It takes everything in me not to pick at the bite mark when I sit on Dr Colas's red sofa on Wednesday. It's healed enough to no longer require gauze, nor is there any necessity for me to hide it here, but the scabs on the deepest tooth marks are horridly alluring.

I settle for spinning around the hyena canine on my necklace instead and refuse to meet her stare.

'Have you been self-harming again?' she asks from her embroidered armchair. Like Dal, Dr Colas has mastered a voice of utter neutrality that manages to retain warmth. When I do nothing but root deeper into the sofa, she continues. 'It's nothing for you to be ashamed of, Ziri.'

Of course, it is. I'm supposed to know safer alternatives, and, by now, I'm supposed to not need them in the first place.

I shake my head.

'Have your symptoms gotten worse, to your notice?' It's the same question, only more shrouded.

'No.' I scratch the side of my neck as I speak. 'I got blindsided by a trigger once and the other grounding techniques you taught me weren't workin. My mum's overreactin, per usual.'

Miles would probably never speak to me again if he knew where I am. Do I care? It's almost painful to attempt to figure out what to think. I've had to rewrite so many aspects of him in a handful of days that it's dizzying.

Do I care? Does your opinion matter? Should it?

On one hand, I can't deny that him being gay changes things, or at the very least, I can't help the empathy that forces me to care about him, if for nothing else, as a fellow queer teen. On the other, I'm not going to pretend like being some neutral bystander is okay, even if he does have personal stakes.

But Miles has never done anything, thinks one voice.

Yeah, exactly, thinks another. He never does anything. He turns a blind eye to everything and how is anyone supposed to excuse that? What, he plays the dead dad card I forgive and forget?

I want to. That's the worst part. I want to forgive and forget even if I'll continue to condemn the same in others. You make ad hominem so tempting.

Does any of it matter? Now that tutoring is over and graduation is around the corner, are we ever going to speak again? Do I care if we don't?

'You seem distracted.' This is Dr Colas's quintessential psychiatrist move — what seems like a casual statement but is actually a question.

Only half of my mind listens to her as the other continues to tangle itself around Miles. A part of me is always going to be tangled in you.

My eyes don't focus when I respond. 'I'm thinkin about how, surprisingly, me and the royal family actually have a lot in common because we both leech off the layman's taxes. Sure, I use it for basic healthcare and education and they use it to furnish their palaces, but still.'

'I thought we agreed you'd work on your urge to turn everything into a joke to distract others and change the subject.'

'No. You said I should. I didn't say I was gonna.'

She's unamused.

Dr Colas is the only Black NHS psychiatrist in Sufadale and I never forget to thank God for her presence after a session — I can tell her things without needing to explain them or skirt around her feelings. She lets me speak French when it comes more naturally and even Darija though she doesn't understand and, like a paleotempestologist, I have to dig around for overwash deposits to translate into English once the storm settles.

...But sometimes she reminds me a little too much of Iya.

'You're one of the cleverest patients I've ever had–'

'Is that a euphemism for annoyin?'

'Why do you think that?'

'Because I am. And people always speak in euphemisms to be "polite" and "professional". It's all made up, you know? "Professional", what's that even mean? It's just another one of those completely nonsensical societal constructs that we all somehow agreed to even though we all hate it.'

She adjusts herself in her embroidered armchair. 'So you think everyone hates you but are simply too polite to tell so to your face?'

I shake my head. 'Some do tell me to my face.'

Dr Colas refuses to take the bait.

I fall back into the red sofa with a groan and glare at the Haitian flag now inverted above me. I know it's her job to be clever enough to stop me from intentionally steering from the topic at hand, but it's still aggravating.

'You can't expect me to stop makin jokes. My quick wit is a cornerstone of my personality. If I can't be funny, what's left?'

'You can still be funny without using humour as a crutch.' Her voice is bland but it makes me smile anyway. 'We don't have to talk about it today if you don't want to, but please don't dismiss this as "not a big deal", because self-harm is a big deal, even if it's only once.'

We stare at each other.

I nod.

Dr Colas relaxes into her armchair as if deciding to no longer be my psychiatrist but rather a friendly mentor. 'Tell me about something else. We've got forty minutes left. We might as well chat about something.'

Sighing, I settle against the sofa cushions and do my best to isolate a single comprehensive sentence from the whirlpool in my head. It's like fishing, except whenever I'm close to catching one, a bigger fish eats it, and a worm on a hook is hardly going to lure in a shark.

Finally, I manage to snatch something. 'I got an offer from Oxford.'

I tell this to the certificates behind her and pause to give her the chance to react.

But she doesn't congratulate me. The fact that she doesn't assume I want to be congratulated eases the tension in my shoulders and words flow out of my mouth before I can properly shape and prune them for effective and direct communication.

'I rejected it. I didn't tell my parents. I didn't even tell them I applied. They would've told the whole continent of Africa if I did. And I never really wanted to go, I just wanted to see if I could.

