Chapter Forty-Three Violet
Chapter Forty-Three
Violet
Supervision wasn’t therapy, but some days it felt dangerously close.
Dr. Afonso’s office was every shade of neutral—soft beige walls, framed degrees, a bookshelf arranged like it belonged in a catalog and holding every textbook on psychology known to humanity.
I’d been coming here for half a year, and still I cataloged the space each time, like it might change if I didn’t keep track. The painting on the wall behind her drew me most with its abstract swirls of muted blues and greens, and never having the same shape twice if you stared long enough.
Her chair was angled slightly toward me, open without making me feel confined. I noticed she also always wore earth-tone shades, ones that helped with sensory overload. Although she and this space intimidated me at first, I’d learned to find comfort in it, especially with her.
Composed. Attentive. No judgment. Just listening.
“How’s the coursework?” she asked, her voice even, practiced.
The leather couch creaked under me as I shifted. “It’s . . . a lot. All online for now, though clinicals are coming. Most nights I’m up late finishing modules or discussion posts.”
“And how does that feel?”
“Like I’m dissecting myself on paper,” I admitted instantly, surprised at how easily those words flowed from me.
Her head tilted slightly. “And how do you feel saying that now?”
The answer came before I wanted it to. “Like I’m bracing. Shoulders up, jaw tight. Waiting for impact.”
“Bracing is anticipation of threat, even when there is none,” she said. “Let’s try grounding. Close your eyes.”
I leaned back, exhaled, and nodded.
“Five things you see when you walk into this room.”
The office unfolded in my mind like a photo I’d memorized. “The walls. The plant by the window. The bookshelf. My notebook. That painting.”
“Four things you can touch.”
I smoothed my hands down my jeans. “The rough denim. My soft sweater. My solid notebook. The couch cushion I’m sitting on.”
“Now, three things you can hear.”
I focused. “The hum of the overhead light. The clock. And my breathing.”
Her voice seemed soft and distant. “Two you can smell.”
“Your coffee. The vanilla perfume you use.”
“And one thing you feel inside, Violet.”
“My heartbeat,” I whispered.
Her voice seemed even softer. “And how does it feel?”
“At first, fast. Now . . . steady. Strong.”
“Good. Boundaries begin with that. They begin with keeping yourself tethered to what’s here, not what memories drag back.”
Already, my chest felt looser, though doubt still pressed at the edges. I picked at a loose thread on my sweater. “Sometimes boundaries don’t matter. People and trauma cross them anyway.”
Her pen hovered. “Boundaries aren’t walls. They’re signals. We can’t always stop others from crossing them, but we can keep making them known. That’s how you take back control.”
I nodded. “I keep my routines, and find peace in journaling.”
“You’re still sitting in on group sessions at work?”
“Yeah, even when I don’t want to.” I thought back to all my routines, all the small things I forced myself to do so things felt controlled. “I hear your voice reminding me to water the plant you told me to get. It’s the first thing I do when I get home.”
“Let’s circle back to journaling. Tell me more about how that’s going. What are some things you’ve been writing about?”
I glanced at the spiral notebook in my lap, the words inside sharp, slanted, and rushed.
“I wrote that I was good at noticing other people’s pain.
I can feel where it sits in them, and how heavy it must feel.
” I looked at Dr. Afonso. “I know when they’re telling me the soft version of their trauma because the hard version hurts too much. ”
She smiled faintly. “Rituals. They don’t cure. They anchor.”
I wanted to believe her. But a knot twisted in my gut. “What if I’m not strong enough for any of this?”
Her brow lifted. “What do you mean? Expand on that.”
I thought about exactly what I meant. “Not mistaking a stranger for someone I lost.”
Her expression softened. “Grayson?”
I nodded and went back to twisting a loose thread at the bottom of my sweater.
“Let’s talk about him.”
“I saw him,” I whispered. “Not really him. Just a man walking, but he wore the same long, dark jacket Grayson had. And the way he walked . . . for a second it was Grayson. My chest cleaved open. I knew it wasn’t him, but my body didn’t care. It was like hope slammed straight through me.”
“What did you do after?”
“I wanted to call out to him, to run after him. Instead, I went home and watered my plant. Then I cried.”
She exhaled quietly, almost like approval. “Functioning sorrow. It hurts like hell.”
The phrase settled heavily in me. What I wanted was resurrection, but I kept that to myself.
“I know we speak little about Grayson, but do you feel comfortable enough to keep talking about him?”
God, yes. I wanted that, wanted to talk about how much I loved him.
“I force myself to think about the positive times we shared. I’m sick and tired of the bad shit that tries to push forward.
” She didn’t ask for more, but I gave it to her anyway.
“Sometimes I feel the warmth of his laugh against my ear, or the way he kissed me slow, like he had all the time in the world.” I looked down at my hands.
“The intimacy of skin against skin, breath against breath . . . it’s a different kind of fire that has nothing to do with death. ”
When the session ended, Dr. Afonso told me, “You’re doing the work,” and I didn’t know if it was encouragement or warning.
I left her office and stepped into the gray afternoon. The air was damp with sea salt, the kind that clung to your skin and refused to let go. Down on the boardwalk, the ocean rolled dark and endless, every wave sounding like a voice I couldn’t quite hear.
“One day at a time,” I whispered.
But what I hadn’t admitted to Dr. Afonso was that I still searched every face. Not for strangers who reminded me of Grayson, but for the one moment I feared and longed for . . . that I’d blink, and there he’d be, walking toward me out of the fog.
And I wouldn’t know if it was real . . . or if I’d finally slipped under.