Another snippet

Again from “Some of the time/Often/Always”:

“I spend a lot of time encouraging people to explore why they do the things they do. Some never can admit the baggage they carry with them. You are miles ahead.”

Baggage, she says, like I’m a harried, excited tourist rushing to a grand destination. This isn’t sparkly leopard print flight totes on little wheels. This is chains whose ends I can’t see, whose thickness swells and bleeds out constricting around an through me until at times I can barely walk, barely breathe.

I need help.

“We are going to help you,” Dr. Parrish says, almost as soon as I think it.

That we is a fearful thing. Cliched, my skeptical brain wants to dismiss it and therefore every other thing that comes from Dr. Parrish’s mouth. But my heart wants to absorb it, wants to believe. I can be a we again. Wants to believe this small, solid box of a woman, behind her PhDs and cloak of professionalism really does understand.

So I box my heart up in steel, just in case but leave air holes and no lock on the door. That’s a thing called Hope.