Reflections of my misplaced hopes during triggering evenings. Sitting with my reddened body. Sticky sweat expelling fury down my back, my legs: blending with the patterned-imprint of this itchy chair.

I can take your hand: press it into this skin that feels too heavy: translucent with the sheen of trauma. I will not engage in exposures, like I'm told to do. My body already trembles and flourishes under my daily fears. I walk and breathe with my triggers: they float languidly on my surface. I ebb and flow with them; and we now guide each other. Our moves are synchronized but not choreographed. We still manage to surprise each other.

But this sticky, dripping fury rises like a fever. I writhe in this fervor, hearing you tell me I might consider being more vulnerable in group. This is after I say I feel alone, don't fit in. And when I say this to the group, I am met with silence. It's like they agree.

I say I don't want to love myself more than I love others, don't want to value myself more, just love and value myself like I do others, I want to matter like my communities matter to me.

I read into your silences. Your confusion weighs on me because you say I have to tell you what I need. So I say some language triggers me. You say "Which portions." So instead I switch my tactic and express my thoughts: maybe this program isn't right for me; I can't go through all the semantics. Your response: I can get a lot more out of it if I'm vulnerable, advocate for myself, even if it's hard. At this point, I'm breathing deep to keep from sobbing and yelling that I've had enough; I will not educate you on my care; not my fault I trouble your imperialist notions of competent therapist. I am my own advocate.

You go on to remind me that you think I'd benefit from partial hospitalization. "We recommended this in the beginning. Remember?"

[Is there content missing here?] treatment faster. I drudge up years of practice for these moments. Maybe then I can salvage some reliability of my own narrative.

I've already absorbed your destructive messages; they landed at my seething core. Just additions to records from helping professions. I'm too difficult, willful, stubborn, no hope, no cure, can't help you if you don't want to help yourself. But I am done with your perceptions of recovery.

So when I feel the fear rising from my belly to my throat, and the air oppresses me, and my nose clogs with the secretions of my sobs, I choose to labor for each inhale and exhale. Waiting for fear to recede. Waiting for it to sink back into my belly and gurgle into strands. For when it reconfigures, I can be ready.

This is the body that hugs my loved ones. The container of my confused being that holds others' anguish and hopes. What I have been given for a second chance at life, even though I'm tired. The proof my devalued labor. The display of this painful knowledge.

What grounds me to reality...