Chapter Twenty
Barrett tilted her head, studying Orion. They’d been her therapist for a long time now, the first person that felt like the right fit, but that also meant she knew exactly what they were thinking when they looked at her like that.
“Just say it,” she insisted when they still didn’t speak.
Orion waved their hands in the air like they were winding fabric—which, given how many things in their office and on their person they’d made, was clearly something they were familiar with. “It sounds like… growth.”
Barrett snorted. “For fuck’s sake.”
“You disagree?” they asked more seriously.
“Of course I do. The only thing it is is inconvenient.”
“Is that true?”
“Yes.” Barrett paused, scowling. “No.”
“It’s understandable that you’re worried, Barrett. Caring about people has been difficult in the past, but it doesn’t have to be now or in the future. You’re older, more mature, and Iris isn’t someone you’re related to. She’s not relying on you the way your family was.”
Barrett chewed her lip momentarily. It was true, of course, but Iris wasn’t the real problem. She was. She was still the exact same person who’d been there before. She was the one who’d never quite learned how to turn off feeling responsible for people.
“Do you want to tell me what you’re thinking?” Orion asked, pulling Barrett’s focus from the window she’d been staring at.
“I believe that’s why I’m here,” she shot back.
“Correct. And I’m charging for the privilege, so you might as well get your money’s worth.”
Barrett cracked a smile. It wasn’t everyone’s preferred energy in therapy, but it was hers.
Orion had always been a better fit than her previous therapists, but they’d been…
more traditional, perhaps—in any way you could describe Orion as traditional—in the beginning.
Right up until Barrett had raged about the way people talked to her in therapy, or, more generally, about her past lives.
She didn’t want or need gentle therapeutic treatment, she wanted real and sarcastic.
Orion had quickly figured out a balance that worked for her.
And she’d refused to even consider seeing anyone else since.
She huffed and leaned back into the green couch—easy on the eyes, calming, soft. The perfect therapy couch.
“Fine,” she said eventually. “If I care, it’s like a pipe that bursts, one I can’t turn off.
She needs help and all I can think about is how to make things better for her.
She practically disappeared all weekend, and I thought we were making progress, actually becoming friends, you know?
But then… next to nothing all weekend. Today, she looked like she’d barely eaten, barely slept, and she’s so busy shutting down everything she feels just to…
function. And I get it. She’s doing what she needs to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry.
I brought breakfast again and she ate it, but I’m one more day away from making a fucking star chart just to check she’s eating.
And where’s the bottom? When do I stop and just accept I can’t save her?
She has to do that herself, but, fuck me, Orion, it feels like I’d throw myself in front of a truck if it helped her. And I know where that road goes.”
Orion watched her as she breathed heavily, having barely stopped for breath once she started ranting.
“I know it’s my fault, not hers,” she clarified.
“It’s not your fault.”
Barrett laughed bitterly. It had been so long since she’d felt so tender and bruised on this couch. And that was the entire fucking point.
“It’s not,” Orion said again, a little more forcefully. “Your mind is trying to protect you from the things you’ve gone through before. It’s trying to keep you safe.”
“Yes, well it’s doing a piss-poor job of it.”
“I don’t know if it is,” they said gently.
Barrett hummed, staring hard at the name plate on their desk, her eyes tracing each of the carved letters there: Orion Olatokunbo. It was what she did when she needed grounding in this space.
Orion couldn’t be correct. She’d grown up knowing her only job was to sacrifice herself to keep her siblings alive.
Her role was to act like everything was fine but make sure everyone else took whatever they wanted from her, until there was nothing left for her.
Her mom needed her to look after her siblings, needed her to feed them and change them and fucking raise them.
She was a kid, parenting kids that weren’t hers.
And she and Orion had gone over that and the impacts of it time and time again. So, why, when she finally got to care about someone else in this adult, supposedly healed, body, was she slipping back into the same old patterns? Where was her healthy mind?
“What I’m hearing,” Orion said carefully, “is that you worried about Iris when you didn’t hear from her, but that you still managed to get through your weekend.”
“Yes? What do you mean?”
“Iris was hurting, and you knew and cared about that, but you didn’t sacrifice the things you needed to do this weekend to try to fix something for her.”
