As part of their training, all therapists had to see their own therapist, but Camila had been in therapy long before she’d chosen her profession and long after it was a requirement for licensure.
There was the male therapist who, even when she was 13, she had found condescending and low-key racist and had cursed out, prompting him to meet with Camila’s mother and tell her that Camila was “deeply disturbed.” This was a stark contrast to Camila’s teachers who always said what a “pleasure she was to have in class,” so Marcella ignored his feedback and pushed Camila into extracurriculars to try to “work out some of that aggression you have, mija.”
Then there was the therapist at the mental health center on her college campus, a sweet, young white lady with a giant diamond engagement ring that made Camila feel itchy, and a radical sense of empathy that gave Camila the first stirrings of wanting to become a therapist herself. She went through a few more therapists, when someone moved on from a practice or Camila had a change in her insurance status or ability to pay out of pocket. It was always challenging to find someone who was the right fit. The lady who said that Camila should be “fixed” by now because she’d had so much therapy? Not a fit.
Until, finally, Camila found Miranda. Miranda was an Indian woman in her early 50s with a wicked sense of humor who never flinched at any of the wild stuff Camila said. They had worked together for years. Camila aspired to one day be as much of a force for good in someone’s life as Miranda had been in hers.
They had a standing weekly session Camila looked forward to. It felt like hitting the reset button on her brain. The thing about therapy was that the therapist wasn’t the person with the answers. They were the person who could pick up on some flicker of light and help you follow it to its source, until you could wrap your hands around the prism and look at each facet yourself.
“Did you bring your project?” Miranda asked as Camila settled on the plush velvet couch.
“Oh yeah. I had to turn around and drive back to my house because I’d forgotten it, but I’m ready to go.”
“Excellent, I am also ready to go. What are you working on today?”
Camila extracted a bundle of turquoise cotton yarn and two long wooden knitting needles from a tote bag. She handed Miranda the printed instructions with a picture of the shirt she was starting. When the project was done, it would have short, loose sleeves and a V-neck detail created by a triangle pattern of open stitches.
“Look at that,” Miranda said. “That lace work will make this a good transition piece for the fall. Cotton?” she asked, signaling the yarn.
“Yup. Not my favorite to knit with, because it can be so floppy. But I think it’s the best choice for this. And you?”
Miranda held up a square textile that was half her height, made of spiraling rectangles of different colors, wrapping around each other from the origin point of a small square in the center. “Still persevering through the log cabin blanket.”
“Damn girl,” Camila said. “How big does it need to be before you’re satisfied?”
With a soft smile, Miranda said, “Maybe when I can no longer get it through the door. Besides, it’s the kind of thing I could knit with my eyes closed. The better to listen to you, my dear.”
“Maybe one day I’ll be that skilled,” Camila said. As she said it, she knew she was being modest. Miranda had taught her to knit in this very office. She needed something to do with her hands that didn’t involve cyberstalking shitty men or downing six shots of bourbon in a row, or doing both at the same time. And no matter how many phone games Era sent her, including several of her own design, Camila could not get into them. But knitting worked. It made her feel useful and like she was capable of creating beauty instead of just wrecking shit.
She started setting up her next row of stitches.
“So where should we start today?” Miranda asked.
Camila smiled much bigger than she should have. “So, I’m talking to this guy,” she said.
“Talking?” Miranda said with a knowing smirk. “Like you are talking to me now?”
“No, not like I’m talking to you now,” Camila said. She let the needles clack for a bit, filling the silence. Miranda smiled at her blanket, focusing on the stitches, not pushing Camila to talk before she was ready.
“We met earlier in the summer. I was getting Era something at the arts festival. Seth knew him from high school and invited him to karaoke with us, and we’ve been, you know.”
“No, I don’t believe I know,” Miranda said. She was a menace.
“Hanging out,” Camila said, sighing dramatically.
“Dating, you mean?”
Camila huffed. “Not dating. You know I don’t do that. We slept together for the first time last night. It was fantastic. And it was just sex.”
“Sure sure. So tell me about this guy.”
Camila’s stupid grin was back. “Well, he’s cute. You know how much I love a floppy-haired white boy, god damn me.”
“Yes,” Miranda said sagely, “it is a tragedy.”
“He’s very sweet and thoughtful,” Camila continued. “He lives with his sister. Their mom died recently and he moved back here to take care of his sister. He’s so intelligent and curious. Well-traveled. Funny but not in an obnoxious way that demands all the attention in a room or conversation, the way I do. He’s easygoing, yet kinda … intense.”
“Hmm,” Miranda said. “Intense like you?”
Camila had to think about this. “Maybe. Not quite the same. I mean, of course I’m still getting to know him, but I don’t think he’s an emotional fucking trainwreck all the time like I am. It’s more like he thinks about things intensely. I do that and I start crying or want to break something. I can’t imagine him doing that. He’s just cool. Not cool like rad although he is rad, and yes I know no one says rad. Cool like nothing gets him heated.” Camila finished her row in silence, remembering the way Zach looked at her when she was on top and the scandalous texts he’d sent her today. “Well, not nothing.”
“But you’re not dating,” Miranda said, smirking.
“You know, you should lower your tone.”
“Just humor me for a moment,” Miranda said, as she switched yarn colors from sunset orange to burgundy. “What if you did date? What if dating were a thing you did, and you were doing it with this man? What would that mean?”
Wincing, Camila sped up her hands. Miranda kept knitting in silence with her, waiting for Camila to emerge with a well-crafted, logical, detached answer, or a joke to try to derail the topic. There was a reason Camila knew all her clients’ tricks and tics. She’d invented them. Perfected them.
“It feels dangerous to date because dating feels like it has a goal other than having occasional fun with someone and getting my back blown out after a night out. Dating feels like I’m trying to make something last. Dating means I care if someone leaves, and they always leave.”
Miranda watched her carefully, eyes full of understanding.
“And me caring about the leaving, me not wanting to be abandoned, makes this fucking switch go off in my brain. It feels like all reason and morality go out the window and there’s this part of me that does know how to function in society who is watching from behind a glass trying to get me to stop setting things on fire, but I can’t hear her over the sound of the flamethrower.
“Zach seems kind and decent, which means either he is those things and I don’t want to risk setting him on fire because he also has nice eyebrows and it would be a shame to singe them off; or he’s a fucking asshole who will fuck me over like every other man I’ve dated. Either scenario sucks, and what do they both have in common? Dating. A relationship defined. So, I don’t do it.”
Pausing to check her pattern, Camila realized she’d duplicated a knit row that should have been a purl row. “Dammit,” she said, and set to the tedious yet whimsically named work of tinking to undo her mistake. “I mean, look at me, a minute ago I was talking about how awesome he is, and now I’m about to cry over a made-up scenario. I should have been locked in a room at puberty and kept away from the general population for their own safety. I’m a feral cat in a tasteful wrap dress. If he’d known me before, he would have run for his life.”
Miranda was gentle when she spoke, after Camila put down her knitting and looked up at her.
“You are here, week after week, because you and the people who love you thought that feral version of you, as awful as you say she was, deserved to survive. Deserved to be fought for. Deserved to see who she would become if she had help and support. You are not the same as you were then, and that’s a good thing. But the old you? The ‘bad’ you? She put you on the lifeboat. Maybe don’t keep holding her head under water and telling her what a bitch she is.”
Camila blinked at her. “I’m stealing that metaphor. I might zhush it up. It was a little clunky. Got kind of dark at the end.”
Used to her bullshit, Miranda nodded. “Your feedback is noted.”