Reply to Animalover48: Thanks!
Michelle's therapist was a short, lovely lady with pale pink hair and a paint smudge across her nose by the name of Ida.
"You haven't relapsed in three months," Ida noted while Michelle sketched out a picture of Ida eating a bagel. "You're doing a lot better than before."
Michelle's fingers twitched, and she almost wanted to lie and say it was easy, but this was Ida, who had seen her break down, and who had reminded her that she had to be brutally honest if they were to help Michelle get better. "I hate it," She muttered, sketch lines turning a bit harsher than necessary. "I can't chop vegetables without thinking what if..." She lowered her eyes, eyelashes fluttering down as she said quietly, "I could pass it off as an accident. Say that I was clumsy. And my parents might suspect, but they would hope, and the hope would keep them in the dark."
"Have you relapsed without anyone knowing?" Ida asked quietly, fingers rising to begin braiding her hair. It was, Michelle thought at first, a nervous tick, but now she found that it was just a good distraction, something for Ida to do on the side and for Michelle to watch without getting too stressed.
"If I did, would I tell you?" Michelle answered, wanting to make her voice light but it ending up just being sharp and demanding.
"I should hope," Ida answered, voice deceptively light as she untangled the braid. Loose strands of hair fell down and curled over her ear, Michelle watching as wisps of bubblegum pink floated above Ida's head. "But in the end, it's not about me, it's about you."
Michelle slouched further into her chair as she added a few wisps of flyaway hair to her drawing of Ida. "I didn't relapse." She finally settled on saying, trying not to sound like a liar. (She was telling the truth, but Ida didn't know that, and it was Ida's job to double check.)
Ida hummed thoughtfully, and then she said, "I could count your arms, but you're too smart for that, aren't you? If you wanted it to stay hidden, you'd put it somewhere that we wouldn't look."
"I'm telling the truth." Michelle answered quietly, snapping her rubber bands again. "You know that I am."
"I never know anything," Ida answered with a sigh, mimicking Michelle's slouch as she stretched out her arms on the armrests of the chair. "But I'll choose to give you the benefit of the doubt."
Michelle dipped her head into a nod, thankful, and then she admitted, "Sometimes, I feel like as soon as I say that I won't do it anymore, I'll jinx it. That I'll feel proud that I'm not doing it anymore, and then the next day something will happen and I'll be bleeding out before I know it. I don't want to relapse, but I'm worried that the second that I become proud that I'm not doing it, I'll do it."
Ida brushed a piece of hair from her shirt and stared up at Michelle, intense and knowing. "You're allowed to be proud of yourself, Michelle." Her voice was as firm as rock. "You should to be proud of yourself."
Michelle wanted nothing more than to curl up into a little ball and roll away, pretending that nothing was happening and the world had stopped. But the session had ten more minutes to go, and she knew that she couldn't.
"I know," Michelle answered in a small voice, doubtful and tiny and a lie that she hadn't even bothered to properly cover.
"No, you don't," Ida's voice was as soft as a feather. "You've gone three months trying so hard, Michelle. You've gone and made a new best record for yourself, you're doing amazing. You've gone almost one hundred days without cutting, and that's brilliant. I'm incredibly proud of you. Your parents are incredibly proud of you. You're doing a fantastic job, and that's great."
Michelle shoved her hands into her pockets. "What if I slip up?" She challenged Ida, jutting out her chin and trying not to cry, sketchbook long forgotten. "What if I mess up again and disappoint all of you? Then I won't be proud, will I?"
"Depression is a mental illness, Michelle," Ida's voice stayed quiet, calm and cool. "If you slip up, it's not your fault."
"Mind over body." Michelle argued angrily, pulling her hands out of her pockets to wave them in the air. "I control my own actions, I alone am responsible. We choose how to react."
"And you've worked really hard for the past three months." Ida agreed to placate Michelle, "So even if you relapse, we know that you worked hard. It's like this, if you exercise every day for three months, and then choose to eat chips and watch TV and not exercise one day, does that make your three months of exercising pointless?"
Michelle chewed on the inside of her cheek, and then sighed in defeat, mumbling, "No."
"Then should you be proud for exercising daily for three months?"
"You slipped up."
"You worked hard, and it was just a mistake that you'll work harder afterwards to avoid, right?"
"...Right."
"So you should be proud of yourself, right?"
Michelle sighed, and reached into her pockets to finger the bottle of antidepressants inside of it. "I'll do my best and work on it, Ida."
Ida offered Michelle a soft, proud smile, and answered kindly, "That's more than enough."
Was it truly enough?
Michelle wondered.