Warning! This chapter discusses anorexia nervosa, drugs abuse, and mental illness which may be a trigger for some. If you or someone you know suffers from anorexia, bulimia, or any other eating disorder, or drug abuse, please seek help! Your life is more precious than you know, take good care of it. ❤️
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I sit in my twelve o'clock one-on-one session barely able to focus on what's being said. She was ranting about why she was still struggling to eat and telling me that I need to give her a new diagnosis because I am wrong for telling her she suffers from anorexia nervosa. My mind is on my decision of whether or not I will go back to Seattle or stay here. I know it's wrong but I can't seem to stop thinking about it.
I'm torn between staying at this job and in my first apartment ever that's in my name, staying with my mother who moved only to be with me, and staying here to raise the baby on my own. Or going back to everything that I left behind, Hayden, the house, his life, the pain, his daughter. Going back scares me because it's foreign to me now. Everything has changed.
"Dr. Greene, are you even listening to me?" Her eyes are wide as they look at me. I can tell she isn't sleeping by the prominent discolored bags under her eyes that weren't there when she first came. She's been here for two weeks now and we're barely scratching the surface of her problems.
"Yes Victoria, you are under the impression that I misdiagnosed you." I say giving her my undivided attention, putting Hayden and the baby in the back of my mind. I can't focus on my life when I have to focus on someone else's.
"Yes because you did. I am not anorexic. I don't weigh seventy pounds like that other girl in this hospital."
"But you want to, you still aspire to be smaller than you actually are. You weigh eighty-two pounds at thirty, and it's not of muscle and it's not healthy. You aren't working out, you're restricting yourself of food and when you do eat you throw it up." I pride myself in being blunt and honest with them. That's why they always ask for me, word gets around that I tell it how it is even if it's harsh. I need someone to be that way with me becauseI can't be that person for me. "Why don't we go back, you tell me when this first started."
"I was never satisfied with the way that I looked, being here in LA, and the women that you see on tv or the Victoria Secret fashion shows my mother made me watch religiously, were always smaller than me and my mother wanted me to be just like them. I was twelve when she gave me my first bag of cocaine and said all models do it, so if I wanted to be one I had to start losing weight now."
"Did you want to be a model?"
"I thought it would've been nice to be one. It wasn't my dream though." Unconsciously she wipes at her nose and sniffles as if it's running. It's the twelfth time she's done it. I've been counting.
"But it wasn't really about modeling to your mother huh?"
"No, it was my weight. She constantly told me she didn't want a fat daughter. She would weigh me all the time and if I was ever over seventy pounds she wouldn't feed me, but would force me to take more drugs. That's just how I grew up."
Often times I'm thankful for my parents. No one's family is alike, and I'm glad I never had parents like other people. My parents aren't perfect and they've done their fair share of fucked up things but they've never been anything like any of the other parents I hear about.
"You have a child right?"
"Yes, a one year old. I was my biggest at that point. It felt so good to eat."
"So then how did you end up here again? Where the sight of food disgusts you, the smell of food makes you vomit, you're eighty pounds, and you're abusing drugs again?"
"I don't know." She wipes at her nose again. Make that thirteen times.
"Yes you do, what happened Victoria? Was it your mother? Did she say something to you after you gave birth? Or were you disgusted with the way you looked you reverted back to old ways because that's all you ever knew beauty to be?"
I can tell that we're getting somewhere when I see the tears strolling down her gaunt face. I hand her a tissue from the table that sits between me and her. I don't make very many people cry in here, but when they do I have to stop myself from getting emotional as well. I cry when I see other people cry when the conversation is about pain and heartache because I know how it feels. Though I've never felt it I know their pain, but they don't know mine.
"Even though Jonah liked me that way, I started to feel ugly because of the number that was on the scale. I was one hundred and twenty pounds after giving birth and becauseI heard my mother's voice in the back of my head I knew I was fat and overweight. So I started using cocaine again and I stopped eating. I couldn't even breastfeed my son."
"Did Jonah know what you were doing?"
"Of course not. I'd eat dinner with him but while he was asleep I would go into the bathroom and purge and spray perfume and brush my teeth after so it wouldn't smell. He didn't know I was using either until he found the little bag in the garbage one night."
"The night he checked you into this hospital?"
"Yeah."
