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She isn’t in her bedroom; she doesn’t have her own bedroom anymore. Although she maintains her ability to present well, her brain injury evaporated the life she had built for herself. The symptomatic proclivity towards impulsive decisions and trusting unworthy people, led her to a state of homelessness. Yet she is lucky to have an assortment of people in her network who own pets and travel often, thus for now, she is nowhere near the streets. The room where she currently sleeps is crowded with a lifetime of art books and specialized gift wrapping and stationary accoutrements, from another era.

Trying to bring some formality into the informality of having her therapist in her current sleeping chamber, she sits above the covers, cross legged. Before every session she builds two towers of pillows, one to sit on, to correct the concave mattress (knowing this is better for the body from years of yoga); the other to raise the computer, so she’s not looking down at the screen (learned from the internet- in attempts to mitigate her chronic fatigue). She’s a few minutes late but once she logs on is quick to share that she has been paddling in deeper waters than usual. Describing an interaction with her sister, from the day before, she’s slowly sipped into the fog of her own desperation. Her body shrinks noting the incongruence she observes between her desires to be genuinely seen and respected and the reality of her relationship with her sibling. The sister, two and a half years her senior, had been her main source of stability growing up, but as a tempestuous child herself, the duo co-created a stormy codependency. After their mother died, the younger sister made a one-sided pact to remedy the unrestrained habitual misunderstandings. Harmony grew between the two, over the course of a decade. However, along with much else of her intentionally developed character, the evolved dynamic melted away as her post concussive symptoms swallowed her. Swimming nearly as far away from where she sat possible, her therapist tries to reach her, “but you do actually know that that’s not the best way to get your point across, right?” The comment ripples through her. Concession and embarrassment strike a suspension and release of murky breath out of her body. Beneath this initial layer of murk, she is gulped by memories with her sister: the drama, the unusual closeness, the glimmers of fun and feeling on top of the world together. Unofficially, mania does float through their bloodlines. Her therapist scatters the mirage in her glossed over eyes and says frankly “like, I don’t know you that well, but I think you’re more of a winner, aren’t you? I mean… like, the better way to get their attention is to succeed and get through this and become like a great success story. Don’t you think that would feel so much better?” The patients’ eyes swell like a delicately bubbling ground spring. The elusive sensations of having once been a winner, crash her body upon the shore and undulate the muscles of her frame. She pulls her shoulders back, she speaks with more assertiveness, “I suppose, the truth is, is that she doesn’t seem to reflect upon herself now, so it is entirely illogical to think that me, killing myself, would wake her up in any substantial way.” Her therapist delicately concedes: “I think your probably, and unfortunately, right about that. And ultimately, is that what you really want- to risk your life for her to wake up?” The therapist pauses uncertain about how the question lands and continues “What if she didn’t exist?” Catapulted out of the room, out of her story, she hears the six-year-old neighbor screaming in delight cannon balling into the pool. Trying to focus, she repeats out loud “if she didn’t exist…”, pausing, to rewind the playback from moments before, “I probably wouldn’t feel as shitty. It would be very sad, but if she can’t meet me in the middle and take responsibility for her own behavior, well, I am just done now.” At the end of the session, boundaries are highlighted, additional resources are shared, and the young woman folds her computer closed. She lies back on a decorative pile of pillows now, her eyes, as if rain clouds cleanse her face with tears.

Remembering, her innate ability to pull others into their own integrity, which she formerly managed to do as a good girl, she was now ready to begin claiming her full truth telling powers as a woman.

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