I pace back and forth before Dr. Abrams, linking my hands behind my neck. Sunshine from the window filters through the leaves of hanging plants suspended all around her office. Her desk sits in the far corner, neat and orderly, a few stacks of papers dotting the surface. She gestures to the chair where I usually sit—where we face each other in the comfortable armchairs by the windows, sunbathing our conversations in light and warmth. I’ve worked through so many of my emotions there. It’s the very spot where I came to terms with so many hurts and wrestled my demons to the ground. But this time, I don’t think there is an affirmation, meditation, or journal entry that can help me live with the consequences of what I’ve done. In the stark cold of morning, realizing I want Josiah back was as much a curse as a blessing. It’s waking up in a nightmare of my own making.
“Be more specific,” Dr. Abrams says once we’re both seated. “How did you mess up?”
I pull the fluffy pillow from behind me and place it in my lap, toying restlessly with the tassels edging it.
“My ex. I think I still love him.”
“Oh, that.” Her lips curve into an indulgent smile. “Based on a few of our conversations, I suspected as much, but you needed to come to it for yourself.”
My breaths chop up in my throat and I can’t get enough air. I grip the chair’s armrest and fight off a wave of panic. Not a wave. A tsunami. It crashes over my head, submerging me in every possibility that I’ve screwed this beyond unscrewing.
“Calm down, Yasmen,” Dr. Abrams says. “Breathe in long. Breathe out slow.”
This shouldn’t work. The mere act of drawing air into my lungs should not calm me down, should not make me feel better, and yet it usually does. The stream of cool air swelling inside, reaching my brain and oxygenating the air-starved pockets, never fails to help. I go through that a few times until my heart stops stammering and the dots clear from my vision.
“I’ve ruined everything.” I shake my head, tears slipping from the corners of my eyes. “My daughter hates me. My husband…ex-husband is done with me. What was I thinking? How could I…”
My voice breaks on a sob, and I bury my face in my hands, shame and guilt and frustration seizing me by the throat, squeezing until my breath shortens again and my head swims. It’s been so long since I had a panic attack, but I’m on the verge of one now.
“Let’s say you did ruin everything.”
The alarming words crooned in such a soothing tone coax my eyes open. Dr. Abrams’s kind stare holds me in place when I would dart back behind the protective shield of my eyelids.
“This happens, Yasmen. Depression is an altered state of mind. Not just feeling sad, but the chemistry of your brain, your hormones. Your body is a participant, held hostage to depression just as much as your mind.”
We discussed all of this before I started the antidepressant. Revisited it as we fiddled with dosages to find the right mix for my body, my brain chemistry.
“Depression,” she goes on, “is a liar. If it will tell you no one loves you, that you’re not good enough, that you’re a burden or, in the most extreme cases, better off dead, then it can certainly convince you that you’re better off without the man you love, and that, ultimately, he’s better off without you.”
I know depression deceives, but how this illness warped truth, how it manipulated my emotions and turned my fears on me, takes my breath for a moment. The magnitude of what I’ve lost, what I surrendered, lands on me with the weight and heat of a meteor.
“While believing the lies depression tells us,” she continues, “sometimes we make decisions and do things we wouldn’t otherwise. Part of the process of healing from depressive episodes can be dealing with the fallout of things we did and decided in that altered state of mind.”
“Fallout? Is that what you call something as irreversible as divorce?”
“Oh, divorce isn’t irreversible. It’s not the worst regret you could have as a result of decisions you made when depressed or grieving,” Dr. Abrams says. “There’s a documentary about the Golden Gate Bridge. A documentarian left a camera on the bridge around the clock for a year. Filmed twenty-four jumps.”
“Oh, my God.” I clasp my hands tightly in my lap and hold her stare. She knows the truth of how I grappled with my darkest thoughts. Though I never tried to end my life, the thought became something the untried, pre-tragic version of myself never imagined it could be: tempting.
“They talked to a survivor and you know what he said?” She pauses, waiting for me to shake my head, breath bated. “As soon as he jumped, he changed his mind.”
I blink at her owlishly. The weight of that sinking through my bones and flesh and digging into my heart.
“That,” she says, “is an irreversible outcome. Divorce may or may not be. Broken relationships may or may not be. You may never repair those completely, but you’re still here to try. Do you recognize what an amazing gift that is? To still be here to try?”
I blink back hot tears and nod.
“You’re right. I’m grateful to still be here,” I say. “I look back and read my journals from when I first started therapy, and now I can see how warped my thinking was, how I swallowed the lies depression fed me. They became so much a part of me until they felt like truth. I don’t know that person. It feels like someone else was in charge of my life. Like someone else made those decisions and now I’m back and have to live with the consequences.”
“You have to make peace with that woman, Yasmen, because she is you. She’s not someone you banished with therapy and meds.Sheisyou. You cannot dissociate from her. Until you reconcile that, you won’t find true peace. Until you have compassion for her instead of judgment, you cannot fully heal.”
She grabs her pen and pad from the side table, lifts her head, and stares me down. “So let’s set a date.”
“A date? For what?”
“We need to put it on the calendar, the day you’re going to forgive yourself and get about the business of living your life.”
“Um, pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.”