Epilogue
A MONTH LATER
TRECEE JONES
Swaying side to side, I toyed around with the stress ball.
It was the only type of relief I could get.
They kept picking at me, stabbing at my emotions and trying to get inside my head.
Truly, on the inside, I felt like a potato.
I didn’t need the help, nothing was wrong with me, but apparently my actions led them to think otherwise.
Sitting on the weathered wooden bench in the park, the sun filtered through the blinds.
Outside I could hear laughter from children playing nearby.
Their giggles were a painful reminder of my soul slowly nipping away.
None of this shit got easier. I don’t give a fuck what nobody says.
This place is built to torture people. They don’t give a fuck about me—no one does!
I’m put here to rot. Every fucking day, I found myself spiraling deeper into a darkness I thought I could escape.
According to them, they were diagnosing me with high-functioning depression.
How the fuck do they do that, when they don’t know shit about me?
I drank alcohol and took a few pills that happened to be opioids.
How hard is it to believe it was a mistake?
Shit, mistakes happen every fucking day, man!
I’m not crazy! I know who the fuck I am.
I’m going through a fucking breakup! Why can’t people understand the tenacity of that—or maybe the level of importance is vague, and I’m overreacting with silly actions. I’m not going through a crisis. I just want to be left alone.
I don’t want to talk to anyone.
I don’t want to express the way I feel.
The therapist, Dr. Moore—a Black woman with salt-and-pepper colored hair styled in a curly blowout—sat across from me, tapping her red ballpoint pen on a notepad, studying me.
We were far from strangers. In fact, we’re well acquainted.
My first day, I spit on her, but she didn’t react.
I guess it comes with the job description.
If a nigga or a bitch ever spit on me, I’d be shitting on their grave.
She was snooty too, I could tell. The way she wore her Chanel tweed dress, Christian Louboutins, and stockings.
Her perfume—Flowerbomb by Viktor & Rolf—screamed “rich bitch,” and the ring on her finger was too big to fit in her hand.
If she did retaliate and knock the brows off my face, I’m sure she’d be well taken care of.
The salary of a therapist wasn’t paying her that well—I’m sure.
“Trecee,” she began gently. “One of the first steps to your health is communicating.”
I stopped swaying and shook my head.
My eyes tore away from her pretty face to the blue jay chirping outside the window. It was in a groggy tune, hard to follow along if you were trying.
“Can you shut that?” I muttered, ripping my eyes away from the blue jay and back at Dr. Moore.
“Oh,” she grinned and glanced at the bird. When she turned her neck, her long, bountiful hair fell over her breast. “The blue jay? You don’t like birds?”
“The chirping,” I stated. “It’s annoying.”
She glanced back at me, then parted her mouth to speak, but she was hesitant. Doing as told, she stood up from her swivel chair and trotted over to the window to close it. It took some struggle, but she did it. When she returned to her desk, she put some hand sanitizer in her hands and eyed me.
“Do you know what blue jays symbolize?” she inquired, with her head tilted, causing her hair to move along her shoulder.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” I shrugged as I squeezed the stress ball in a pumping motion.
“They have multifaceted meanings—one that may be meaningful to you, depending on the source of action. In your case, it’s rebirth, healing, and communication.”
“I didn’t know your name was Miss Cleo too,” I retorted, getting a snicker out of her.
“I like your sense of humor.”
“Good. Can I go now?”
“No.”
I stared at her. My emotions were anchoring me down. One minute, I don’t want to exist, then the next, I’m trying to find my purpose for existing. Merely doing both made my head hurt.
“We can’t keep doing this, Trecee,” she spoke softly, leaning on her elbows, as if trying to get closer to me. “These therapy sessions are to—”Cutting her off, I finished her sentence. “To help me. You’ve said that already.”
“It’s as simple—”
“Simple,” I scoffed, with a raised brow. The stress ball rolled out of my palm and pounced on the floor under the bench. “Nothing about being in this fuckin’ asylum is simple. You don’t know what it feels like to be me. You don’t shit.”
My chest heaved up and down from my anger boiling.
I hate when people who know nothing about an experience try to speak on situations by using unrelatable topics or people they know and lived through. It’s not real. It’s not fair.
“What the fuck do you know about being in here?”
Water formed before my eyes and I didn’t care if it fell, dripping stains on the green jumpsuit.