"I was told you didn't eat today." I realize our session is coming to an end and I have others that I still have to work with before I leave. I typically see about three or four patients a day depending on how their days go when I'm not here. I sometimes get called in during mental breakdowns, medical emergencies, and anytime I'm being asked for specifically. I like working here, I don't know if I want to leave.
"I couldn't."
"Are you going through drug withdrawals?" I've been told that she is, I just want to hear her side.
"I feel fine Dr. Greene."
"Random body tremors and shakiness, nightly seizures, insomnia, running nose, bloody noses at random, dilated pupils, refusing food, severe anxiety." I read off the list given to me by one of the nurses. "Should I go on?"
She sakes her head no wiping at her nose . . . again.
"Some of the things I mentioned could also be from your lack of eating, which means that if you don't eat, we'll have to tube you and force feed you."
"No, please don't. I'll eat." She promises but I know better than to hold her to it.
"You'll be watched by Nurse Linda all day, so no purging, or sit-ups, or five bites, or chew and spit, and absolutely no asking about calories. You cannot take a cold bath and you must sleep in a blanket since the air conditioning will be on all night."
"Jesus, you know most of the tricks."
"Victoria I'm serious, I do not want to have to force feed you and I know you don't want that either. Do your best to eat as much as you can. You have to get better not only for yourself but for your husband and your baby." I mention them because I know how much she misses them. She hasn't seen her baby since she's been here and her husband can only come for an hour during visiting hours. They are the only reasons why she's here and why she wants to get better.
When I finish my session with Victoria, I sit with two others before I leave for the day. My mother reminded me of the meeting tomorrow where we discuss our patient's progress and seek advice from one another. I sometimes dread the meetings because I feel like one of the seniors judge me for being young. I'm not respected here the way my mother is. I've managed to ignore most of the doctors here except on the mornings of the meetings.
Mohamed and I made plans to go to dinner but I received a text saying he couldn't make it due to an emergency surgery so I scheduled a last minute meeting with my psychiatrist instead of being home alone. She's so easy to talk to, I feel like if it were allowed she and I would be close friends. Either she feels the same way or she's really good at her job.
I don't like the paint on her walls. The olive green was supposed to be a relaxing calming color but it does the complete opposite for me. It heightens my anxiety and stress level about ten notches. She could've at least done a pastel yellow. Yellow is calming, green induces stress. I wonder if I'm the only one of her patients who feel this way.
"How are you today Alice?" I spent hours online after I had gotten out of the hospital going over the list Mohamed gave to me. I chose her because she's in her mid thirties, not much older than I am. She's been practicing for four years and had the highest number of 5 star reviews on Yelp.
"I'm just a bit conflicted."
"With what?" She inquires.
"First let me tell you I'm pregnant and Hayden is the father," I catch her eyes widen with shock for a quick moment. She knew herself I wasn't over him, she'd tell me all the time, but I always denied it. "I slept with him when I went to Reign's wedding. And now I don't know if I should go back to Seattle or just stay here."
"What does Hayden want you to do?"
"I haven't told him yet."
"You haven't told him?"
"No. I bought a ticket to go there this weekend to tell him face to face. But when I left him the last time he wanted me to stay, he said he'd do anything to get me to stay."
"Do you ever think Hayden could have gotten you pregnant on purpose?" She questions. "To get you to come back to him, and as a way to control you?"
I don't even have to think about this before I defend him, "Absolutely not, I said he wanted to control his own life not that he was controlling me. That's two different things."
"Let's have this inevitable conversation that I figured you were too fragile to have before. You're still fragile now but you're going to be a mother and you need to make the best decision for yourself and your child. You do not want to put yourself in a potentially dangerous situation."
My eyes widen as she says the word dangerous and I stop her before she can continue, "Wait a minute, are you trying to call Hayden dangerous?"
"I am not saying he's dangerous Alice, I'm saying he's—okay fine," She stops herself mid sentence. "I'm saying he's dangerous."
"How could you ever make that assumption of him without ever having met him?"
"Let me just clarify that when I say dangerous I don't mean that he's physically going to harm you. I'm not calling him a woman beater, I'm saying he's going to bring you drama and pain that you don't want for you or your child. For some reason his life is so eccentric that normalcy doesn't seem to exist. Why would you want to go back to someone that brings hardship instead of ease?"
