Chapter 23
Natalia
The last time I was here, I brought Binx with me. Dr. Sasha Boyd said it was okay because my cat brings me solace.
This perennial sadness weighs heavier than any weight I have ever carried. It knows no bounds.
Sasha Boyd, my therapist, has always been incredible.
And truthfully, I feel ashamed that I haven’t been to see her in so long.
But now, as I sit on the small couch in her office, I feel like I can relax.
It feels like a safe space where I could come to sleep and know that I’m safe from the nightmares and monsters under the bed.
“How are you, Natalia?” she asks first.
I pull one of her weighted pillows onto my lap and gently scratch my nails over the fluffy fabric. “Good, I think.”
“You haven’t been here in a while,” she says. “How are you really?”
I can only give her a sluggish shrug.
“Major depression, Natalia,” she says, “is hard.”
I scoff and murmur, “I know.”
“When was the last time you self-harmed?” Dr. Boyd asks gently, her voice soft and reassuring—reminding me this is a safe space.
“I think…almost two years ago,” I admit quietly and draw circles with my thumb over the thin, pale scars on my wrist. “Two years.”
“That’s really good, Natalia,” she says, and all I can do is nod.
I can’t seem to agree nor disagree. Just nod.
“Have you thought about cutting yourself again? In the past few months?”
A frown pulls heavy at my lips and I nod again.
“When?”
“Um, last month, I think? I was just sad and lonely,” I murmur. “It was after Isabelle’s birthday party. I got home and I just…I don’t know…”
“It’s okay.” Dr. Boyd puts a box of tissues in front of me and I’m suddenly aware of the wetness dripping down my cheeks and neck. “It’s okay, Natalia.”
“I went home,” I cry, picking at my cuticles, “and cried on the couch for a while. And I just felt really, really empty. And…worthless.” I hiccup. “Like my friends didn’t really want to be my friends, and maybe I don’t deserve them to be my friends.”
“Natalia,” Sasha says. “Did you think about more than self-harm?”
I bite my inner lip until there is a metallic taste on my tongue. I nod. “I started thinking, what if I could just never stop? What if I was going to do…what if I’m going to self-harm my whole life because I don’t know how to do anything else? Like…I’m an adult. Shouldn’t I be past this?”
“Adults suffer from depression, Natalia,” she says gently. “Adults self-harm. It affects everyone and anyone.”
I exhale shakily. “I know. I know, I just…I’m scared I’ll always be in this cycle and I’m scared I’ll want to always be in this.”
“Did you use any of our old techniques?”
“I cuddled with Binx,” I croak. “I tried to meditate. I showered and put on a movie until I fell asleep. I just tried to ignore it.”
“And the journaling?”
I shrug, indifferent. “It doesn’t feel like me. I just prefer to bake.”
“Okay, so baking,” she says. “How has that been?”
“Good.” I sniffle. “Fine. I’m scared I’ll wake up one day and hate it. I already do sometimes.”
“Have you considered taking some time off?” she asks. “Maybe a week or weekend vacation? Or even a mental health day.”
“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “Who am I without the bakery?”
“You would still be you, bakery or no. Baking is your passion, right?”
I nod.
“Then, without the bakery, I’m sure you’d still bake. I’m sure you’d still find solace in it.”
“Maybe,” I murmur. “I’m kind of seeing this guy.” I wipe beneath my eye with the crumpled up tissues in my hand.
“And? Are you happy?”
“Yeah,” I rasp. “Yeah, but…”
“You’re scared,” Dr. Boyd finishes for me. “Natalia, the last time you were in a relationship—”
“I know,” I mutter. “It got really bad. But this—He isn’t like that. Rowan is—” I choke on a sob trapped in my throat. “I can’t let myself love him. I can’t let him love me, but I know he does.” I let go again and allow the tears to rush down. “He loves me and I don’t know what to do with it.”
“With what, sweetie?” she asks gently.
“With the love,” I cry. “I don’t know how to accept it. I don’t know what to do with it or where to put it. He looks at me like that and I wish he wouldn’t. But I want him to because no one has ever looked at me the way he does. I can’t do this—I don’t think I can do this.”
“Do what, Natalia?”
“Him! I mean, we’re supposed to only be having sex but it doesn’t feel like that anymore. He cares and he’s gentle, and it’s ruined! But it’s so much better. I don’t know. I—He cares. We haven’t…”
We haven’t fucked in so long because we aren’t just fucking anymore, and we both know it.
“And I don’t like the way I’ve treated him,” I confess out loud for the first time. “I always shut him down—call him for sex. And when he’s nice to me, I don’t know what to do with it. I have so many feelings for him but I don’t know if I’m ready to give them to him. I’m not well enough.”
