have you considered sketching as an outlet?"
I nodded. "I just don't know what I'd sketch about anymore."
"Exactly what you're feeling."
I scoffed at that. "That'd be some dark shit."
"Then sketch some dark shit, Lee. There's no one stopping you."
I hadn't thought of it that way.
"But you'd psychoanalyze the drawings," I pointed out.
"They're all yours. I just provided the outlet."
Oh.
"So you wouldn't look at them?"
Alison shook her head. "Not unless you wanted me to."
I doubt there'd ever be an occasion when I wanted to open up the black hole inside of me for Alison to see. "Okay."
"I'm really proud of you, Lee," Alison said.
"You shouldn't be."
"You deserve praise," she said. "And it's okay to accept it."
That's not true. "I haven't done anything praise-worthy."
"You came back when all odds were against you," she said. "You made the decision to stop self-harm, and you're actively working toward an attainable goal. All of those, individually, are praise-worthy."
"If you say so."
She sat her iPad down on the coffee table. "Do you feel done today?"
I glanced toward the clock. "I'm always done."
She laughed at that.
"But we still have another half hour," I pointed out. "And Nurse Kool-Aid would lecture me, again, if I walked out."
"Nurse Adelaide," Alison corrected. "And she lectures you when you walk out mid-session, because that's not helpful to either one of us."
I rolled my eyes in response. "She lectures me whenever she gets the chance. I'm pretty sure she enjoys it."