I tend to get very angry and defensive when people are speaking ill of Hayden. Only because I know the real him, I know how hard he's been working to be better. When I left he said he couldn't change but the person I was with was nothing like the Hayden I first met. He had changed, a lot about himself and his behavior, but the one thing that hadn't changed was that he was still an addict. He's so much different now, he's certainly not the same man that I left. I hate that I always notice the change in him after I'm gone, it takes my leaving for me to open my eyes.
"You sound like my mother." She thinks I need normal. I thought I wanted normal too, but after having normal, I realize I absolutely don't want that. Hayden is fun and he makes me angry and happy all at the same time. It isn't always easy with him, but I love him more because of it, "I don't pay you to tell me what you think I should and shouldn't do."
She chuckles as if something I said was so hilarious to her, "That's why you came here today isn't it? You wanted me to give you the answer, to make up your mind for you. That's not my job Alice. I'm only here to listen and help you clear your mind so you can decide what's best for you. I ask questions, you give answers but you knew that already, seeing as how you're a psychologist yourself."
"I only came here because my previous plans were canceled. I don't expect you to make up my mind, no one can ever do that but me. I cam for guidance and instead I've have to sit here defending my ex because you're being condescending and judgmental to someone that you know absolutely nothing about."
I never revealed to her any of the secrets Hayden told me, she doesn't know he was an addict or sadist, she doesn't know about his past with women, or his past with his family, all she knows is that he likes control and she took than and ran with it not knowing the full truth to it.
"He has never hit me or isolated me from anyone, telling me who I can and can't be friends with. He's never tried to keep me from working or make me depend on him financially or anything like that." I defend Hayden. "He's never forced me to stay, though he never wanted me to leave."
"So then how did you become so dependent on him?" Her question takes me by surprise and I was rendered speechless. I honestly don't know how that happened, it just sort of did.
I think hard before I answer, breaking the silence that surrounded her question. "He was all I had because he was all I wanted. I willingly depended on him because I felt a sense of security and a safe haven whenever I was with him. I made my world revolve around him because I desperately wanted it to."
"If you feel this way, so strongly about him and your relationship, why leave?"
"Because when things get too difficult, I run. He was going to be a father to someone else's child and at the time I couldn't handle that. Fast forward to three years and that doesn't seem like the worst thing anymore."
"What does that mean?"
"It means, I could've stayed if I really wanted to fight for us like I said I was going to. He had a fear of being abandoned and I had abandoned him every time when things got too complex. I understand now why he found it so difficult to be honest with me."
"Are you making excuses for him?"
I'm not making excuses for Hayden, I still strongly believe you need trust and honesty in any relationship that you have. I trusted him and was honest with him but he was neither with me. I hated it then but the separation forced me to realize why he was the way he was.
It was actually Declan that opened my eyes to it. We argued many times in the time that we were together, and each time I was storming away leaving him. I didn't break up with him I would just leave. When we were reconciling he told me I was a runner. I denied it then but as I thought about it, there was no doubt about it. I tend to stay blind to my own problems and actions but I'm fully aware of every one else's.
"No, that's not at all what I'm doing. I'm saying I understand. You have to know your crowd and I think it's safe to say he knew me better than I knew myself at that time. He knew that his truth was too heavy for me to handle without feeling overwhelmed and like I couldn't be with him. He wanted me so bad he was willing to lie and withhold to have me. I still strongly despise him for that but I understand now."
"If he asked you to be with him again, to be his girlfriend or his wife, would you?"
"I would love to. I didn't want to turn him down when he told me he still wants me because I still want him. It's just difficult and different. We've both changed and grown, I live so far away and I don't know if I want to move for him when I can't trust him."
"You don't trust him?"
"Not anymore." I tell her honestly. "I love him, of course, but I've been through this with him already and it didn't work. We were unfaithful to one another, it was one-sided in so many ways, it was like a constant battle between me and everyone else in his life. He says he's changed but I don't trust him enough to try again."
"When you go to Seattle this weekend be upfront and honest with him about how you feel. You have to address your fears and problems head on so you guys don't make the same mistakes all over again."
I desire to have a relationship with Hayden again, but I don't want to make the drastic measures that it takes to be with him when I'm not certain that we will even stay together. How will I know I won't run again? How will I know he won't lie to me again? How will I know he won't cheat on me for weeks with other women? How will I know I won't cheat? How will I know it will be different? How will I know it will be better?
I guess it's something you have to actually get into to get the answers. I won't know unless I try again.