She was quoting to me the exact same chapter from the exact same book I so often use to help people understand boundaries. In the hour we spent together, my counselor said nothing new to me, nothing I myself don’t regularly say to others. And yet it was hugely helpful.

Heavy and icky, a sense of doom presses down on me. At night, it jerks me from my sleep with scenes from what-if scenarios raising my pulse as efficiently as any horror move while endless do-do lists scroll like credits in the background.

It happens again. That same, crippled communication where both of us are delivering well-worn lines, both of us aware that we are trapped here. Neither of us wants this. Neither of us knows how to break the cycle.

Now the two of them went until they came to Bethlehem. And it happened, when they had come to Bethlehem, that all the city was excited because of them; and the women said, “ Is this Naomi?”

But she said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?”