Usually, I cry in the dark, behind closed doors, when no one’s watching because I don’t want to be judged.
I don’t need anyone to coddle me or make it seem like my feelings are being suppressed by something else.
This therapy shit isn’t going to help me… not now… not ever.
She stood up. Her heels clacked on the polished wooden floor, with a box of tissues in her hand.
She walked over to a file cabinet and retrieved a manila folder, with paper spilling out.
One by one, she passed me the box of tissues and tossed the folder on the empty spot on the bench.
A few papers dropped on the floor. It stuck out among everything else.
I leaned forward to pick it up.
It was her profile, in the same green suit as me, looking much younger than I am now.
Still standing in front of me, she rolled up her sleeves and showed me the faint marks on her wrist that matched the gash on mine.
“You still think I don’t know shit?”
A frown etched on my face as I glanced into her eyes.
“There was a point in time where I was sitting on that bench too.”
Dabbing at my eyes, everything felt heavy again.
I remembered the group session, though I didn’t participate much. They said when things feel heavy, let it flow and don’t fight it—don’t caress it either. Let it pass. It’s a part of the healing process. One step at a time.
As Dr. Moore pulled her sleeve down, I surveyed the file. As if God knew I needed her, she used to be in the same trauma unit too. This must be a full circle moment with her—encountering girls like me, people like me, often.
Returning to her desk, she scooted forward and kept her eyes trained on me. I could feel her burning gaze. After a few minutes of going over the paper, I became uninterested and placed it back in the manila folder, along with the rest of them.
“You haven’t been taking your meds,” she said—not a question or an observation based on my behavior.
During nurse rounds, they brought our pills to us and watched us take them. I always hid mine on the side of my mouth. It’s so easy to get things past them because they never checked afterwards. I’m sure if I can get away with it, I wasn’t the only one.
To me, the medication makes things worse—zombified. It makes you wilt into a deeper state of depression, and just thinking about it makes me crazy.
I shrugged, giving her my undivided attention now. “That’s their fault, not mine.”
“You don’t talk in group sessions either. Talking and being communicative is the only way you’ll get released faster.”
I scoffed. “I don’t feel comfortable talking to a bunch of strangers—”
“They’ve made suicide attempts as well,” she cut in.
My eyes bucked. “So that makes them relatable? That’s fucking bullshit.”
“It’s great for your healing and it works. We wouldn’t have you end them if it didn’t.”
“Putting me in here was a mistake,” I muttered to myself. “A fucking mistake.”
“I’ve read your profile here and this is your first time. I don’t see much background of suicide, which piques my interest. What triggered you?”
I shook my head and glanced down at my palms, as if the answer lay there.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. It was a half-lie.
“You really loved him,” she spoke right after me, not a second later.
I squinted my eyes. My vision worked perfectly, but Dr. Moore was trying to bullshit a bullshitter.
“If you know all this shit, then what the fuck are you beating around the bush for?” My tongue clicked against my teeth. “This the shit I be talking about.”
“It’s best for you to mention it aside from me pulling it out of you.”
Then she mentioned visitors.
“You see everything that goes on around here. That’s pretty fucking obvious.”
“Are you not wanting them to see you like this? It’s pretty normal—”
I cringed at that word. None of this shit is normal and she kept trying to aid it. That’s why we’ll never work. I don’t need a bitch for a therapist to say shit like I’m a child—like I don’t know right from wrong.
“Here you go with that normal shit,” I waved her off with a blatant eye roll.
“It’s pretty normal to think that way.”
“Okay, well ain’t nobody coming in this shit hole to visit me,” I retorted.
There was a lump forming in the back of my throat that was difficult to swallow. That’s another reason why this therapy shit ain’t gon’ work—because of all the crying. I can cry on my own. I don’t need anyone to bring it out of me.
“Does the name Synthia ring a bell to you?”
My brows knitted from confusion. Then that feeling crept back again—the dark hole feeling. My eyes closed as I tried to wilt it away, but there was no use. I took a deep breath and licked my chapped lips.
“Yes.”
I paused.
“She’s the reason I’m in here.”
Dr. Moore’s brow rose. “What do you mean?”
“She fucked my boyfriend and I found out about it on my birthday,” I stated plainly.
Dr. Moore tried to hide the look of shock washing over her face, but I caught it as quick as it vanished.