The Chair

Chapter 4 – Poem

Healing isn’t the kind of growth that gets applause. This is the soft, sacred work of becoming someone new without knowing who that is yet.

Not a Staircase but a Spiral

The chair squeaks when I sit down. My legs cross automatically, arms folded, like I’m trying to hold myself in.

She doesn’t say much at first. Just watches. And when she finally does speak, her voice is slow, like she’s giving me room to decide if I want to tell the truth.

“So,” she says. “What brings you here?”

I pause. I think about how far back I’d have to go to answer that honestly.

The breakup? The sleepless nights? The spiral after that one conversation with my mom? The cold tile floor under my knees at 3am?

I smile, politely. “I’m not sure.”

But I am. I just don’t have the words yet. Only feelings I haven’t let myself feel.

Before I Got Here

It looked like this:

Crying in the shower. Skipping meals. Obsessing over texts I didn’t send. Wondering, Is this anxiety?

Laughing at the absurdity of life the next day. Is this bipolar?

Struggling to concentrate for more than five minutes. Is this ADD?

Remembering something painful from years ago. Is this trauma? PTSD?

A thousand thoughts a minute. Is this schizophrenia? Or is this just… being alive?

Every symptom became a possible diagnosis. Every feeling, a threat. Until I started asking not what was wrong with me, but what was really happening.

Loose Threads

I keep pulling

at these threads—

old words,

lost moments,

a sigh I swallowed in 2004.

Is this healing

or unraveling?

One week I’m raw,

the next, resolved.

And still

the big question:

Is this madness

or just

finally

feeling?

I wish healing came with a checklist.

Instead, it’s a carousel

of forgotten hurts

and fleeting grace.

I close my eyes.

I sit still.

I wait for the softness

to come back

to my voice.