Happily Ever After

Thirty Four- Love and Loss

Jenna

As October starts up here so does playoff baseball, and I was doing some good things of my own. I'm up to three clients now and am working hard to make these people happy again, or maybe even for the first time. My schedule is weird because there's some days where I have all three people and some days where I have none. But I am loving the therapist life and getting to understand these beautiful people.

The thing about being a therapist is that it's really hard not to take your work home with you. Now you're sworn never to talk about other people's issues other than with the client. But the fact I can't talk about what's happening and my ideas to help makes it that much harder. It's like what I was telling Kris from the beginning, we all want knowledge until that knowledge becomes a burden. It becomes too heavy to carry with us.

But I'm lucky because as a therapist I have some powers to help people. Like today I was meeting with Cara, a 30 year old woman who recently lost her husband and is left with their two kids and not a lot of motivation to go on anymore. Her friends and family had a intervention and she agreed to at least try and get better. But if this doesn't work I'm not sure what will happen with her and her friends or her kids, what that would mean for her. She wasn't a bad person, she's just hurting and can you blame her?

So she meets me at my office and we get through the formalities. I can see in her eyes she still isn't sure this is what she wants, even though she knows this is what she needs.

"Can I ask you something" I start as she looks up from the floor. Her eyes are so sad as she tries to find her voice through all of this.

"It's kinda what I'm here for" she teases as she cracks a smile. At least I know she has a good sense of humor.

"What made you come here? Because it wasn't you who called me to set this up, someone did it for you. And I can tell from the moment you stepped in here you wanted to leave, but here you stayed. Why" I ask.

She lets out a soft sigh as he eyes fall back to the floor. "This is my last hope. If this doesn't work I get sent somewhere far away and I don't get to see my kids. I'll be gone for a while and I'll miss so many moments with them. They lost their dad and I don't want them to lose their mom too" she explains.

"Do you believe that this can work" I wonder.

"I don't know what to believe in anymore. I used to be different, I believed in love and fate and overcoming. But then my husband died and everything I believed in died with him. The only thing that helped was the drugs" she tries.

"Do the drugs actually help though" I question. "I mean besides a temporary fix to a consistent issue do they help raise your kids? Does it put dinner on your table and tuck your children in? Does it pay your bills and help you keep the memory of your husband alive?

I don't want you to feel guilty for taking the drugs, I don't want you to feel regret to the point where you don't see the point of going on anymore. I want you to see that why you take the drugs isn't for the right reasons. If you take them expecting for you to come out in the other side and things have magically change, then you will spend your whole life waiting for something that will never happen. You can't expect for you to wake up one day and not miss your husband. You will always miss him and that's okay. I would rather you miss him then not be able to remember him because of the drugs" I explain.

"I don't want to take the drugs. I just feel like I can't handle what my life is like without them" she insists. 

"Where there is darkness there is a light that matches it. While the light your husband gave off is now dim it gives other things a chance to light up your world. There's always a light that can keep you out of the dark and I promise you it's not the drugs" I argue.

"I don't want to hold on to another light for it to slip through my fingers" she whispers. I could hear the hurt in her voice, I can tell that she was trying even if nothing was getting better. She didn't want to hurt but she was afraid to get better then feel this way all over again.

"When my sister died by the hand of drugs and left her kid behind to be taken care by me I was terrified. I was a college kid who ran away from a terrible home with nothing but thoughts like yours. I didn't want to have anything because I didn't want to lose anything.

But then I lost my sister and my eyes were dark like yours. My legs felt so heavy as I tried to carry on. I always said tomorrow is a new day but it always felt like the day before.

Then I realized that there was a little girl who was counting on me. I was all she had and she was all I had, and I was scared of losing her. Scared that I wasn't enough alone. But she didn't want any more from me than what I was giving her. She knew her mom was gone and I was all that was left but she loved that I was there for her. That I fought to keep her and promised her a life that gives her a reason to smile.

Your kids need you, in any way possible. They lost their father and all they have left is you. Your fear of losing them is exactly what will cause you to lose them. I know you love them and I know you don't want to lose them, otherwise you wouldn't be here. But it's going to take all the strength you got to over come this.

Can you do it" I ask.

"I don't know" she whispers.

"You do. Because you have the power to change your life and you can do it" I promise her.

"How" she questions. "I'm so far gone. How do I get back?"

"One step at a time. No matter how small and no matter how slow just keep moving forward" I insist.

So we set up a few more meetings and I give her a journal to write down her daily events and what she wants to work on. It's going to take her a while but she will get better and I hope I can still be there for her.