Safe Haven

The bracelet was a hassle more than it was anything else. It had too many chains – too many intricate pieces – that tangled too often for it to be convenient to put on. It was bulky, it was a little too bulbous for my liking, but I never complained about it aloud. The bracelet, as much as I hated it, was a gift that I fully appreciated even after the clasp loosened and started coming undone throughout the day.

I loved it as much and as frequently as I hated it.

Memories – good memories – had been made when it was locked around my wrist. Arguments had been settled, wounds had been formed and mended, tears of joy had been shed and too many decent emotions had been felt while I was wearing the silver trinket. Relationships bloomed and flourished, my friends and I graduated from high school and I’d survived my first year of college, coming out mostly unscathed. Too much had happened for me to be able to just forget about. Even a year after losing it, the piece of jewelry was still on the foremost front of my mind.

Staring out the window of Dr. Fletcher’s office I wondered if I could find it despite the time I’d been separated from it.

“What are you thinking about, Marlow?” the middle-aged woman asked, her voice quiet – almost as if treading on thin ice with me.

Snapping my attention back to the present, I stared at her gray roots showing through her black hair dye. I’d expected Dr. Louise Lorraine Fletcher to be like the other therapists that had visited me: perfectly groomed hair, nice smile, designer-looking if not designer pant-suits and blazers. She was anything but though.

Her hair was frizzed and hanging about her face like heavy curtains. She was extremely thin and had a hooked nose that was a little too large for her face. An unflattering brownish sweater was draped over her too bony shoulders as it hung loosely around her frame. What I was mostly focused on though was the way her deep red lipstick looked as it smudged her front tooth.

We stared at each other for a moment in silence, waiting for something – anything – to happen. Nothing did, and after a few minutes Dr. Fletcher realized that nothing would.

Not through the duration of this session.

She sighed deeply, leaning forward in her chair to slump in defeat for the day. “Marlow, you realize that your parents are very worried about you, correct?” I looked down, mostly in shame for wasting my parents money on an hour filled with nothing but questions that I refused to answer. “You realize that no one can help you if they aren’t aware of what you’re experiencing, correct?”

I knew. The therapists back in Seattle had said the same thing when I couldn’t answer their questions about my close encounter with death.

“And you realize that everyone supports you and isn't here to judge you, correct?”

I wasn’t sure about that. I knew I was already being judged by my parents despite their hard attempts to disguise it. But I guess I really couldn’t blame them. One day, their daughter was perfectly fine, doing fantastic as a college student and living life with a bright smile, and the next she was gone – just vanished from their lives without so much as a goodbye before being found in Seattle living with her aunt.

“We want to help you through whatever situation and emotions you’re going through.” No "correct". I was mildly surprised.

I folded my arms across my chest and stared at fuzz on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Avoiding eye contact usually helped me bite back the urge of speaking. I didn’t want to talk about anything that revolved around me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone; I just wanted to flow through life without complications, without feeling like a freak for having to speak to a psychologist to pick apart my brain.

Looking down didn’t help me resist talking this time though. “What situation and emotions would that be?”

Dr. Fletcher looked amazed. For the first time since our sessions began, I’d spoken directly to her. She thought she finally had broken through the metaphorical shell that she claimed I was wrapped up in, my security blanket of muteness that protected me from whatever I didn’t want to face. She was dead on with that assumption, but I'd never give her the satisfaction of admitting it.

The poor woman looked like I’d just given her the best gift in the world.

Dr. Fletcher pulled her serious demeanor back together within seconds though and probably thought I hadn’t noticed her the way her eyes brightened. “That’s why you’re here, Marlow.” She had an annoying habit of constantly saying my name on top of her constantly saying "correct". “Your parents can’t get through to you. Your brothers can’t get you to open up about anything. You’re here so that we can work through the problem that you’re having a hard time coping with.”

“What problem?” I mumbled. I was being serious. She had a list that she could have chosen from, but Dr. Fletcher took my comment as rude, avoidant and insolent.

“Obviously, there is a problem, Marlow. You attempted suicide for some reason, and everyone who knew you believes that depression wasn’t all that triggered it. You ran away, you dropped out of college, stopped talking to all of your friends… Something traumatic had to have happened to you to give up on graduating at the top of your class so easily...”

She said it as if I didn’t already know with that sickly sweet tone of hers.

I decided that I’d said enough for the day. Crossing my arms the opposite way and unfolding my criss-crossed legs so my feet were planted on the hardwood floor of her office, I turned my eyes to stare out the window once again.

I could picture it clearly: me losing the bracelet that night.

Loud, summer class, exam the next afternoon, needing to go study, smiling, kissing goodnight, getting out of the car, the chain snagging on the edge of the car door, the already feeble clasp snapping with the jerk of my arm. Not finding enough will to bother finding it in the darkness...

Opening my eyes, I glanced to the clock mounted above Dr. Fletcher’s head. One minute left: good enough for me. “Time’s up,” I stated, standing and walking toward the door of her office, trying to look as nonchalant as possible.

“We still have a minute or two left, Marlow,” she tried in attempt to prolong the inevitable. I wondered if she was the same way with all of her other patients: trying to get as much use of her appointments as she did with mine. Every minute counted to her.

Unfortunately, we didn’t see eye-to-eye completely on the matter. I walked out to the waiting room where my mother sat rereading a copy of Better Homes & Gardens dated back to 2004.

At the sound of my flip-flops smacking annoyingly on the floor and the base of my feet, she looked up and flashed me a tight smile before standing. She hitched the straps of her handbag higher on her shoulder and smoothed her hair down before she led the both of us out to her dark blue minivan, her stylish boots clicking on the pavement with each pseudo-confident stride.

“How was it?” she asked after we settled comfortably in the scorching interior of her vehicle.

I shrugged as I always did when she asked about my appointments and reached for the radio controls, turning on any station that would fill the vehicle so I could avoid the conversation effectively.

My silence was killing her, but some things were better left unsaid and unknown. In my opinion, ignorance was bliss and what was left in the shadows of all that had happened over the past months should stay masked.

Leaning back in the seat, my mind zeroed in on the bracelet once more.

By the time my mother pulled her ancient minivan into the driveway of the house I’d grown up in, I’d come to a couple of conclusions. Maybe I didn’t really miss the bracelet – I missed the memories that came with it, the good times that happened before my life suddenly veered off of the course that I’d been so set on.

And even so, I needed to find it. A part of me screamed that I would not be able to return to a semblance of my old self without it dangling off of my wrist.