“I want that too,” I said. “I just…I don’t know how to get better.”
“Try talking about it? With me? A therapist? What? Why did you roll your eyes?” I didn’t even know I’d rolled my eyes until she checked me and flashed a scowl. “What’s wrong with seeing a therapist?”
“Nothing’s wrong—”
“Then maybe you can start looking for one? I really think you should. I’ll look for one with you. We can both get one.”
“I don’t need a therapist. I need to figure out what the hell I’m going to do when my swimming career is over.”
“A therapist can help with that. You said you want to get better, Quinn. How can you be depressed for almost five months and be okay with that?”
“I’m not okay with that,” I said a little too defensively.
“Then do something about it!” She lifted herself to square her body with mine. “I don’t know why you’re acting like therapy is the dumbest idea. I said I would get one with you. We can do this together.”
“I don’t want to see a therapist.”
She opened and closed her mouth, and when no rebuttal came out, a frown took over her face. “So…you want a solution, but going to someone to help you discover that solution is off the table?”
“You don’t need to be patronizing—”
“I’m not being patronizing. I’m trying to help you. Someone has to because you’re not doing it yourself. I feel like instead of fighting against the current, you’re letting it thrash you around.”
I shifted too and crossed my legs to get comfortable. Apparently, this wasn’t going to end anytime soon by the harshness in both of our voices, and if Kennedy thought I was a useless piece of debris floating around, then I definitely wasn’t happy.
“That’s what you think?” I asked.
“Why are you acting so surprised? What have you done that’s a step toward feeling better?”
“I dropped out of the world champs. You know how big a step that was? You know how hard it was to tell my coach that at the peak of my career, I need to pull away from the sport and take a break? Or let my teammates down? You know how scared I was? I almost didn’t do it. Talk about letting something thrash me around.”
“I get that’s a big thing to do, but that happened in November. It’s now the second week of March. What have you done to find solutions? You worry about your life after swimming, which is a valid concern, but what have you done to solve that? You already shot down my suggestion of therapy. So what’s the alternative?”
“I…I don’t know—”
“You don’t want to go to therapy because what? You were trained not to ask for help? Are you one of those athletes who thinks they’re better than asking for help?”
My eyebrows furrowed. “No—”
“Then I don’t know how you’re going to get those answers if you won’t talk to me, won’t talk to a therapist—”
I rolled my eyes, shook my head, and got off the bed. It wasn’t comfortable anymore.
“Quinn? Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Wherever the current takes me, apparently.”
She grunted and chased me, grabbing my hand as I snatched my sweatshirt from the floor, but I yanked it out of her grip. “Come back to bed.”
I pulled the shirt over my head. Kennedy followed me into the walk-in closet as I shoved into my tennis shoes. “And have you continue to tell me I’m not doing shit? That I’m just letting life beat me up? How is that helping me?”
“So you can realize that sweeping things under the rug—like you’re used to doing—is very detrimental to your break.”
“I really don’t want to continue this conversation,” I said and walked around her to head downstairs.
“Quinn, come on—”
“I just need to walk.”
“No, you’re running away from your problems,” she shouted over the loft railing. “Come back, and let’s talk about it.”
“I’m not running away,” I yelled. “I’m taking a walk. Jesus.”
I snatched my keys from the hook mounted to the wall, continued out the front door, down the elevator, and into the damp early spring night. Mist saturated the air, and a thin fog hung low around the tree lines. The streetlights flickered off the shallow puddles on the sidewalk as I buried my hands into my sweatshirt pocket and continued walking without a destination. The misty rain clung to my face, and the cool air sent a shiver down my spine. The weather was horrible for a ten o’clock at night walk around the neighborhood, but I really needed some air to calm down.
I did a few laps around the block, passing the craft brewery about fifty paces right out my condo’s front door, the market at the corner about to close, the yoga studio next to the market that attracted so many hot women that it made the weekend mornings that much more enjoyable, and the hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeout place that had amazing Kung Pao chicken that Kennedy and I ordered at least once a week.
I loved my neighborhood and all the sights, sounds, and food smells that came with it. I also really loved living with Kennedy and establishing our favorite places. The market was our go-to if we were craving Halo Top ice cream. We took the neighborhood and turned it into ours, and it made me feel like a new San Francisco resident, living vicariously through Kennedy. Watching her falling in love with the city felt like falling in love with it all over again. At the same time, I was falling in love with her.
Then my thoughts latched on to Kennedy and training.
She was my girlfriend, my best friend, my partner, and she thought I wasn’t doing enough. Half of me agreed with her, so why was I so angry? Why did I have a tone with her when I understood what she was saying? Why did I run away when she was trying to help me and understand me?
You want her to tell you that you’re doing amazing. You’re still searching for validation that confirms you’re still a winner, Rational Me said.
I couldn’t believe how childish I’d acted. What the hell was I doing? I hated that I was so good at sweeping things under the rug. Later was always more convenient. I guess it was part of my swimmer programming. But I couldn’t expect to get better or fall in love with swimming again if I wasn’t willing to deactivate that suppressing gene in my DNA.
The last thing I wanted was to be mad at Kennedy. I had no idea what I wanted to do or what my future looked like, but I knew one hundred percent that Kennedy was my person. Two and a half months into living together, fully enveloped in the pact we made, I knew I could be with her for the rest of my life and not feel left out of the dating scene. If anything, I needed to get my ass off the couch and look for that answer to my problems, even if that meant I spent the whole day wandering the city or the internet looking for it. I had to do it for her and ease the anxiety that told me if I didn’t get out of my funk, she would leave me for a happier life back on the East Coast.
Didn’t I have enough rest since I dropped out of Abu Dhabi? Plenty of time to sleep in, catch up on Killing Eve, Stranger Things, and the last season of Orange Is the New Black, enough time to store away pop culture references and topics to make me feel like a normal twenty-three-year-old?