Broken Connections

III.

"And how do those dreams and flashbacks make you feel?" It takes everything in me to not roll my eyes when my new therapist, Sophia, asks me after I tell her why I've come in.

This is beyond stereotypical, but I guess that's what really helps, so I try to humour her.

"Well it makes me physically sick, I get so worked up and mad or sad about it I've had to run to the washroom to puke. I try so hard to put him out of my mind, to move on, but when he shows up in my dreams like he does, I can't." She just stares at me, no comment on what I just said. It starts to make me feel self conscious, as if I've done something wrong. My eyes dart around the room, trying to find something to focus on other than my stupidity.

"Severe anxiety manifests itself in different ways for almost anybody who deals with it, you getting sick is completely normal, although it's not great I've heard of worse side effects, some people pass out, some go into a fog and don't even know what they're doing at any given moment, it's all just a ploy your body does to try to get your mind off of it." I manage to pull my focus back to her, actually feeling like I'm a normal person for the first time in the past month.

We talk more about ways my anxiety can come up and a bunch of different skills to cope with it when it does for the rest of the hour. I leave with strict guidelines to be back for another hour on Thursday.

After I leave I head to my favourite little coffee shop, it's a little boutique coffee house, like the ones all the famous instagrammers and internet huh people take pictures of. I order my usual upside down iced caramel macchiato. It's just a regular iced caramel macchiato, but they put the espresso in first and add the milk and caramel on top, that way it mixes a lot better and I don't end up with my first sip being 100% sugar.

"Well, now you have two coffees to drink. Dummy, I was here before you I ordered your regular for you." I'm jostled out of my deep thoughts by a familiar and happy voice.

"Rory, god you scared me. Thank you. I guess I'm not sleeping tonight." I glance at my watch, it's 3:00 pm, no way that I'm going to bed any time soon after two espresso drinks. I guess I should have looked around before ordering.

"Meh, sleep is for the weak."

We sat at my usual table, over looking one of the busiest streets in Toronto, people watching. I loved to make up stories for each of the people that walked by. If I didn't get a job in editing maybe I could be a writer. My novels would all be heartbreak novels though.

"So what were you up to this morning?" Rory asks knocking me out of the beginning of another panic attack, thinking about my imminent, and ever so boring future ahead of me.

"I actually went a saw a therapist, decided that I wasn't going to have any more of the debilitating anxiety that has struck me."

"Elle, that's so good. I'm really proud of you! Even more so because I didn't have to call and make the appointment for you!" She laughs taking another sip of her coffee.

"Yeah, I never thought that it'd be so stereotypical, like the way she said things could have been taken right out of a movie. But she made me feel really comfortable and not like I was weird or wrong at all so I guess it's going to be good for me."

She smiles at me reassuringly, telling me it's okay, and that I'm not weird. I've been through a traumatic event, even if it was just leaving behind a guy.

"So I was thinking, we haven't really got to celebrate us being back together! We've been back in the same city for a month now, other than the two weeks I went back over there, and we've only ever hung out at each other's houses. You told me that we would go out to party. And now I'm holding you to it. Tonight, 10 o'clock we're going out. Take me to your favourite bar that you used to have to sneak into. The one you always told me about back in first year."