Married To Baseball

Miss Dinner.

Jailyn~

"Yeah, it's a lot," I confirm to my therapist, Amy, after recounting the last few weeks. "And we still haven't replaced the lamp."

Amy can't help but chuckle, the simplest of my problems being relayed to her. "That's at least something you can control," She points out, "As heavy as everything with Nick is, you seem to be handling it pretty well."

Nodding, "I think for the most part. From my perspective, I've dealt with everything that happened in my relationship with him. The thing that I think I'm the most stuck on is that I feel relieved. Like someone is dead, because of him, and I feel relieved."

"I'm sure you're going to feel many things through this whole process. Why would you say you feel relieved?"

"Maybe because I have some assurance he won't be able to hurt anyone else. As horrible as it is to say, I've always believed he'd get to this point, it was just a matter of when. There's also a part of me that I think held so much anxiety knowing he was just out there, that at any point I could end up having to interact with him again in some capacity. I suppose that's still there and I know I'll have to see him once everything goes to trial, but there's a level of security now that I'd never had before."

Amy nods, "I've been waiting almost as long as I've known you to admit that openly."

"You could have told me," I joke, knowing that's not the point of our sessions.

"You've always known," She points out, "You're also justified in feeling this relief. Just like you're justified to feel every other emotion you're going to throughout this process. He hurt you in ways that no one ever deserves, and now he's getting some sort of repercussions for that."

"Right," I agree, "I'm just stuck on how guilty I feel. Obviously, I know that I couldn't do anything about what he did. I have always felt like I could've and should've done more."

Taking a breath, Amy nods, "Jai, you've always had such an innate sense of right and wrong, which is an incredible quality to have, but from a perspective of having witnessed cases like yours go to court and fail, there's nothing more you could have done. As horrible as that is to say, the system isn't built to protect the Olivias of the world, just those that come after." Chewing on the inside of my lip, I can't help but shake my head knowing she's right. "As impossible as it may feel, you have to let go of some of that guilt."

"Yeah," Is all I can say. Easier said than done.

Overall, I feel a lot better after today's session. Amy and I were able to sort most of my thoughts out and get me to a place where it doesn't feel like they're consuming me. Grabbing the two new lamps out of my passenger seat, another thing that was taken care of, I head into the house.

Setting them down on the counter for a moment I set my bag and keys to the side before grabbing the lamps again to head upstairs. "Hey," Christian says, spotting me from the top of the steps.

"I got new lamps!" I say, holding one up to show off.

"I see that," He laughs, moving out of the way as I get to the top of the stairs. "They look nice. Where'd you grab them from?"

"Anthropology," I chuckle, knowing he's going to have some comment.

"Where's everything else?" There it is.

"Nothing spoke to me today like the lamps," I joke back, setting the first lamp in the empty space on my end table. "I probably should have asked when I was out, we don't have any light bulbs, do we?"

"I can check, probably not though."

"That's a later problem," I comment, "I'll continue to suffer in the dark."