Page 1 of Until the Ribbon Breaks

HARLOW

“Her worry comes in fractions; you know that.”

“Better in fractions than not at all, right?”

My eyes drift to the window to spare him having to see them roll. The mist collects on the glass in a similar way misery collects in my soul. It’s never-ending, much like the clouds that hardly spare us their presence. I miss the sun at times, among other things. I’d rather be at the Sound than stuck here in this banal office that has already claimed too much of my time.

When I turn back to Dr. Amberg, my psychiatrist, he’s staring at me with his legs crossed and his notepad resting in his lap. He’s an older man with peppered hair and wire-framed glasses with small round lenses. They look funny on him.

I scan the room, which is void of any kind of decoration. The hours I’ve spent in here have been countless, yet with each passing week, this office remains just as desolate as it was the first time I walked into it. “Why have you never decorated?” I ask. “How long has this been your office?”

He fiddles with his pencil as he thinks for a moment. “Around eight years, I suppose.”

“And you’ve never hung a single picture? Not even your college diplomas? Are you even a real doctor?”

“I never got around to framing them.”

“Are they not important?”

“Not as important as my patients. So, why don’t we get back to you?”

“There’s nothing to get back to because there’s nothing to talk about.”

“Your mother is worried.”

“What’s new?” I scoff.

“What would you say if I told you thatIwas worried?”

“I don’t want to hurt myself,” I defend on the veins of irritation.

“I wasn’t insinuating that you did.”

I don’t believe him. Everyone who knows about my incident uses it as a reason to treat me differently, as if I can’t be trusted, as if I’m malfunctioned, as if I’m a ticking time bomb. It makes it impossible to forget—not that I want to forget, I only wantthemto forget.

“Triggers have a way up popping up when we least expect them, and sometimes, if we aren’t paying attention, we can miss them,” he adds.

“I’m not triggered.”

“And what about when you hurt yourself?”

Nervously, I clasp my hands together. I think about that day often. There was nothing alluring about it—it wasn’t a fantasy about to be fulfilled—even though, in a way, it was. When the attempt happened, it was all a blur.

Maybe I should tell him that.

If it weren’t so hard to open up about it, maybe I would be able to be honest with him.

I want to feel better, there’s no doubt, but I’m scared and embarrassed.

Information creates power that I fear could be used against me. This is why I’m selective with what I share with Dr. Amberg in these weekly sessions.

He means well. I’ve actually come to like him since I first met him at Hopewell, but it isn’t enough for me to trust him entirely, and he knows it. It’s been seven months since I was admitted to his facility, and even now that I’m back home, I still find it extremely difficult to talk about that day.

After setting his pencil and notepad on the small table beside him, he folds his hands together on top of his legs. “What happened with you is never an easy thing to talk about.”

His eyes linger on me, and I know he’s trying to read me, trying to find the crack in my façade. I want so badly to be fixed, but that would require me to open up and be transparent, to expose the depths of my sadness buried inside.

“How have you been sleeping?”

---