The Void Between Stars: Book 4 Of The Orion Series

Starting To Work

[Trigger Warning: Discussion of suicidal ideations]

"For today's session, we're going to do something a little different," the group therapist says with a smile.

It's been a month. Everything is going...surprisingly smooth. Ben and Gloria visiting me is a constant now. I've respectfully asked my biological mom to not visit me. I don't know how I would react, I don't know if it would have a positive or negative effect on me, and I don't want to chance it.

Because I am taking this seriously. I thought I did the first time, but I think I was just going through the motions. I tried to spin it to keep my emotions safe. I'm nearly positive that's why I relapsed.

You can talk about your problems all you want to. You can learn about things until you're doing it by osmosis practically. You can talk about all the things you plan on doing to be better until you're blue in the face.

But the first time I was here, I did all those things, but I didn't feel them. I knew I was a wreck, but I also didn't have enough confidence in myself to actually think I could make it. I expected to end up being a failure, like I always did in the back of my mind. I felt largely bullied into the entire thing. Plus there was no sense of urgency to any of it.

Now? Fuck that. Now the stakes are too high. I've resigned myself to the fact I blew things with Tristan. It sucks because I don't know if I'll ever meet anyone as perfect as he was. But just in case I do, if fate cares to bless me with someone equally awesome down the line, well...I want to actually keep it this time. I wanna be better for them.

Then there's Jake. If I have any hope of salvaging my relationship with my best friend, I have to try. I have to be better. I can't lose Jake on top of Tristan, I just can't. If I am to pull this off, I have to actually fucking mean it, and I have to prove that to Jake. I can't just say I'm better—I have to pull the fucking trigger and be better.

In fact, to go meta on the subject, I think that's why I ended up trying to kill myself. I wasn't actually better after rehab last time. I wasn't actually using the tools given to me. It had been just a patch; I was still bleeding profusely everywhere but denied it.

All that happened because it's scary to acknowledge everything. It's terrifying to own up to your faults, and there's a certain disappointment that comes along with looking yourself in the face and knowing how truly fucked up you actually are. It's sad, it's really, really fucking sad. You don't want to look at the shambles of your life and be like, "Damn, this is so fucked up it could be a movie."

You don't want to admit that you have trauma. You don't want to face your demons, especially if you have more demons than most. It's so incredibly difficult for me to look at my life and be like, "Yeah, I felt unworthy of love the first ten years of my life because no one was adopting me. My adoptive parents were emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive. I had a traumatic coming out. My first love basically raped me, so that's manifested in me having to be in control of sex, always the one who initiates it.".

It's really difficult to look at all that and have a fistful of diagnoses to go along with them. You're Depressed because of your childhood. You developed OCD in an attempt to control things because you felt so out of control of everything for the first half of your life. You have a severe anxiety disorder because you just expect the worst to happen, because it's what you've grown accustomed to; you don't ever feel safe because you lacked safety in your formative years so your baseline anxiety is constantly elevated. You developed Bulimia as part of your OCD and from the pressures of fame.

The first time around I acknowledged all that. But I sure as fuck didn't internalize any of it. Because if I did that, I'd have to admit I'm fundamentally a broken person.