ZANDER
We are waiting for our names to be called so Dr. Chen can see us.
I look at my own body hugging itself on the chair, but my heart aches knowing it is Alex who is inside. I am too familiar with the anxiety, the dread in telling soul after soul that I feel as if I am not fit for this world. I have disclosed my past multiple times to professionals who studied and trained to deal with people like me, but only Dr. Chen taught me that it isn’t just my past who is to be blamed. That the trauma I’ve experienced wasn’t the only thing that turned me into a ticking time bomb.
She was the only one who didn’t tell me to just think positive, to just shake the negativity away. That I am sick. That I lack a chemical in the brain called serotonin that makes it easy for negative thoughts to seep t
