The Part Where Looking It Up Was Already the Answer

December nineteenth. I told myself I was just checking whether a second-level session existed. That was the whole premise: reconnaissance, no commitment, purely informational. The clinic website took about four seconds to load and by the time it did I had already opened a second tab with my bank details.

Simone had mentioned it at the last session, not that she registered, just that she looked. She said it the way you say something when you want to leave the door open without admitting the door is already open. I filed it. Walked to the bus stop thinking about it in the way I think about things I have already decided without telling myself. That is a specific feeling. I have started recognizing it.

The borrowed shoes are the obvious part of the story, two sizes too wide, velcro closure, slightly chalked up by someone else before me, and I have written around them twice now because they are the right object to write around when what you actually want to say is: I kept going back. The borrowed shoes mean you have not committed. Except I went back. Twice. And now I am on the registration page for January with my card number ready, and the borrowed shoes are starting to feel less like a threshold and more like a perfectly reasonable thing that happened before I owned my own pair.

the registration page was already open when I sat down

I have not registered yet. That is technically true. But I am writing this at the kitchen table with the laptop still open on that tab, and the windowsill behind it has the bowl and the card and both photographs in it and the December light is doing that specific thing it does at this time of year, and I think the impulsive version of me already knows what is happening. She is just waiting for the deliberating version to catch up.

simone was already reading the flyer. of course she was.