The Patient's Secret

by Loreth Anne White

The Death card is a sign that you need to draw a line through the past in order to move forward. It says: Release what no longer serves you.

As a therapist Lily knows that trauma lives in one’s body and that the body keeps the score even if the mind has no narrative for what occurred. Even if the event is completely compartmentalized in the unconscious.

Her goal in life is to help others cope with mental adversity, to show that one does not have to be irreparably destroyed by horrific actions of the past. Her goal, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, is to show, again and again, that a person can make a choice to change the narrative, to overwrite the patterns of history. That a person does not have to be defined by the past. Or by genetics. People can change.

nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, it also holds true that nothing is more terrifying than to be divested of a crutch.

Normal is a construct. A story people tell themselves. It’s what everyone does—feigns some concept of normalcy. Stories people tell themselves are the only reality humans know.

People live in the six inches of real estate between their ears—in that three pounds of fat and protein that is the human brain. They live inside their heads. That’s where reality resides. That’s where every single human constructs an individual narrative of their life.

“We die as we live,” says Fareed, reaching for a ruler. “Our mental and physical traumas, our pasts, daily habits, lusts, desires, fetishes, addictions—it’s all written into the body.”

“We all need a mask in order to function. But wear the mask too long and we forget who really lives behind it. Right? We forget our authentic selves.”