Barrett groaned. “So I’m an asshole for not running over there to help her?”
“That’s absolutely not what I said. Is that what your mind is telling you?”
“Yes, because who spends the weekend running errands and seeing friends when they know someone is struggling?”
“Someone with healthy boundaries, Barrett.” They looked at her seriously. “She didn’t ask for you, didn’t reach out to you. For all you knew, she was having a perfectly lovely weekend.”
“But she clearly wasn’t.”
“You know that now, but you can’t beat yourself up over the things you didn’t know. You said she has a therapist, she has her own support systems. It’s not on you to fix it all. One person cannot possibly do that.”
“I’m aware.” But that didn’t mean she wasn’t annoyed by her own inability to do so.
“You understood that Iris wasn’t having the easiest time and you’ve been collaborating with her to make things easier. But you’ve also been keeping up with your own wants and needs.”
“How is that relevant?” She sounded more like a petulant child than she liked, but it was always that way when her family came up.
“The version of you that lived with your family couldn’t have done that.”
“I—”
Orion was right. The feeling of it slammed into her with uncomfortable clarity.
It was the work they’d done for years. When something was off or wrong in her home growing up, she couldn’t function until she fixed it.
It was her job—her only job. No food? Find food.
Beg, borrow, or steal it. The kids had to eat.
Plans with school or friends when her mom needed to work?
Cancel them and watch the kids. Desperate to sleep but they needed money?
Work an overnight shift at the gas station and still go to school the next morning. There was no space for anything else.
This weekend, she’d worried about Iris but she’d done other things. The world didn’t stop if she didn’t tend to Iris every second of the day. Iris didn’t scream and shout or fade away. Neither of them became destitute because she hung out with Ruby and Deepti.
“Okay,” she breathed, her stomach turning over unpleasantly. “I suppose that’s true. But the feeling is still too intense. It’s there constantly. What if it becomes too much and I just… lose myself in it?”
“We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen.
But part of that is recognizing that caring for people doesn’t have to lead to destruction.
You have the power not to go down that road.
And that means accepting that Iris’ well-being is her responsibility.
You can help and care, but fixing her problems isn’t your job. ”
“I know that. Intellectually, I know that.” She moved her hand from her head to her chest. “But emotionally…?”
“It’s hard. I know. But you’re here, taking care of yourself, just like Iris does with her therapist.”
“Right. But her therapist can’t make her eat.”
“Neither can you, Barrett. However, they can work with her on strategies. Just like you and I did. And that helped, right?”
“Yeah, loads.”
“So, you have to believe in Iris and her therapist, trust that they’ll find a way through it.”
“She just seems to have an easier time eating when I’m there. And I want to be there for it—for her.”
“Which is admirable. You’ve been through something similar to what she’s battling right now. Of course you’re going to have a strong reaction to it and want to help.”
“Yeah, but… I don’t know.” She shook her head hard enough to feel a little dizzy.
“I’m not suggesting you’re not important to Iris, but do you think she knows other people who she might be able to eat around?”
An irrational need to be special to Iris speared through her. That was exactly the kind of feeling she did not need. It was important that she wasn’t the only one. Yet, she still wanted to be… the best one. The most helpful, the most useful, the one Iris liked the most. Foolish, foolish feelings.
She huffed. “Her best friend, Anya, I imagine. Probably other people.”
“You don’t need to be her entire village. It’s not on you to fix everything.”
“Then… how do you cope with feeling like you need to?”
“Like you need to? Or like you want to?” Orion was obnoxiously insightful. It helped almost as much as it annoyed her.
So, she thought about it.
Earlier in their work together, Orion had asked her about wants and needs. It had been hard to want anything, hard to admit to the things she did want. Wants were selfish, wants took away from things other people needed.
They’d spent a long time helping her dismantle those particular feelings. She was better with them now, but feeling something as a need still felt safer than a want. The difference mattered, though, especially in this case.
She thought about Iris. About her laugh, her smile, the way she rolled her eyes, how her shoulders sagged when she was annoyed with Barrett’s bullshit. And she thought about her sadness, about the dark cloud she was carrying around.