Jake's phone buzzed on the nightstand, killing the early morning stillness of his apartment. The sun had only just started to rise, casting a pale, gray light across the floorboards and the unwashed mug on the windowsill. He reached for his phone, half-hoping Jules's name would light up the screen. Instead, it was a reminder: Therapy at 9:00 AM. He stared at it, unmoving. A knot formed in his stomach, part relief, part dread. Therapy was supposed to help....Dr. Lane always said it was progress, even when it didn't feel like it. But some days it felt more like digging through old wounds than healing them. Like picking at scabs you didn't even realize were still bleeding.He crawled out of bed, moving slowly, like his body had forgotten how to function without permission. Getting ready was automatic at this point,brush teeth, put on clean-enough clothes, avoid the mirror....,but today he paused. The mirror caught him mid-step. He stared.The face looking back didn't feel like his. Brown eyes ringed with exhaustion, lips pressed in a thin, uncertain line, hair tangled like he'd fought sleep all night. Maybe he had. Maybe he always did. There were nights when he felt like a stranger in his own skin like some version of him got left behind years ago, and what was left never quite grew into anything solid.At Dr. Lane's office, he dropped into the seat across from her and folded his arms across his chest, as if bracing for something."Rough night?" she asked softly. Her voice was calm, familiar. A contrast to the chaos in his chest.Jake shrugged. "I don't know. It just… gets loud. In my head, Like everything's tangled together and I can't tell what's real or what's just... me spiraling." Dr. Lane nodded like she'd heard that before. Maybe she had. "That makes sense," she said. "You've talked about the noise. How sometimes your emotions feel like they're running the show."Jake nodded, chewing the inside of his cheek. A memory surfaced....the bus ride the night before. The woman who sat beside him, makeup smudged under her eyes like she'd cried in the bathroom at work. She told him, out of nowhere, that saying things aloud sometimes helps. That if you don't speak your pain, it finds its own way to be heard. "There was this woman on the bus," he said quietly. "She told me that… sometimes it's just noise because we don't face it. That saying it out loud makes it real. But like what am I even supposed to face?" The last part came out sharper than he meant. Dr. Lane didn't flinch. "Maybe she was onto something," she said gently. "If you had to say something to yourself… just for a moment… what would it be?" Jake looked down twiddling his fingers. The silence between them stretched, uncomfortable but necessary. "I feel… lost," he said finally, the words brittle. "Like I don't know who I am. Or who I'm supposed to be." Dr. Lane leaned in slightly. "That's an important thing to say. A lot of people with borderline personality disorder feel that. A kind of emptiness or confusion about who they are. But naming it? That's the first step. That's how it starts to shift." Jake clenched his hands in his lap, fighting the instinct to brush it off with a joke or a shrug. But he didn't. He stayed with the discomfort, letting it settle around him.
"Sometimes I think… people get tired of me," he said, barely above a whisper. "Like I'm too much. Too intense. Too everything." Dr. Lane's face softened. "That fear of being too much is part of the fear of being left behind. It's something a lot of people with BPD carry. But it doesn't make you unlovable. It just means your heart's been shaped by inconsistency. You learned to expect loss." Jake swallowed. He didn't know if he believed her. Not really. But some part of him a tired, bruised part wanted to. Needed to. By the time he left her office, there was a strange lightness in his chest. Not joy, exactly, but a breath of space where all the noise had been. A flicker of something like hope. He walked out into the soft morning air, his hands deep in his pockets, and let himself imagine just briefly that maybe he wasn't as broken as he always feared.
Maybe the pieces didn't need to go back where they came from. Maybe they could form something entirely new.