people can only meet you as deep as you meet yourself

during my last therapy session last november, i asked my therapist if i was "fixed".

i study psychology and logically i know that my question was absurd. i know that the journey of repairing the parts of yourself that were damaged by years of insecurity, disappointment and whatever incidents happened to your self-worth is not something that can be completed in ten one-hour sessions. i know that healing is not linear, i know that recovery is not a checklist, i know that there is no magical threshold where a therapist stamps your forehead and tells you congratulations, you are now mentally healthy. i know all of this because i have spent years learning it. i have written essays about it, sat through lectures about it and memorised theories about it. but despite knowing all of that, there was still a part of me that desperately wanted her to say yes.

quick quick quick.

i wanted a quick recovery.

more often than not i look at my mental health the same way i look at my physical health. two months ago i injured my back from committing an act of pure ego. i tried lifting a heavy bag by myself despite knowing i probably should not have. i forgot everything i knew about posture and body mechanics and all the countless gym videos telling me to engage my core. i disappointed you, romanian deadlift form, i am sorry.

because of that one stupid action i spent the next few days walking around hunched over like somebody's grandmother. getting out of bed became an event. sitting down became an event. existing became an event. but eventually my back healed.

and i think somewhere in my brain i still expect my mental health to operate in the exact same way.

that they could be a day in which i just stop being sad? that is not the right word. empty, that would be more appropriate to describe what i have felt for the longest time.

and being smart therapist that she was, said that it was not for her to answer and, i think during that session i was mostly scared, i was scared that i no longer have a weekly avenue in which i would be able to share my thoughts of the week, to share how they were days where i felt overwhelmed or that one scene that kept on replaying with my mind. those ten weeks which i attended therapy has been both reasurring and humiliating, reassuring knowing that my experiences were validated, humiliating because i had to rely on another person to help me understand my feelings. i thought i was different, those years of picking up the DSM5 of learning about mental illness, i thought it wouldnt get to me but no one is bigger than the system.

i always think about the story of jibril opening prophet muhammad's chest and cleansing his heart. so when i finally admitted that i needed therapy, i treated therapy like it was a sacred religious practice.

there are nights where i would take my shirt off and stare at my bare chest and i outline the insivisible line that divides my body into two symmetrical halves and i imagine an angel splitting my chest open and reaching inside. to have my sins removed that would be useful alongside everything else. i wanted somebody to take all of that out and wash it clean.

i still question the story's biological accuracy. whether it was the hati or the jantung that was being referred to, i genuinely do not know. either way it does not really matter because i have never interpreted that story as being about a physical organ. i like to see it (read: qalbun) as something more conceptually similar to the nafs, something that shapes every part of us despite having no physical location. 

whatever it was, i wanted therapy to do the same thing for me. the same way gibrael ripped open muhammad's chest when he was 4. i wanted my therapist to split me open and identify the exact wrong thing and wash it away.

it doesnt help that my therapist also calls me amirah, whenever i meet someone outside of a professional setting i would introduce myself as milo, amirah to me is an internal personality that i reserve for people who are closer to me. milo as silly as it sounds, carry less sentimental value. sure, many of my creative projects belong to milo. miloborak, milotrashcan and all the other little corners of the internet where i get to experiment with who i am. milo is a name i chose. a name i built.

but amirah is different. amirah is the name that belongs to my family. the name attached to childhood memories and expectations and disappointments and every version of myself that existed before i became old enough to reinvent myself.

apart from meaning princess, amirah has always sounded suspiciously close to the phrase "a mirror" and perhaps that is why i hated hearing it in therapy. that is exactly what therapy was for me. ten weeks of staring into a mirror.

but what i learned is that: therapy or honestly anybody in your life can only help you as deep as you are willing to help yourself. there is only so much another person can do when you are still avoiding parts of yourself. there is only so much reassurance somebody can offer when you have already decided that you are not worthy of reassurance. there is only so much love somebody can give when you are convinced that you are fundamentally unlovable.

people can only meet you as deep as you meet yourself because eventually every relationship reaches the limits of your own self-knowledge. people cannot understand parts of you that you refuse to understand. they cannot love parts of you that you keep hidden from yourself. they cannot help you navigate rooms that you are unwilling to enter.

so hide from the mirror how ever long you want, it will find you one way or another.