We discuss benign topics. I stay on safe ground. Expectations, values, a tiny touch on guilt. We can talk about these things.

And then I leave the room and everything hurts. There’s a thousand pounds weighing in my chest. 

Why? I wonder. What just happened?

Beneath the surface is an abyss of pain that I just don’t want to open up.

I don’t even want to talk about.

I’m not ready to share this part of me with this stranger. Not now. I think not ever. 

I’m not telling her about the deepest hole that has no bottom. 

I’m not going there. When I opened it in the past it just swallowed me whole. It sucked me in, and I struggled in its depths, trying to find enough oxygen to breathe. It shrouded me in its murkiness, and the stalagmites that hung from the sides punctured my skin.

I can’t open it again.

So I don’t.

But I continue to go to therapy, because what else is there to do?

I can’t keep going on without changing something.

Because beneath all the painstakingly pieced-together fragments of my self is an ocean of pain. Wounded innards. 

We tread on the surface, but the surface has cracks. I feel the pain rising through them, the heaviness seeping through.

I’m afraid that if I stay on this ground just a little bit longer, the surface will give way and I will tumble right into that abyss once again.

But there’s nowhere to run.