Page 206 of Disarm
Her eyes sparkle. “Maybe,” she says. “Or at least a thought log. When you notice the ‘more space, more ways to fail’ story, write it down. Then write a more balanced alternative.”
“Like… ‘If I don’t get into the NBA, I’m still allowed to exist’?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “Exactly.”
I let my head fall back again. “That feels… illegal.”
“I know,” she says. “That’s why it works.”
We talk about logistics: the camp, if I pick up a summer job at the rec center coaching, and possible course loads if I decide to take something in July. She keeps looping back to the same point.
You don’t have to decide everything today.
Near the end of the session, she glances at her notes. “How’s the safety plan feeling now that you’ve lived with it for a bit?” she asks.
I think about the bathroom at the restaurant. The stalls. Miguel’s steady eyes when he asked what I needed. The pozolelast night. The way his arms wrapped around me, I could literally feel my brain dialing the noise down a notch.
“It’s… good to have,” I say slowly. “It feels like… proof I’m taking this seriously. Not just white-knuckling it and hoping I don’t crash.”
“Have you used any part of it since we wrote it?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “The grounding before exams, for sure. Letting Miguel know the volume is inside my head when he asks. I… haven’t hit the ‘crisis’ steps yet. But knowing they’re there makes it less… tempting to go nuclear. If that makes sense.”
“It does,” she says. “And how is Miguel doing with it all?”
I smile, small and involuntary. “He’s… annoyingly good with all of it,” I say. “He asks for brain check-ins. He doesn’t push when I say I don’t want to text my dad back yet. He feeds me pozole and tells me we’re not a test.”
Her brows lift. “We’re not a test?”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “He said… we’re messy and horny and traumatized and obnoxiously in love, but we’re not an exam I can fail. And that… kind of scrambled my brain in a good way.”
“That sounds like a very reparative message,” she says, smiling. “Especially given how often you describe relationships as things you can ‘fail’ at.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I wrote it down, actually. On my phone. So future-me can look at it when my brain starts telling me I’m one argument away from losing everything.”
She nods, clearly pleased. “That’s excellent coping,” she says. “You’re building a toolkit. Between that, your safety plan, your support system, and your own growing skills, you’re much better prepared for stress than you were a year ago.”
“Tell that to my amygdala,” I mumble.
Laughing softly. “We’re working on it,” she says.
By the timeI’m walking back across campus, the sky is bruising into evening. Lights flick on in dorm windows. Someone’s blasting music from a second-floor balcony. The air smells like eucalyptus and weed and wet grass and it’s an oddly comforting scent.
My phone buzzes again.
Dad
I know you’re busy, but I wanted to say… I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversations. I’m still… working on things. But I meant what I said about being proud of you. That hasn’t changed.
My feet slow without my permission.
I read it once. Twice.
The noise in my head immediately remixes it.He’s only saying that because he feels guilty. He’s going to take it back. He doesn’t really mean it. It’s a trap.
I breathe. In for four. Hold. Out.
“Data, not prophecy,” I mutter to myself. “We talked about this.”
