Prologue: 45 Minutes
“How are you feeling today?”
I asked Sanya, my regular patient, as she walked in with her shoulders slumped lower than usual. She was in her regular white shirt. I wondered why she wore it every day. Her eyes were red, and her dark black eyebags were a statement of her lack of sleep. It was not from last night, but from many nights.
She sat down slowly and held her gaze into mine. “Dr... I'm not able to forget him at all. He's everywhere. My house. My bed. My workplace.” She let out a shaky laugh that didn't quite reach her eyes. “Even my books, my cup. Everywhere. It's… getting overwhelming. I can't seem to focus because everywhere I look, I see him.”
She paused, as if expecting the walls of my clinic to whisper his name and take her back home. “What should I do, Doctor? It's getting worse day by da—”
“Take a deep breath, Sanya.” My voice was laced with caution and patience.
She inhaled.
“You're not actually seeing him everywhere. You're seeing a part of yourself that once existed with him. And that's… completely normal,” I said, as I held her troubled gaze.
She nodded, taking my words in.
“When someone becomes a part of your life, your mind starts tracing patterns to bring you back to them. It's not love haunting you, my dear. It's familiarity.”
Her eyes flickered. She adjusted in her seat and nodded, an indication that she was listening to my words.
“We don't need to erase him,” I continued. “We need to change the pattern. We need to rebuild a space where he doesn't revolve in the centre. New habits. New patterns. New associations. Your brain will follow.”
She exhaled a breath that I didn't know she was holding.
“It's unbearable, I know. But our mind, Sanya, it's powerful. It adapts. It changes. Work on creating new memories… even small ones. You'll start seeing the difference. And trust me... it will get better.”
I smiled, a reassurance to her fidgeting legs.
I glanced at my clock. 45 minutes. Right on time. “Thank you, Sanya, for coming in today. Work on what I told you.”
She stood up, adjusting her jeans which she crumpled with her fingers.
“And when you come in next week, I want your glowing face and not the swollen one, okay?”
“Thank you, Doctor.” She smiled faintly before leaving. The door shut quietly behind her.
I closed my notebook, heavy with emotions that were never mine to begin with, but followed me home like my own.
People think psychologists just listen. What they don't realise is how we absorb others’ problems and treat them as our own. We carry fragments of grief, misery, unending love. And when we return back, our house gets invariably stitched with new emotions as we carry it each day.
When Sanya walked out, she left a piece of herself within myself. The piece of me that I tried to bury this whole time.
The memory that I swore not to look back on ever again.
“I keep seeing him everywhere” echoed in the back of my mind.
Years back, I was in the same position too. Desperate. Wanting. Waiting. For him.
I always told people to move on, to not overwhelm yourselves with memories of people that were once your home, but now are just concrete walls.
But when it came to him—
The preacher forgot her own sermon.
A quiet wind brushed past me, a constant reminder of him existing in some part of the world.
And no matter how much I taught healing, I have never quite healed from him.
