nishka//loki (![]() ![]() @ 2017-11-12 23:39:00 |
![]() |
|||
![]() |
|
![]() |
|
![]() |
Entry tags: | loki |
A vampire or a victim?
Who: Nish and Sandra [NPC]
What: Nish and her therapist discuss her recent drunken behaviour.
Where: LA County Hospital, psych outpatient department
When: November 7, 2017
“So the punch was spiked,” Sandra said, repeating back to Nish what she’d explained to her, “but you didn’t know until you’d already had some. And by the time you noticed it was difficult to stop yourself.” Nish was nodding, her elbow on the desk in front of her, face resting in her hand.
“Try nearly impossible,” she sighed, lifting her head to look at her. “I could see myself doing it, but it was like I’d become someone else. I could hear what I was saying to him, but I couldn’t keep it in.” She sighed again and looked away, towards one of the abstract paintings on the walls. “And the worst part: I can’t even say that what I said to him wasn’t me. It was, but it just...it wasn’t the way I wanted to talk to him about it.”
“So you were feeling neglected because he’s working so much,” Sandra deduced. Nish paused, mulling over that word, and slowly shook her head.
“That sounds a lot harsher than I’d want to put it. I know he’s not doing it on purpose, it’s his job and I get that,” she said, “it’s really important to him that he can do what he trained for, what he loves, now that he can be himself again.”
“But have you told him that?”
That got a pause, a frown. “I...no…” she murmured, hesitating, sounding shocked at that revelation. “I guess I didn’t think I needed to…”
“You need to think of this from his perspective, Nishka,” Sandra said, leaning forward a little. “He’s finally doing what he loves, he’s rebuilding his career again from the ground up, but he sees that it’s making you unhappy. His job is keeping him from being with you, and that’s got to be as frustrating for him as it is for you.”
Nish nodded again, her frown deepening. “I was barely keeping a lid on what I was feeling as it was...the alcohol just...removed the filter,” she sighed, suddenly feeling wretched for what she’d done. “It’s not the first time I’ve slipped up on AA, but it’s the first time I felt so shitty about it.”
“Remorse can be constructive if it spurs you into change,” Sandra said. “Maybe this can be a time for you to shift the focus of your relationship to him for a while. Be someone he can destress with; make your interactions as low-key as possible, at least until his schedule settles down a bit.”
She sat in thought for a moment, chewing on her thumbnail, and then a smile crept over her lips. “I was going to cook for him,” she said. “I’m pretty hopeless in a kitchen, but I did learn a few things in the past four years.”
Sandra chuckled at that. “That’s a great idea. It sounds to me that you two jumped pretty quickly back into the ‘lover’ part of your previous relationship, but you haven’t really had time to get back into being ‘best friends’ again. I’d like to see you take a step back and work on that for a while. Learn about each other again. As you said, it has been years.”
Nish smiled, “you’re right,” she said, visibly relaxing. “I could definitely use some ‘low-key’ right about now. We both could.”