Lesson learned. 

When you start taking sleeping meds, don’t just stop taking them. I’m exhausted.

Therapy Session 6 

“You had some visitors again today.”
“Yeah, Liv and Tony.”
“How long have you known Olivia?”
Of course. He recognized the mayor’s daughter. “Since middle school.”
“Is she a good friend?”
“Yeah. She’s more like me than most of my friends.”
“How so?”
“She’s just…really caring. She’s always there for everyone. I mean, she’s ….” Sophie didn’t know how to say it, it had just always been. “She’s like me. She likes helping others through their problems. She doesn’t like talking about her own. She cares about school. She makes friends with everyone. She’s a neutral. She’s like me.”
“Neutral?”
“Uh…” Sophie was tired and hadn’t caught the slipup until she heard it repeated. She’d skipped her sleeping pills and stayed up all night air guitaring to practice for Tony. She’d hoped she and Joel would have gotten through the whole song before she saw Tony next, but they hadn’t, so she’d looked up videos online hoping the chords would stick without the muscle memory of actually playing. For the most part they had, but after three nights of large amounts of sleep she felt a bit dead with the few hours she’d gotten last night. “It’s a slang term for people who don’t like drama.” Not a lie. Just not the truth.
“Right. Well that makes sense. What about Tony? How long have you been friends with him?”
“Um…four, five months?” had it really only been four months ago that Mitch had attempted to kill himself and she and Tony had started talking? It felt like so much longer.
“And yet you’d sleep outside his hospital room?”
“There’s a lot of people I’d do that far. Besides, the time line matters a lot less than the events on it.”
“Very wise.”
“I try to be.”
“So…why the songs you chose?”
Tony had sung The One That Got Away. Sophie had sung a slightly edited version of Half Of My Heart. It was very…them. “It’s us,” she said staring at her knees, not knowing if she should smile or cry.
“Playing sad songs?”
“No. the songs. They’re us.”
“How?”
Sophie bit her lip and took a gulp. “We’re in love, but we can’t be together,” she said quietly.
“Why not?”
“Because he’s in love with someone else.”
“So then your feelings don’t matter?”
“They do, just not as—” she stopped herself. “You didn’t happen to treat Mitchell Newton, did you?”
“I can’t say that I did,” he said a hint of confusion on his face.
“Well if you had, you would understand. He’s…fragile. He cuts. He does drugs. Now he has an eating disorder. He’s attempted suicide more times than I can count. Tony is everything to him. And he’s Tony’s world. They…they’re sole mates. And…one losing the other means the world losing both.”
“The world losing both?”
“Mitch would kill himself if he lost Tony. And maybe vice-cersa. But…they have a suicide pact so…the world loses both,” she whispered.
“And you think they’d follow through on this pact?” She just nodded. “And what about you? Could they lose you?”
The question made her already aching heart break. “Mitch already isn’t talking to me because I kissed Tony and told him I love him. Mitch…functions without me. Tony…Tony once stopped talking to me because Mitch asked him to. He…he’d be hurt…but…he would find a way through it.”

She didn’t know if it was true, but it felt true. As long as they had each other, they didn’t need her. It felt like no one did. Everyone she could think of had that one or two people they couldn’t live without, but it wasn’t her. No one needed her in the way she needed  everyone else. She knew she mattered to people, but did any of them really need her? And what about her? She had a lot of friends, a lot of people she needed, but…no one who felt the same way. It hurt. It hurt so much. She pulled her legs up and began to cry into them. She felt a hand on her back and when the doctor spoke it held a gentleness she hadn’t heard in his voice. “Sophie, why don’t you go back to your room and we can pick this up in a little bit?”