I plop down my mug full of whisky to pick up my razor brimming with bad decisions. This completes Step 1 of the ritual: drink. There is always a ritual to any addiction. Mine begins with drinking. That’s a given. Beyond intoxication, the ritual deepens itself into my nightly routine. Now, I gather my tools. Razor blade—or any thin sharp object will do—and strips of fabric from an old blue t-shirt instead of Band-Aids because that feels dramatic. Like me. Plus, they stop the soon-to-be blood flow a whole lot better than gauzy plastic strips. Next, music. Tori Amos’s “Little Earthquakes.” That soft haunting harmony until—wait for it—the rush of piano chords. That is my cue. Swipe. The melodramatic melody pushing forward as I sharp-metal my way into my skin. A musical release. Tension gushing; I am closer to myself now.

Stare. Gaze into the gash, blood seeping, skin open. Stand there feeling crazy. The song softens, ends. Now grab the t-shirt strip and tie it tight. Finish the whiskey waiting, expectantly. Slurp. Gulp. Dissolve into sleep.

The nightly routine.

********

Another ritual:

Stare. Gaze. Not at gushing wounds, but at the bartender, Natalie. Her straight black hair framing a perfect complexion whose origins I can’t quite name. Slightly pale, but with a radiant glow. A few freckles speckled here and there. Tall but not awkwardly so. Slim but not skeleton-ly so. A softness to her body, a kindness to her personality. A bottle opener tucked in and sticking up from her back pocket. I don’t even know Natalie, just clips of conversations we have between each of my finishing sips before she pours me another.

I spend my pre-2 a.m. nights sitting at the In Fine Spirits bar because Natalie looks just like my therapist, whom I unfortunately have a hardcore crush on. Maybe not unfortunately. My attraction keeps me going to therapy on days I really don’t want to face myself. Like, every day. Kristy pushes me hard in each session, but always with a loving and caring touch. We’ve never touched physically because that whole client–therapist relationship boundary thing, but at this point in my life, Kristy is the only person to whom I’m really close. With no one else consuming my life, and in an attempt not to dwell on the people who ditched me—or whom I pushed away (my opinion depends on how I feel that day)—I have no one else to think about but Kristy. She’s the only one I really converse with, so it makes sense that our conversations are on a permanent playback loop in my head.

But for now, I’m getting drunk (again) at In Fine Spirits and staring at my therapist’s doppelganger because I don’t know what else to do.

Some nights, when In Fine Sprits closes and Natalie kicks me out with the remaining 2 a.m. crowd, I get in that drunk-depressed state and consider calling Kristy. Her office phone, of course. Again, boundaries. I don’t have her cell phone number. But even just hearing her voicemail telling me to call 9-1-1 if this is an emergency comforts me.

********

I started seeing Kristy two years ago when my then-girlfriend urged me to go to therapy because I felt depressed so much and manic so much and totally unmedicated and add to that the complicated grief from my alcoholic father dying two years prior to my seeing Kristy, and well, my girlfriend was sick of dealing with me and my widely oscillating mood swings. A handful of our friends went to a feminist therapy center, so I booked an intake session, got assigned to Kristy because she was cheap—a postgrad still racking up hours for her LCSW certification. Then I met Kristy, and holy hell she captivated me. Long straight black hair, fair skin, dark eyes—and not just their look but their attentive care.

We began in my basic emotional territory. The aforementioned complicated grief over a dead father, unhealthy faux-mother figures in my teenage years, and how running marathons kept me sane as I resisted taking medication for the bipolar disorder I was diagnosed with at fourteen. This was all before a sexual assault happened to me, before I started cutting, before I started drinking so much. Here, in Kristy’s office, before the night that he grabs me, I was enhancing my basic tools of navigating grief—breathe, journal, run, distract. But they won’t be enough for facing the about-to-be BIG trauma, which is why I will continue to sit in front of Kristy, paying for her to pay attention to me. To help me figure out what’s going on with me.

Because after three months working with Kristy, this happens:

“What’s going on?!” I scream/sing into the karaoke mic with a friend. It feels like an anthem. Thank you, 4 Non-Blondes. And it feels like shit’s crazy because after a four-year relationship, I’ve just broken up with that girlfriend who persuaded me to go into therapy. And here I am, screeching notes of exasperation of not knowing where my life is going.

I didn’t know where he was going.

Because later, after karaoke, when I walk myself the two miles home, a man sees me. Whether I’m his destination or a stopping point along the way to somewhere else, I’ll never know. I know nothing of this man. Never will. Our time together in this world lasts two minutes. That’s 120 seconds of life—of him grabbing, of me screaming, of him grabbing more, of me fighting him off and then I pull out of his grasp, my phone clenched in my fist, raised in the air. And then: A stare down. “LEAVE!” I shriek. Surprisingly, he doesn’t lunge at me but turns and calmly walks down the street, slipping his body around the corner. Then I’ll sob myself home and spend an exorbitant number of months attending to the reverberations of this two-minute interaction with a routine: with a razor, with heavily drinking, with religiously going to In Fine Spirits, with talking with Kristy in the hopes that she’ll save me because as a newbie in this sexual assault survivor life, I don’t know how to save myself.