“Natalia,” she says, “what kind of love do you think you deserve?”
“I don’t really know,” I whisper. “I don’t think I know what to do with love from other people. I barely know what to do with the love from my friends. It just feels like…a wall, I guess. Or they’re sending me all this love but no one is there to pick up the mail. I don’t know.”
“Do you think you deserve good things?”
“No,” I blurt.
I laugh dryly to myself, fidgeting with my fingers and lavender-painted nails.
“Or maybe I don’t want good things, I don’t know. I just… I think I feel comfortable. Like this.”
“Comfortable how?”
“Depressed,” I say. “I’m comfortable with what I have—what I go through.
It feels like the best I can do, the best routine I have.
I get up not wanting to wake up and go to my bakery.
I close and go home and sleep all night.
And I do it all over again the next day.
But Rowan means I have to get better. I have to let go of whatever comfort I have in it and actually be better and I don’t know why but it’s so scary to get better.
” I swallow. “But I think, maybe, I just need it. For him. For me.”
Dr. Boyd stares intently, waiting, like she knows there are so many things I can say about it, so many things I think about on a daily basis that I do not voice. Things I think about doing.
“But it’s like a friend,” I blurt quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“I lean into it,” I say, unraveling the balled tissues in my hand. “When there’s nothing else there’s that. This...darkness, I guess, for lack of better words. I linger around in it, settle down, and just…stay there. It’s like…”
“You kind of like it,” Dr. Boyd states.
“Kind of?” I huff, tears rolling down my cheeks and neck. “Is that weird?”
“No,” she assures me. “It’s not weird, Natalia. Lots of people feel that way-that their depression is safe for them. It’s understandable that you feel the same.”
I nod.
But the thought that I’m not alone in that feeling seems to be my trigger today because right after that thought, I shatter in this office. Splintered all over this mustard-colored couch, hugging a pillow to my heaving chest as I gasp for air through the vehement sobs.
“I—I’m—I’m so—sorry,” I gasp.
“Why are you apologizing, honey? You don’t apologize for feeling,” Dr. Boyd says, her words hugging me and reinforcing my safe space here.
“I just…” I wipe roughly at my cheeks and under my nose and push my hair back from my face, behind my ears. “I just feel like…Some days I feel like I’m sorry for existing.”
It takes long, suffocating minutes before I can speak again, Dr. Boyd patiently waiting—her presence a calming, parental kind. I finally catch my breath, tear-soaked tissues crumpled on my lap, my neck and face slippery.
I release one final, shaky exhale, and Dr. Boyd dips her chin. “Whenever you’re ready, Natalia.”
#
After my session, I went to The Black Cat and figured out a way to give myself time off. I handed out extra hours like Oprah and warned everyone I’d be gone for a week, leaving my trusted and amazing assistant manager, Emma, in charge.
Now, I’m in my kitchen, pulling on my Jack Skellington oven mitts. Carefully, I remove the cupcakes from my oven. I don’t know why I baked them, it was just a compulsive thing that my muscles did from memory. The ingredients were laid out in front of me before I could even think twice about it.
I place the hot cupcake tray on the stove to cool off while I finish up the frosting. My oven mitts come off and my phone vibrates against the small, granite island.
Rowan’s name appears on my screen with his contact picture taking up the space.
Like an idiot, I put the picture he took of us for my dads as the contact photo so now every time he calls, it’s me on his lap with his lips on my cheek and my grumpy face.
I think that was the first night I realized I was in trouble.
Snapping out the haze brought on by the photo, I finally answer the call. “Hello?” I mumble.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.” I nip at the skin around my thumbnail, pacing barefoot. “Where have you been?”
“Home.”
“Oh.”
The silence stretches, the both of us allowing it to. As much as I love lying alone with Binx in the dark, every cell and bone in my body is hyperaware of the missing piece.
“Are you okay?” Rowan finally asks.
“I don’t know,” I breathe out. “I think I just need some time…from the outside world. A—”
“A mental health break,” he finishes. “You deserve one.”
“Hmm.” My lips twitch with something just shy of a smile.
“I went to The Black Cat for my lunch-time cupcake,” Rowan states. “You weren’t there; I missed you.”
“Which cupcake?” I ask, walking around the fact he missed me.
“Red velvet coconut.”
“I just baked some,” I say, a quiet invitation. “If you want…”
“I’ll be right there.” I hear his smile through his words.
“Why? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I own the place,” he says. “And I have sous chefs; they’re good at their jobs.”
“Are they better chefs than you are?” I tease.