I didn’t want to go.
Therapy felt like one of those things people mentioned at dinner parties but rarely followed through on—like yoga retreats or detox diets, some distant luxury that didn’t belong to people like me. In my world, appearances mattered more than breath itself, and weakness wasn’t just frowned upon, it was punished. You bled in silence, you stitched your own wounds in the dark, and you never let anyone see you stumble. That was survival. That was the rule.
But I went.
Not because I believed in it. Not because I wanted to sit in some stranger’s office and spill all the jagged, humiliating truths I’d been dragging around like broken glass in my pockets. I went because Adrian asked me to. Because he looked at me in that way only he could—with equal parts desperation and love
