The irony that my lifeline came to me at rock bottom never escaped me— swinging tantalizingly out of reach from the mouth of a middle-aged, anxiety-riddled office worker.
“Sabrina, why don’t you tell us why you’re here today?”
I scowled, tapping my heel against the leg of a shitty folding-chair, overcome with uncomfortable flashbacks to grade-school teachers who thought they were being clever by calling on the quiet kids.
Dr. Sovin gazed at me expectantly, and the rest of the group followed his lead.
“Uh, sure,” I muttered— “I’m depressed. Used to be suicidal, got sent here after my last attempt.”
It wasn’t the truth, but it was good enough for the smattering of group therapy attendees. A few offered me bland words of encouragement. Others looked away, uncomfortable. I crossed my arms over my chest, staring blankly ahead as the rest of the circle introduced themselves in turn. Ashley had severe OCD, Hassan suffered from Bipolar, Theo rattled off a list of phobias that made my head spin.
I zoned out, watching the riveting view of a parking-garage roof and wondering whether attending three or four of these would mark enough progress to get a Xanax script from my primary care physician, when the patient seated directly to my left caught my attention.
Perhaps his nerves were exacerbated by going last, or he simply didn’t do well with crowds— whatever the reason, the man who introduced himself as Ira was the most nervous person I’d ever seen.
He had the quintessential outfit for any dead end middle-manager; khakis that were a little too tight around the middle and slightly too long, a pale blue button-down, soulless loafers churned out by some overseas factory.
The back of his shirt was tucked in to the khakis, but the front hung loose and wrinkled, the fabric bunched up where Ira’s fingers twisted at it. His nails were impossibly short, the ragged edges pin-pricked with blood from bitten skin, and his lips were raw where his teeth chewed at them. I did not have to guess at the bald patches on his eyebrows and eyelashes, because, as Ira spoke, I watched him reach up and pull several out compulsively.
“My name is Ira,” he greeted, sounding as though somebody were holding a gun to his temple— “and I have anxiety.”
I fought the urge to pipe up and finish his introduction with “no shit.”
Dr. Sovin clapped his hands together, looking satisfied. “Excellent! Now that we know a little more about each-other, I think we should open up the floor in case anybody wants to share some difficulties that brought them here. After all, we’re all here for one reason and one reason only: to support each other, and learn from each other.”
“That’s two reasons,” I cut in, unable to stop myself.
Ashley let out a nervous little giggle.
“You’re absolutely right, Sabrina,” Dr. Sovin replied, grinning good-naturedly. “Since you were so quick to volunteer your thoughts, perhaps you’d be willing to go first one more time?”
I wasn’t willing, but backing down after my little quip would have made me look like a total asshole. I sighed, leaning back in my chair and trying to ignore the sounds of Ira’s fingernails tapping erratically against his belt buckle.
“I was sort of a fuck-up in high school,” I started, clearing my throat. “– didn’t really know where I was going with my life, mediocre grades, no real ambition. I ended up going to a state school an hour away from home for Business Administration, but honestly, I hated the degree. No offense to all the business admins out there, but it was literally the most boring shit I’ve ever had to sit through. Uh, sorry– dunno if we’re allowed to swear.”
“It’s alright, Sabrina,” Dr. Sovin encouraged.
“—Anyway, I spent about two years barely staying afloat. I partied a lot, drank a lot, failed a lot of classes. I don’t think there was a single semester I wasn’t on academic probation.”
I felt an odd pang of nostalgia; a longing for the simplicity of my old misery, the woes of a twenty-year-old with too much wit and too little ambition.
“I was a dumbass. I would always drink too much, and I didn’t always have a safe way to get home. One time, I was walking back to my dorm from a frat party, alone, and I got hit by a car.”
“Holy shit,” Theo chimed in, raising an eyebrow. “Like, run over?”
“Sorta,” I shrugged. “I rolled over the hood. I broke my arm in three places, and my collarbone. The worst part was my head, though; I cracked the back of my skull on the windshield. I was legally dead for three minutes in the ambulance before they stabilized me.”
“Anybody would be depressed in your position,” Hassan said, shaking his head solemnly.
I laughed.
“Naw, that’s not the depressing part. Actually, that accident was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
The group stared, enthralled by my story now.
“Have you guys ever watched those YouTube videos of people who suffer traumatic brain injuries and wake up speaking, like, every language, or being able to learn any instrument at a professional level in days?”
A few of the group members nodded, and Dr. Sovin waved me on.
“Well, after I woke up, I began having these really vivid dreams. They were amazing— different every night, beautiful and colorful, and completely lucid. I could do anything and everything; I sorta felt like a god. Unlike other people, I didn’t have any trouble remembering them when I woke up. In fact, I remembered them so well, I started painting what I saw.
People loved my paintings. I started selling prints online, but then a couple of industry bigwigs noticed, and I started getting real contracts with real galleries. Suddenly, I had people from all over the world asking to fly me out to their galleries and museums, willing to pay tens of thousands for my artwork.
I was basically on top of the world, so you can only imagine how much it fucking sucked to come crashing down. Two years ago, the dreams stopped out of nowhere, and I lost everything. My art became shit, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t dream anything when I slept: not even basic ones, like looking for a bathroom in a maze or showing up on the first day of school naked.”
I kicked at the legs of my chair again, a dull metallic thud echoing through the room each time the ragged soles of my converse connected with their target.
“I tried everything. Every hallucinogen, every sleeping medication, everything. And then, when I realized substances weren’t going to do it, I— I started trying to recreate the event that gave me my dreams in the first place.”
Ashley clapped a hand over her mouth, catching on.
“They weren’t suicide attempts, not really,” I muttered– “I didn’t want to die, I was just trying to come close. I overdosed— that was a bust, and inhaling my own puke was fucking disgusting. Tried to pay some guy from Craigslist to run me over; the moron stood me up, of fucking course. The last time— the time that got me sent here— I tried leaving my car running in the garage with the windows rolled down. Y’know, carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Did it work?” Theo asked.
“Obviously not.”
The silence that followed was uncomfortable, and the thunk of my shoe against the chair leg grew louder, more frequent.
Then, Ira chimed in.
“Ac-actually,” he stammered, eyes fixed on the office-park pattern of the carpet— “I’m sorta here because of dreams as well.”