Cameron had left therapy with a list of goals, a structured plan, and the ghost of something that almost resembles hope pressing against her ribs. But putting all of it into practice? That was an entirely different beast.
The first morning after her session, she woke up to her alarm instead of letting herself sink back into sleep like she usually did. That was goal number one—structure her days, wake up at a consistent time, set a routine. Simple, in theory. But when she sat up, the crushing weight of exhaustion clung to her like a second skin. Her body felt impossibly heavy, her head a mess of static and half-formed thoughts that whispered, Why bother? What's the point?
She stayed in bed until noon.
By the third day, she managed to drag herself up before eleven. She even made coffee instead of drinking leftover whiskey from the night before, which felt like some kind of victory. But the moment she sat down at her kitchen table, alone with the silence, she felt the itch crawl beneath her skin. The need to reach for her phone, to see if Jasmine had broken first, if there was some last, desperate text waiting for her. She knew better, but the habit was ingrained in her bones. Even when she managed to resist, it didn't feel like strength—it just felt like suffering.
Her therapist had suggested hobbies. Distractions. Ways to fill the hours that didn't involve alcohol, mindless sex, or spiraling into herself. So, she tried.
She picked up her sketchbook again, flipping through pages of unfinished portraits and abandoned ideas. Her hands felt clumsy, the lines coming out wrong, nothing looking the way it used to. She gritted her teeth and pressed on, trying to sketch something—anything—to prove to herself that she still had this one thing left. But every time her mind wandered, it went to Jasmine. To the curve of her lips, the slope of her neck, the way her eyes had always held something just out of reach. Cameron's hand trembled, and before she knew it, she was scribbling out the drawing, blackening the page in frustration until the paper nearly tore.
She slammed the sketchbook shut and went straight for the whiskey.
It took her an hour to talk herself out of it.
One of the goals they had set was reducing drinking—not quitting outright, but cutting back. Make it manageable, her therapist had said. Don't set yourself up for failure. So, she didn't pour a glass. But the fact that she had stood in front of the bottle for as long as she had felt like failure anyway.
She tried running next. Exercise was another recommendation, something to ground her in her body rather than letting herself spiral in her head. It lasted ten minutes before she felt like her lungs were going to give out, and she collapsed on a bench, staring at the pavement with a kind of distant, detached loathing.
She had never been good at being alone. Jasmine had always been there, filling the space, occupying her mind, giving her something to orbit around. Now, there was nothing. Just her. And she wasn't sure if she even liked herself enough to want to be left alone with her own thoughts.
By the end of the week, she had managed to cook one meal, go on two runs, sketch three times, and ignore the whiskey in her cabinet five separate times. Small wins. But they didn't feel like wins. They felt like feeble, temporary distractions.
She sat in her apartment that Friday night, staring at the ceiling, her fingers itching for her phone. It would be so easy. Just one message. Just to see if Jasmine was thinking about her too. Just to—
She groaned and threw her phone across the couch, dragging her hands down her face. This is pathetic.
Her therapist had warned her that healing wasn't linear. That some days would feel like progress, and others would feel like she was right back where she started. But no one ever told her how lonely it would be. How quiet. How much she would miss the chaos just for the sake of filling the void it left behind.
She needed a distraction. Something to do. Something to keep her from reaching out.
She opened her laptop and searched for local group therapy sessions. It was another one of her therapist's suggestions—talking to people who understood, who were going through their own versions of the same storm. She hadn't committed to it yet, hadn't even seriously considered it, but right now, anything was better than sitting in her apartment, alone with her thoughts.
There was one that met on Tuesdays. Another on Saturdays. Cameron hesitated, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. She had always been bad at talking about herself. Bad at being vulnerable. But she was bad at this too—bad at being alone, bad at resisting the urge to self-destruct. And if she was going to be bad at something, she might as well be bad at trying to get better.
She signed up before she could talk herself out of it.
The urge to text Jasmine didn't go away that night. It still gnawed at her, still whispered in the back of her mind like a sickness she couldn't shake. But she went to bed without giving in. And for now, that had to be enough.