Page 10 of Inevitable Endings
The Storm Beneath the Skin
Isabella
The rain has stopped, unlike my nightmares.
For the first time in weeks, the streets of New York aren’t slick with water, reflecting neon lights like shattered pieces of a dream. The air is cold but clear, the kind of night that should feel fresh, new. But it doesn’t. The dampness lingers in the cracks of the pavement, in the spaces between heartbeats, in the places I can’t quite reach.
I sit in the waiting room of Dr. Monroe’s office, staring at the floor. The chair beneath me is firm, unyielding, the fluorescent lighting above just harsh enough to remind me this isn’t a place meant for comfort. The air smells sterile, clean but in an artificial way, the kind of scent that doesn’t belong anywhere real. The clock on the wall ticks steadily, each second dragging into the next.
Ada pushed me here. Dragged me, really. She didn’t say it outright, but I could hear it in her voice every time she told me to ‘‘get some rest,’’ every time she watched me over the rim of her coffee cup, waiting for me to break. She was waiting for the cracks to show, for the storm inside me to finally spill over.
I let her win. I didn’t have the energy to fight anymore.
After weeks of sleepless nights, of drowning in the weight ofmy own mind, I stepped into this office and sat across from a woman who was supposed to fix me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be fixed. I loved being a mess, especially when it came to him. I don’t even believe I can be ‘“fixed” after all I have been through and have seen.
When I was a child, I was never allowed to be anything other than small. His voice, loud and suffocating, would fill the house, and I learned to shrink into corners, to make myself invisible. There was never any room for softness. The warmth that a child should have, the love that should’ve flowed freely, none of it ever reached me. He took all of it. Took it with his hands and his words, and what was left behind was a quiet, aching loneliness I could never outrun.
I didn’t know what safety felt like, not really. Until him.
He was the first person who made me feel something real, something alive. I never knew what excitement was until he looked at me like I mattered.
It’s ironic, really.
He was the first person to ever make me feel alive. A criminal. A marked man. A force of chaos, of destruction, someone who should have been the last person to make me feel safe. But he did. He made me feel seen, wanted, and for once, I felt like I mattered, something I had never experienced, not in the warmth of my mother’s arms or in the safety of a home that was supposed to protect me.
A few sessions in, Dr. Monroe put me on Prozac. Just a low dose, something to ‘‘balance the chemicals,’’ something to ‘‘help me function again.’’ It worked. I wake up. I eat. I work. I exist. The machine inside me is running again, smooth and efficient.
The sharp edges of my thoughts are duller now, the grief I carried like an open wound has scabbed over. I don’t feel like I’m drowning anymore, but I don’t feel like I’m breathing either. I function, but I am not me.
The door to the office opens, and Dr. Monroe steps out, her expression calm, professional. “Come in, Isabella.”
I rise without a word, stepping into the office. It’s small but warm, decorated with soft colors and lined with bookshelves filled with psychology texts and literature. A small couch sits against the far wall, but I never use it. I take my usual chair across from her desk, my hands folding neatly in my lap as if they belong to someone else.
Dr. Monroe sits too, flipping open her notebook, pen poised between her fingers. “How have you been feeling?”
It’s the same question every time. I give the same answer.
“Fine.”
“Fine,” is the most told lie in human history.
It slips from our lips like a shield, hiding the weight we’re too tired to carry. It’s the mask we wear when we don’t know how to say that we’re drowning, when the world feels too heavy to share.
She studies me for a long moment, assessing, peeling back the layers I try so hard to keep in place. “Fine isn’t a feeling.”
I exhale slowly, forcing my body to relax, though every muscle in me feels wound too tight, stretched too thin. “I don’t know,” I say eventually. “The Prozac is working. I can focus at work again. I’m eating, I’m sleeping. I guess that means I’m fine.”
Her lips press together, thoughtful. “It means you’re functioning. But functioning isn’t healing.”
I don’t respond.
She lets the silence linger before shifting gears, her voice gentle but firm. “Last time, we spoke about your childhood.”
I tense. I knew this was coming. I always know. It doesn’t make it easier.
“We don’t have to go there if you don’t want to,” she says, watching me carefully. “But I think it’s important that we continue to explore how that shaped you.”
I glance at the clock. Fifty minutes to go.
