Wade
I had come to the conclusion that therapy was the universe’s way of taking everything that was weighing you down, amplifying it by a hundred, and shoving it back down your throat for you to choke on.
I’d spent the last two weeks talking about my feelings more often than I had in my entire life.
At the end of each day, I crawled into bed, closed my eyes, and crashed. There were no nightmares, no thoughts of the past, just a void of darkness and an overwhelming sense of calm.
The first couple of days after arriving at the treatment center were rough. Settling into a new environment had exacerbated my nightmares, often leaving me gasping for air as I fought for each ragged inhale of breath.
Thankfully, the in-house psychiatrist had offered relief in the form of some sleeping pills to get me through the worst of it.
I fought tooth and nail against taking any sort of meds, but after talking with the therapist in individual sessions, she encouraged me to use them as a stepping stone, not a crutch, to which I’d reluctantly agreed.
After the first night of getting a full ten hours of sleep, I decided to only use them temporarily. As my therapist would say, “We’re here to create good habits and coping mechanisms, not to create bad habits as a way of brushing off the things we need to deal with.”
Each day at the center, we alternated between group and individual therapy in the morning, and a therapy-based extracurricular in the afternoons.
We weren’t bound to a schedule, but for the duration of our stay, it was highly encouraged for us to focus on the suggestions of our therapy team and the assets provided.
Keeping a strict schedule was something I was intimately familiar with, so I had no reservations about working within those constraints.
I was signed up for individual therapy and dreading every single moment as the clock ticked by. My therapist, Dr. Langford, was a kind woman—but her idea of healing involved what I could only constitute as psychological torture.
Locking the door to my room behind me, I walked down the long corridor to the wing where the offices were. I passed by other residents’ rooms; people were milling about, chatting in between therapy sessions.
The interior of the center reminded me of its own little town. Each resident had their own apartment of sorts, and there were common areas for food, entertainment, and socializing.
Therapists’ offices and conference rooms were kept sequestered to one wing of the center, maintaining the appearance of a nonclinical atmosphere.
I had learned that each therapist focused on only three clients at a time to ensure everyone was given ample attention to their individual needs. Not only did they work in small numbers, but each therapist was also specifically chosen for each resident based on their expertise and background.
Dr. Langford, who insisted during each and every session that I call her Winnie, had grown up in the area and was highly familiar with the small-town lifestyle.
She had shared with me during our first session that she actually had been born and raised on a small ranch much like ours. We bonded over our love of horses and riding. It made confiding in her easier, knowing that she was able to correlate some of the daily stressors with experience.
She pushed me to join the equine therapy extracurricular as a way to push past mental barriers I’d put up around riding. Even though I couldn’t ride, it was comforting to be around a ranch-like atmosphere.
Each day, I went out and mucked stalls, tacked up horses for riders, and washed them down when they came back in.
It was nice to feel needed and have something to keep my hands from sitting idle, but I struggled to see how it correlated to my healing. It often felt like a slap in the face to be so close but unable to ride.
I rapped on Dr. Langford’s door, and a soft “come in” echoed from behind the wood. I turned the knob and removed my hat, setting it upside down on the table beside the entrance.
“Mornin’, ma’am.” Some habits were hard to break, and this was one I would take to my grave. Calling a woman ma’am, even if they weren’t much your senior, was a sign of respect, and I wasn’t going to give it up, no matter how formal it sounded.
“Good morning, Wade,” she said with a smile.
Dr. Langford was a middle-aged woman with a warm personality and a gentle, motherly soul.
Her wardrobe consisted of items that reminded me of the seventies.
All long, layered pieces that swished when she walked, and rings on each finger.
Her long blonde hair, graying at the temples, was always in a braid, draped over one shoulder.
She was eclectic, but never off-putting.
As I walked into the room and took a seat across from her on the worn leather couch, she lowered her reading glasses that hung around her neck on a beaded string.
I noticed the soft laugh lines that webbed beside her eyes, crinkling with each soft smile. They reminded me of Pops and the way he’d earned every single one with a hard-fought smile and a welcome laugh.
“How are you feeling today?” she asked, her signature notebook seated in her lap. The small leather-bound book was where she kept all the important information on each of her clients.
From what some of the other residents had mentioned, it seemed like she was the only one who still hand-wrote her notes. Most of the other therapists had moved over to recording sessions and transcribing them after the fact.
I liked the fact that she was a little old-school, as I wasn’t huge on technology myself.
“Better than yesterday,” I sighed.
Each day that we had individual sessions, she asked me to focus on one thing that was better between sessions. So far, they had been minor, like not forgetting to get dessert at the cafeteria or making the acquaintance of another resident.
I hadn’t felt much of a breakthrough toward healing, but I knew that the process wasn’t simple or linear. I just needed to be patient and trust in myself and my therapists to help me get back to a place where I could see the light again.
