Page 139 of Disarm
I shut my eyes for a second.
“I’m not trying to be a dick,” he adds. “I’m trying to show you how automatic it is. Your default is, ‘If something hurts him, I have to absorb it. Alone.’ That’s what I want us to work on. Not decreasing your love, not stepping back emotionally, but spreading the load.”
“How?” I ask. “What does that even look like?”
He lets out a slow breath. “It looks like small, practical boundaries,” he says. “For example: deciding what constitutes an emergency that requires you to drop everything and go, and what does not. Agreeing with Caleb on a check-in word, like the ‘alive’ you already have so you’re not left in the dark for twelve hours. Practicing telling him, ‘I’m scared right now,’ instead of only showing up in action.”
He taps his pen lightly against his notebook. “It might also look like you giving yourself permission to step away for an hour after a hard conversation with him and calling someone—your mother, a friend, even me down the line—instead of immediately pushing your own feelings down to be strong.”
“That’s… a lot,” I say.
“It is,” he agrees. “And we don’t have to do it all at once. Today, I just want you to notice. Notice when your brain tells you, ‘If I don’t handle this, he’ll die.’ Notice when you feel responsible for everyone in the room. We’ll build from there.”
The clock on his desk ticks quietly. I realize my shoulders are halfway to my ears and force them down.
“What are you feeling right now?” he asks.
“Exposed,” I say. “Like you took the cover off my wiring panel and are looking at how bad it really is.”
“And how bad is it?” he asks. “On a scale from ‘mild code violation’ to ‘immediately condemned’?”
A surprised laugh slips out of me. “Somewhere in the middle,” I say. “Like… ‘this is functional but messy.’”
“Messy is workable,” he says. “Condemned is when we worry. You’re here. That tells me you’re invested in keeping this house standing.”
He closes his notebook gently. “We’re almost out of time,” he says. “I’d like to see you again next week, if that works for you. Same time?”
I hesitate.
There’s a part of me that wants to say, Thanks, this was cute, but I’m good. To walk out of here, tell Caleb it went fine, and never come back. But then there’s another part that remembers saying, I’d bleed for him. Gladly. And realizing I never specified how much.
“Yeah,” I say. “Next week works.”
We pick a time. He walks me back to the lobby.
“If things spike between now and then,” he says at the door, “you can call the front desk and leave a message for me. I can’t always respond immediately, but we can adjust if you’re really struggling. And if it ever gets to a point where you’re thinking about hurting yourself, there are emergency numbers on that brochure.” He nods toward a rack by the door. “You don’t have to go through that alone, either.”
I shake my head instinctively. “I’m not?—”
“I know,” he says calmly. “You checked the box. That tells me you have the thoughts. Not that you’ll act on them. I’m not trying to scare you. Just letting you know support is there.”
I stare at him for a second, then nod. “Got it,” I say.
“See you next week, Miguel,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “See you.”
I sitin the truck with the engine off and my hands on the wheel, staring through the windshield at nothing. The session replays in my head in flashes.
You’re not the only line.
You’re not a raft.
Martyrdom isn’t love.
Who are you if you’re not the handler?
I feel… wrung out.
