The drive back to Istanbul was quiet. Kerem drove while Selin watched the landscape blur past. Murat’s presence was still there—she felt it in the car’s unnatural chill, in the way the radio crackled—but it was muted, as if acknowledging defeat.
“What happens now?” Selin asked, more to herself than to Kerem.
“Now you get help. Real help. Not just medication that dulls everything, but someone who can help you process.”
“What if they think I’m crazy?”
“Then they think you’re crazy. But at least you’ll be trying.”
Selin appreciated his matter-of-fact tone. No coddling, no false reassurance. Just honesty.
Back in Istanbul, Kerem helped her find a therapist who specialized in trauma and complicated grief. Dr. Ayşe Demir was nothing like Dr. Levent—she was warm, direct, and didn’t take notes that made Selin feel like a specimen.
“Tell me about Murat,” Dr. Ayşe said in their first session.
So Selin did. Not the sanitized version she’d given everyone else, but the truth. About the betrayal, about his death, about his return—or what she experienced as his return.
Dr. Ayşe listened without judgment. When Selin finished, she said: “What you’re experiencing is real to you. That’s what matters. Not whether Murat is actually here, but that your brain is processing trauma in this way.”
“So I’m not crazy?”
“You’re grieving. And grief does strange things to our minds. Sometimes it creates presences, voices, sensations. It’s the brain’s way of not letting go.”
“How do I make it stop?”
“By letting go. But not of Murat—of the guilt, the anger, the unresolved feelings. You need to forgive yourself for being human. For being angry at him. For wanting to move on.”
It sounded simple. It wasn’t.
Over the following weeks, Selin worked through layers of pain she’d been avoiding. The betrayal, yes. But also her own role in the relationship—the ways she’d ignored red flags, the times she’d chosen to believe lies because the truth was too painful.
And slowly, gradually, Murat’s presence began to fade. Not disappear—she still felt him sometimes, especially at night—but fade. Like a photograph left too long in sunlight.
“I can breathe,” she told Dr. Ayşe one session. “For the first time in over a year, I can actually breathe.”
“That’s progress,” Dr. Ayşe said. “Real progress.”
And it was.