********

Three months after the assault,  I’m standing in the alley behind my apartment, clutching a razor blade in one hand and my phone in the other. The green dumpster is in front of me and Kristy’s voice is telling me that I can do this. That I can chuck that razor right into that dumpster. But it feels like I’m letting go of a safety net. The thing that hurts me is what makes me feel safe.

I freeze.

Through the phone, Kristy can feel that freeze. “You can do this, Chelsey. I mean, it’s not like you can’t just go buy another razor. But just release this one and we’ll see how that feels.”

Good point.

“Okay.”

I push up the heavy black plastic lid. Chuck the razor in the empty metal bin.

Clink.

The sound of progress.

For now.

I can always buy another.

********

Surviving trauma isn’t some one-way trajectory. Kristy teaches me this. How cutting is not good for me, but that I’m learning how to deal with hard emotions, and now, after the assault, cutting has been my way to navigate them. That method of navigation needs to end, of course, but it’s not going to happen instantaneously. Resisting cutting even just once a week is better than never a week. It’s a harm-reduction approach and it’s helping me breathe. With all that I need to work on, the last thing I need is Kristy berating me for cutting. What good would that do? I already hate myself, so let’s not add to that.

Instead, she holds me.

That’s her word, what she calls it, the language she uses to keep me inching toward sanity: “I’m here to hold that with you.”

Kristy never physically holds me, but I do hold on to one literally touching moment.

In the elevator going up to her office, crutches holding me up because I twisted my ankle while running the previous weekend, I lose balance and sway to the left. Kristy catches me. I’m in her arms. I see the metaphor of all of this now. Me hurt. Kristy being there to catch me, to set me upright in the world. To indeed put me in fine spirits.

********

I’ve bought another razor (oops) and I’ve held it in my hand and I’ve cut again and I’m starting to lose count of what number of cut this is. Somewhere in the 80s. Some cuts are small—like the five slices on my hip. Some are fat, long gnarly ones like the one that’s on the bottom of my left forearm that, even now, a decade and beyond its making, is numb. This new one somehow got made on my arm. “Somehow” because there’s not a lot of room there for any new cuts. It’s like a traffic jam of crusty scabs and newborn scars.

Cutting on my forearm was stupid because it’s summer and that’s going to be a hard one to cover. Not that cutting is ever a smart thing to do. Still, there’s a hierarchy in the intelligence of self-harm decisions. This one was definitely not at the top.

In our session the next day, Kristy doesn’t comment on my winter hoodie donned during August. Until it’s almost time to end the session.

“So. It’s pretty hot out there and you’re in a hoodie. Did you cut again?”

Goddamn it.

“Yeah.”

I don’t know what happens after this. Maybe I hang my head. Maybe I leave. What I know is that she doesn’t press me on this. And that feels something like care.

Because even though I might still be cutting, the time between the cuts is growing. It’s because Kristy understands that the cutting is not a death wish. The swipes aren’t an attempt on my life, and they aren’t really a cry for help either. Kristy knows this. Knows that they’re just the tool I use to get me through difficult moments when flashbacks of grabbing hands terrorize me. So, our work together isn’t focused on why I’m cutting, but rather an understanding of what’s going on (even now, that phrase trembles something within me) when I feel like cutting is my only option. It is this distinction and understanding that perhaps saves my life. Kristy looks beyond the surface level of my cuts. Like them, she dives in deeper than the skin.

********

Back at In Fine Sprits again. I hold my drink like it will save me.

Although my obsession with getting drunk every night and living at the Natalie-attended bar isn’t a healthy lifestyle decision or trauma-healing route to follow, one obsession I do have is healthy: Kristy.

So here I am, looking at Natalie because she looks like Kristy, and I’m swallowing this drink to fill in the spaces Natalie can’t reach because only Kristy can. In the six Kristy-less days of every week, I drink my drinks at In Fine Spirits and gawk at Natalie so I can feel some sort of visual connection with Kristy.

I think about crushes. The women from my past who were always unattainable, which is perhaps what heightened my desire for them. To want what you can’t have. A crush is all about attention. Wanting more of it from the other person. I get pathetic about this—this stance in which I dwell on my unfixable insanities to create some sympathy, which is a form of attention, which is what I want from Kristy.

I want Kristy. I want her perspective to fill my every second.

Her perspective: that I’m not hopeless, just stuck but trying like hell to get out of this rut of trauma effects and hypervigilance. That I’m relearning my way in the world and to accept that cutting has been a part of that but doesn’t have to be. That I can love myself, scars and all. Have compassion. That it’s okay to dissociate—hello survival skill—but that I do, somewhere within me, have the helpful skills to bring me back. That I don’t have to process all my trauma RIGHT NOW. That I can just breathe sometimes.

