physiotherapy | awsten knight

39: psychotherapy

epilogue

"What has brought you here today?", the woman says, dressed in a white coat and narrow glasses perched up on the bridge of her roman nose.

Cosima sits on a chair opposite her, shoulders hunched together and eyes glued to the table stood between them.

She doesn't even know how to put it into words.

"I'm-", she takes a deep breath in, "...just really overwhelmed."

The psychiatrist sends her a sceptic look, "You need to give me more detail than-"

Cosima interrupts her, before she can even stop herself. "I feel like I am losing my grip on reality. My life– it just, feels like it isn't mine."

Her words come out messy and unstructured.

"I'm constantly paranoid that my boyfriend– well he is not really my boyfriend anymore. I scared him off-", she cut herself off before she could go into any more detail.

"And now I'm stuck in a rut. I can't get out of bed and I don't want to, either. I cut off all my friends and my family, too, obviously. I constantly feel like a failure and so alone.", Cosima has trouble holding her tears back. They start spilling out faster than she had anticipated.

"My body feels like it's on fire constantly and I don't think my meds are working. I'm constantly crying and being angry over any little thing. I feel like my outbursts are controlling me more than I can control them. And I'm afraid that anyone– okay it's more like, someone specific could break into my apartment and moment. I check the lock like twice every hour. Even at night. I only get like two hours of sleep every night because of it.", she is stopped briefy by a choke forcing itself out of her throat.

"And I don't want to take my sleeping pills because what if he comes to get me-"

Cosima can't go on anymore after that. She's fully breaking down, curling herself into a hunched position on her chair and tears flowing down her cheeks.

"Miss Moore, I need you to speak more clearly. I can hardly understand you.", the psychiatrist tells her, sitting back and watching her fall apart.

Cosima tries to contain herself, so that she can keep going. But she can't bring herself to stay calm or even level-headed.

"Didn't you hear me? I think he's coming to get me!", the girl exclaims urgently. Her volume border-lines on a shout.

"Miss More, I need you to calm down. Who is coming to get you?", the psychiatrist speaks up with a sense of authority. She draws her pen, adding notes to the paper attached to her clipboard.

"Him! My ex- or ... I don't know! His face looks weird! It's not him, but there is someone, please stop him!", Cosima cries into her hands, not being able to bear the warped images in her mind.

"Okay, so it's a man you know? You're having a hard time identifying who he is though?", the doctor asks for confirmation.

Cosima sniffles and nods.

"You mentioned you were taking medications? I need you to give me the names, dosage and time of the day you are taking them.", the doctor continues, her steady voice paints a stark contrast to Cosima's.

After taking Cosima's medical history and performing a physical exam, she picks the conversation back up.

"You have described a lot of things to me just now. Would you mind explaining your quote 'paranoia'? So you check whether or not your door is locked? So do I."

"It's not just that.", Cosima feels a pang in her chest at the woman's cold attitude.

"So I was dating this guy and I was constantly afraid that he's doing something to hurt me. Like, I thought he was poisoning my food and that he staged for me to have a serious injury. And I thought he wanted to physically trap me with him, like in my apartment. And I freaked out on him, big time. And I kept trying to push it down, but I couldn't do it anymore. At one point I had to do something about it."

The psychiatrist blinks slowly and looks at her seriously, "Well, what did you do about it? I, too, would freak out if someone tried to do those things to me."

"See, the thing is I never actually had any proof. I had the suspicions, but I am still unsure if anything ever really happened. And whatever I believe to be the case basically changes every hour.", Cosima explains.

"What do you believe to be the truth right now?", the woman asks.

"I think I might have overreacted, or completely misread the situation."

Admitting it, is hard for Cosima, but it feels necessary. She changes views on the subject so quickly though, she feels like, if she had been asked the same question only ten minutes earlier, her answer would have been the opposite.

"Back to my question, what did you do about it? Surely, you felt really threatened."

"I threw a jar at him, because I thought he wanted to hurt me.", Cosima admits it, but it feels more like someone else had control over her body back then.

"So you intended to harm him?", the doctor perks up.

Cosima knows exactly where her true answer will land her, but she doesn't know any other way out anymore. She feels tired and torn up from all the back and forth, lonely and guilty from cutting every last person off and angry at herself for completely derailing her life.

"At the time it was, yes."

The doctor takes in a deep breath, as she opens a drawer and gets out a stack of papers. She flicks through them quickly, making sure she got every page.

"Okay, given that you report almost harming someone, I need you to read through these pages and sign at the end. It's an agreement between us that you will undergo in-patient therapy at a clinic, here in Houston and that, until a place becomes available for you, you swear not to harm yourself or anyone else. If you decide to not sign and therefor not agree, or if you break the agreement before you can be admitted, I will have to call an ambulance and have you escorted to an emergency facility against your will.", she explains.

Cosima sighs silently to herself, scans the pages and promptly signs the agreement.

*****