Becoming (INSECURE SEQUEL)

18

Okay it's been a whileeee. I'm sorry, I've been busy and distracted

CATALINA

I stare at the chipped nail polish on my fingernail. It's always chipped. No matter what. I can get gel nail polish or a hardening overcoat, but I pick at them so much that it always chips. I look at the white of my fingernail peeking out of the blue polish so I start to think about my next color. I take my thumb and rub it over my bruised knuckles; it doesn't sting to touch like it did a few days ago. I frown at the purplish color giving my hand such an ugly look. My wedding ring doesn't even fit around the swelling and forcing it on only hurts. I wonder if I can get it temporarily resized.

"Catalina." I hear my therapist say my name.

Ugh. She's still here. I thought if I focused on something else she'd disappear.

"What?"

"Are you ready to--"

"I'm not having this conversation with you!" I roll my eyes, frustrated with repeating myself.

"So there's a conversation to have?"

I huff and lay back on the couch. "No. You're making stuff up. You people are crazy."

"You're looking for a reason to be mad at Ashton." She says, forcing the conversation on me.

I glare at her. She has no right. I'm not here for relationship therapy, I'm here for me. And who does she think she is? Saying his name like she knows him or something.

"Because you resent him for meeting a standard that you will never live up to. You resent him because you never wanted kids and now you have so many that you can't do anything--"

"What are you talking about? What do my children that I love have to do with this?"

She shrugs. "You didn't want any and now you have plenty of them. You don't have the time to focus on being the version of yourself that you want to be because you have to be their mother before anything else."

"So?"

Maybe I didn't want children before, but that's changed. Three plus one is a lot but I wouldn't have it any other way. She's acting like I wasn't an active participant in both the making and birth of my children. I don't even know why i have a stupid therapist, they don't know anything anyway.

"Okay." She crosses her legs and does that thing she does when she thinks she's making a point. "So two years ago when you had your daughter what made you decide to? You didn't want children and you didn't have to have her, but you did. Why?"

I take a long, bored sigh.

I guess when I think about it, I don't know why. I'd like to think that no one really wants kids until their only other option is to kill it. Adoption wasn't a choice for me because I know exactly what that's like. I guess it's easier to say you don't want a child when having one isn't in the question; then you get pregnant and everything you said before changes.

"I don't know."

"Yes you do."

"How are you going to tell me?"

"Well until you can admit that you resent him for wanting kids when you didn't and you loved him enough to have them. Now you're home all the time and he isn't, so you're stuck with all the stress. Until you can admit it, we can't go any further with this conversation."

I don't resent him. If I did, I would know it. Being mentally ill for years and not having a therapist makes you quite self aware. If I were ever mad at Ashton for something like that, I wouldn't be able to do so without feeling guilty.