'When I went there for the interview, I didn't like it. I understand the social prestige but I was so uncomfortable. 

'But maybe I'm supposed to suck it up, cause how can I complain about people hatin immigrants if I don't even take the opportunities I get to prove em wrong? Plus, my parents came here so that I could succeed and I'm choosing not to.

'I don't want to live so far away from my parents. I know I'm eighteen and I'm too old but I need my parents. And I've always lived here. Maybe I do hate it a bit, but I can only hate it because I know it and I definitely don't know Oxford, nor do I really want to.'

Clearing my throat, I conclude: 'So I don't regret it. But I feel like I should.'

Dr Colas nods. 'You don't owe anyone anything. It's entirely possible for you to be grateful for the opportunities you're given and, at the same time, choose not to take them. You don't have to do things that don't make you happy.'

'But what if I do?'

'But you don't.' She smiles. 'It's your life, and if you don't go to Oxford because you "just don't want to", that's completely justified.'

Now all I can think about is Miles.

Does he only do things his dad would do with him? Or things that won't bother his mum or sister? So maybe it's not about justifying his passivity but accepting his grief. Maybe this is what we have in common: we both carry the self-imposed responsibility to prove others wrong. I've misidentified the string.

When we argue whether a passing car is green or blue, are we arguing over the word or the colour? Do we see it differently or merely have asynchronous categories for identical scenes and at which stage is truth determined? If a car is green and I call it blue, is it blue or is it green? Is there such a thing as a genuine objective state of existence? Is Miles green or is he blue and when did my perception become reality?

Maybe he's been red all along. Does red exist?

My decision to no longer be confused is a colossal wreck. I've never been more confused in my life.

Dr Colas's voice beckons me back to her office. 'What's on your mind?'

I grab one of the decorative cushions from my left, a pictorial of a man tending to his garden by the sea, and hug it so beads and tuffs of the embroidery irritate the skin of my throat. It still smells of Razac body lotion even though it hasn't been in Haiti for at least a decade — the date on Dr Colas's PhD from Cambridge is June thirteen, 1998.

'Just my dickhead of a neighbour.' My speech is muffled by the pressure of the cushion against my vocal cords but I don't move it. 'I've been helpin him with maths for A-levels and, at first, I only put up with him cause of the money, but now it's all I think about.

'But what if he doesn't? Think about it, I mean. And what if he's only spendin time with me so that he can find my weaknesses and tell all his friends so that they can bully me more than they already do?'

Silence.

'Does that sound like a realistic scenario to you?' When her voice lacks condescension, my mind fills it in. She thinks I'm stupid.

I shrug. I can't tell these days when something I say is hyperbole for comedic effect and when I actually believe it true.

'To me it sounds like you're coming up with conspiracies to justify running away because you're afraid, maybe a little paranoid too.'

'I'm not paranoid!'

Unoffended by my glare, she smiles. 'It's nothing to be ashamed about, Ziri. You have PTSD and bipolar, it comes with the territory. You just have to learn to navigate it.'

My chin itches from the impressions of the linen cushion but I curl back into it nonetheless. 'I'm so confused. I don't get confused. All I do every day is think about him and I still can't figure him out. When I'm around him, it's... so nice, but then five minutes later, he'll pretend like we don't even know each other, and I can't solve it. And I shouldn't care anyway. He plays football and goes to parties and eats liquorice. We have nothin in common. I don't like him.'

Dr Colas takes a moment to respond. 'Have you considered that instead of "figuring him out", you could let him explain himself?'

I peel my face from the cushion to stare at her, eyebrows knitted.

'Your brain is wired to come up with every possible outcome of every possible situation and then prepare the survival kit for each of them, but when you're busy doing that, you can't listen.'

With no verbal rebuttal coming to mind, I shake my head. Not true. Nothing just explains itself, nor am I busy preparing survival kits. What's that even supposed to mean?

Clearly having some inkling of my thoughts, she leans forward. She's about to say something she knows I don't want to hear.

'I'm going to be harsh for a minute. You come to therapy so that we can work on overcoming your trauma responses, not so that you can allow them to keep governing your life. I'm not expecting you to get over anything overnight, but it's been two years, and every time something you can't control comes up, you run away. Forget Oxford, these are the opportunities you need to take.

'It's okay to live in a bubble when it's best for you, but after a while, all that bubble does is impede you from healing. You can't prepare for everything. You can't figure everything out in advance. Learning to deal with a little bit of discomfort is vital for your recovery.

'And you need friends. Because friends add to your support system and that's what's really going to get you through the hard days. And you don't get friends by treating them like a maths equation or the zombie apocalypse.'

I scowl into the cushion.

'So next time you see this neighbour, maybe try to be with him instead of in your head, even if it makes you a little uncomfortable at first.'

Notes

Ad hominem: A logical fallacy where you attack the person rather than what their argument is