“That’s great. You had your appointment with the doctor yesterday, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The previous day, I’d been able to miss out on my therapy sessions as I spent the day at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. I’d been poked, prodded, imaged, stretched, bent, and studied all day.
Coming back to the treatment center had been a relief after all the testing I had endured, and I’d flopped down in my bed, dead on my feet.
When I’d first arrived, and the intake coordinator noted that I never received a second opinion on my injury, the focus became making sure the doctors hadn’t been wrong in keeping me from riding.
It had taken almost two weeks to get an appointment with each of the specialists, and the center gave me a day pass to be able to attend all of my appointments.
On a general basis, once you checked in at ERRC, you didn’t get to leave until the end of your allotted thirty days.
I’d been accompanied by the intake coordinator, Lydia, whom I’d met on my first day, to each of my appointments. I didn’t feel like a prisoner, but the reminder of having a babysitter kept things more clinical.
Throughout the day, I met with a neurosurgeon, a musculoskeletal specialist, an orthopedic surgeon, and a physical therapist.
Each one had run different versions of the same tests, and they would sit down and discuss their findings as a panel once the results were in.
I was on pins and needles waiting for answers, but I hadn’t allowed myself the opportunity to hope for a different outcome than the one I’d already been given.
Hope was too dangerous a feeling to allow myself the luxury of entertaining.
“How are you feeling about all of that?” the therapist asked, uncapping her pen and opening her notebook to a blank page.
“Nervous,” I stated simply; no use in beating around the bush. I learned very early on that the sooner I cut to the chase in individual therapy, the sooner I was able to get out to the stables where I truly wanted to be.
“What has you nervous?” she asked gently, probing me for more information.
“What if they say I still can’t ride?”
“What will that change about the way things are right now?”
I thought about that for a moment. Realistically, it wouldn’t change the way things were currently; she was right. Things could only get better or stay the same.
There was a high probability that they would tell me what I already knew—that I wouldn’t be able to ride again. But the tiny spark of hope that bloomed inside of me, no matter how hard I’d fought it, at the prospect of the original diagnosis being wrong was a hard thing to ignore.
“I guess it doesn’t really change the way things are right now, but I don’t want to get my hopes up to have them crushed again.”
“I can see how that would be devastating, especially since a lot of your sense of self is wrapped up in the notion that riding is your one true love.”
I nodded and relaxed, leaning back on the sofa and crossing my arms. Talking about my inability to ride was still a sore subject, and thinking about it always made me tense.
“Let’s change gears a bit. I wanna talk about Ray.” She shifted, flipping back through her notebook to a previous session’s notes.
My heart started pounding at the mere mention of her name. This had been one of the longest stints I’d gone without being able to talk to her, and both my body and mind were remembering how much I needed her in my life.
“What about her?”
“It seems like she’s someone extremely important in your life.
We asked at the beginning of your therapy to write down each person in your life waiting for the healthy version of you to come home.
Besides your immediate family, she was at the top of your list. We haven’t really had a chance to talk about her, and I’m curious to know more. ”
“What do you want to know?” I did my best to hide the defensive tone of my voice, but Dr. Langford was perceptive and caught on to the tightness in my posture and edge to my words.
“What do you want to share?” she asked, crossing her legs at the ankles and sitting back in her seat, mirroring my defensive posture.
“She’s my best friend.”
“I see.” She hummed noncommittally, seeing through my bullshit with ease.
An exasperated sigh puffed past my lips. I knew that if I didn’t give her a little more than just “she’s my best friend,” she would sit here and wait until I gave something up. It was better to get it out of the way and open up.
“Ray and I have been best friends since we were kids. She was the only girl I met who didn’t look at me like I had something they wanted.
It wasn’t a secret that my brother and I were hot commodities with the girls in school.
Even though she was younger than me, Ray didn’t act like it.
She is wise beyond her years and one of the best people I know. ”
The therapist nodded, urging me to continue.
What did I want to share about Ray?
I’m sure she didn’t want to hear about how responsive she was to my touch, how her body reacted like it was made specifically for me.
She probably didn’t want to know about how sinking inside her for the first time had left me raw and emotional at how good it had felt, and how right.
So, I settled on a version of all of the above.
“Rayna Cortez is the sun that shines, even on my darkest days. She is my anchor in the storm, keeping me from drifting. She’s it for me, and she’s the love of my life.”
“It sounds like she’s a very special woman. It takes a strong partner to stand beside you, encouraging you to be the best version of yourself. Can you tell me about the moment you realized that you loved her?”
I thought back, trying to remember the singular moment I knew that my feelings for her had veered from friendly to romantic.
There had been so many moments over the years that I’d seen her in a light that was more than just friends, but only one stood out that encompassed everything for me.