Digging deeper

You take a shaky breath. The question she asked—what actually happened versus what the nightmare is telling you—sits in your chest like something half-digested.

"I know Janelle isn't a danger," you say. "She's not going to hurt me. She's trying. She drove me here today. She brought me ginger tea her mom made because she remembered I mentioned stomach problems." You almost smile at that. Almost. "Maybe nobody in this town is going to hurt me. People have been kind. Genuinely kind."

Dr. Vasquez nods, pen still.

"But I know how trans people are treated. In this country. Right now. I read the news. I see the legislation. The violence. The statistics." Your voice is getting thicker. "And it's only a matter of time before I face real hatred. Possibly violence. That's not paranoia—that's math."

She doesn't argue. She doesn't reassure you with statistics about how most people are fine, actually. She just listens.

"And that scares me in a way that's... new." You pause. Something is happening in your throat, a tightening that has nothing to do with the words you planned. "Because before—before I knew who I was—I was kind of indifferent about my own life. Not suicidal. I wasn't suicidal. But I just... didn't care. About myself. About what happened to me. It was like I was watching someone else's life from behind glass."

The realization is arriving as you speak it, like a train pulling into a station you didn't know you were headed to.

"My life didn't matter to me because it wasn't mine. It was... someone else's script. I was just playing a part without knowing I was playing a part." Your hands are shaking. You press them flat against your thighs, feeling the wool of the skirt under your palms. "But now—now that I'm actually myself—now that this is MY life for the first time—"

Your voice breaks. Not cracks—breaks, like something physical giving way.

"I want to live so much. I want to live so badly it terrifies me. Because now I have something to lose. Now there's actually something at stake. And the world could take it away. Someone could take it away. Just for being who I am."

The tears come. Not delicate, cinematic tears—ugly crying, the kind where your face contorts and your breath hitches and snot runs and you can't stop it. You press the heel of your hand against your eye like you can physically push the tears back in, but they keep coming, hot and relentless.

God. God. This is what it was. This whole time. Twenty-one years of not caring if you lived or died because you were living someone else's life.

Dr. Vasquez doesn't move. She doesn't reach for the tissues. She doesn't make soothing sounds or tell you to breathe. She just sits there, present and steady, letting you fall apart without trying to catch you—because she understands, you realize distantly through the blur, that you need to fall apart. That this is the falling apart that makes room for what comes next.

After what might be two minutes or ten, the worst of it passes. You're left with hiccups and a wet face and the profound exhaustion of having said something true for the first time in your entire life.

Dr. Vasquez hands you the tissue box. Not pushes it—hands it, directly, meeting your eyes.

"Thank you for telling me that," she says quietly. "That was important. And I want you to hear something: what you just described—that indifference to your own life before, and this fierce desire to live now—that's not weakness. That's the opposite of weakness. You survived twenty-one years of dissociation. And now you're choosing to be present. That takes more courage than most people ever summon."

She lets that sit.

"We have about twenty minutes left today. I'd like to use them to talk about what safety looks like for you—practical, concrete things. Not to minimize your fear, but to give it a container. Can we do that?"