I intellectually know these things. I’m not there yet emotionally. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that I’m here at In Fine Spirits, sipping down another survival skill for softening the world and staring at Natalie because Kristy can’t be here. Of course she can’t. I’m at a bar. Therapists won’t come to the bar with you, but that doesn’t stop me from mentally bringing my therapist here with me. Besides, I’ll hear her voice tonight. I know I will because I know how this goes.

New routine: Get drunk. Get depressed. Grab a razor. Second guess. Call Kristy just to hear her voicemail so I can soothe myself a little before I crash down into a whiskey slumber, hopefully with no new fabric strips torqued around my forearms so I don’t have to hide anything.

********

I hide other things easily enough, though. Just don’t get wasted before therapy. But 10 a.m. Sunday drinking is fine. Every-night drinking is fine. Post-therapy drinks are the best. A way to unwind. Decompress the mind because my body is an accident site. Move along people—nothing to see here. The crime scene. Yellow tape should be flung around me, cautioning the looky-loos who want a glance of something tragic. Something with which to compare themselves. Perhaps to feel lucky and more alive. At least I’m not her.

But at least I show up to therapy sober. However, I never show up to talk about my drinking. I don’t ever talk about my obsession with turtles in therapy because I don’t have an obsession with turtles. If you don’t talk about the alcoholism, you don’t have it. Done and done.

Moving on.

But as long as the drinking is going on, the cutting will too. Kristy doesn’t make me stop cutting. How can she? Instead, she just allows for it to exist so I can face it and deal with it when I’m ready. In the meantime—or perhaps in preparation for it—she teaches me tools to self-soothe. Distraction techniques. Writing prompts. Even arts and crafts activities. Anything to help get me through the hard moments without a razor. These tools work when I remember to use them. But I’m forgetful when I’m drunk. And impulsive.

Maybe Kristy’s office always feels so good and safe because it’s the only place in which I’m sober.

********

Being an alcoholic who refuses to quit drinking means I drink the next night which means that I cut the next night. I was too drunk to use my tools. I hadn’t cut in weeks. Therapy: working. Routine: getting different. But now that I’m not attending to a wound because they’re all healed, it feels weird and freaks me out and so I drink and I cut.

I go to the ER (again) because the cut is way deeper than I thought it would be. Funny thing is that the next day I will be at that same hospital again to start an outpatient therapy program because I’m determined to stop cutting completely and Kristy thinks a little cognitive behavioral therapy will help me. But it’s the night before and I’m drunk and I cut and I go to the ER for stitches and then I go back home for seven hours and then I go back to the hospital for the outpatient program and then after that I’m in Kristy’s office that night having a session about all of this.

I’m hungover as all fuck and struggling. The cutting is not fully stopping and I’m frustrated and depressed and in general just a big hot fucking mess.

“Do you want to show me the cut?” she asks.

I think her proposition is so I can face myself with her support. I don’t know. She’s never asked this before. But,

“Yeah.”

I pull up the sleeve, unwrap the bandage, and as my cut and accompanying stitches are exposed to Kristy’s eyes, I lose my shit and start sobbing.

A deep, guttural sob.

An “I give up” sob.

Kristy stands and sits down on the couch next to me. She keeps her professional boundary—no hugging, no touching—but her closeness feels like a hug and I sob my hot mess status out of me.

Facing my cuts is like a type of grief. I’m grieving my body and what I’ve done to it. Grieving the mind that won’t stop me from doing it, even though I was getting so good at my new routine. But with Kristy sitting next to me, I transition into the acceptance stage of grief. The cuts need to stop and start turning into scars at some point. That point is now.

********

It’s way beyond 2 a.m. Hours after I stared at Natalie for hours. I’m in my bedroom, my mug brimming with whiskey sits next to those tools I know will not lead to healing. T-shirt strips. An unused razor. That was a purchase from weeks ago when I thought I needed it. I don’t know if I’ll need it tonight, but here it is, resting patiently next to my iPod, “Little Earthquakes” queued up, expectantly, waiting. And how I’m waiting for this hard moment to end.

I’m drunk and I don’t want to cut and I just want Kristy here to help me get through this moment. This moment in which I hate my body for having been  assaulted and causing me so much terror that I want to shed my skin.

I grab for my phone instead of the razor. Dial her office number. There’s her voice now. But this time I leave a message before hanging up. “Hi. It’s Chelsey. I’m in a really hard moment right now and I just needed to say that to recognize it so I can feel less anxious about it and not cut. I don’t want to cut. Um. Okay. I feel better. Thank you for holding this for me.”

It’s a small success in the long, arduous battle of gaining some sanity. Because I don’t cut. Because now that Kristy (or at least her voicemail) is holding the knowledge that I’m not doing okay, I actually feel better. More okay than not.

I just hope I didn’t slur my words.

Either way, for once, I go to bed without finishing off my mug of whiskey or listening to Tori. A new routine.