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that's what is triggering you.  You say she was the best thing in your life, yet you have made her the focal point for all of your misery.  We have to pull apart those two things.  You can have one without the other.  You have to keep working on your reframing.  To recognize the positive where your mind wants to look at only the negative.”
     
                     Thinking about the situation I had written about in my notebook, I wasn’t so sure that advice was possible.  I mean, how the hell was I supposed to find the positive in trying to kill myself?  It wasn’t a trip to Disney World for Christ’s sake!  It was me; taking a piece of a broken mirror and cutting my arms open to the point that I had to have forty-five stitches on both arms.  I had heard the doctor in the hospital tell my parents that I had almost hit bone.  I hadn’t been fooling around.  I had wanted to die.
     
                    And for what?  Because I thought, in my twisted head, that Maggie had betrayed me.  I hadn’t been able to see that she was confused and scared and had really only been trying to help me.  And that is where the guilt came in.  Because it started that I had been thinking about Maggie and how for a brief second it had been the two of us, together, ready to take on anything.  Then my mind went to that night.  And all I could see was the darkness.  The moment when all I wanted to do was die.  And I had lost it.  The panic attack swept me away in its merciless tide.
     
                     My anger picked up a notch.  Why couldn't I just think of Maggie?  Why couldn't I simply remember her without all the other nasty stuff, like guilt and shame and the soul sucking anguish?  I only wanted to think of how much I loved that beautiful girl before I had turned our worlds upside down.
     
                     Maybe this was my punishment for being so weak and selfish.  Karma was a vindictive jerk.   
     
                      Because Maggie was my trigger.  And it wasn't a good one.  And I hated that my fucked up mind had taken something so wonderful and warped it into...well....something ugly.  Something that only served to remind me of what I couldn’t have.  Something that I was trying desperately to be healthy enough for but deep down worried I never would be.  No one had ever accused me of being a Pollyanna.  I was not a glass half full kind of guy.  But Dr. Todd was hell bent on changing that.  And damn it, I needed him to.
     
                     I growled in frustration and tugged at my hair.  I struggled to take a deep breath and loosened the grip I had on my scalp.  I could do this.  I could work through this maze of crap. 
     
                     After a few minutes I sat up and let my hands hang limp between my knees.  “Tell me something positive about that event in your life.  Think, Clay.  Think really hard.  The thing about the shadows is that they're not all darkness.  You need to have light to have shadows.  So just look for it,” Dr. Todd encouraged me.
     
                     That was his mantra. Finding the light in the dark shadows inside me.  He really should have T-shirts made or something.  It made me think of a gospel choir raising their hands to the sky singing, “I’ve seen the light!  Hallelujah I’ve seen the light!” 
     
                    But I got what he was saying.  But there were times it was impossible to do (with my natural pessimism and all).  But I did as he asked this time.  I thought hard about the good stuff. 
     
                      “I guess if I hadn't bottomed out, I wouldn't be here.  I wouldn't finally be getting the help I need,” I said finally, feeling a bit proud of myself in being able to verbalize something good in that horrible mess. 
     
                     Dr. Todd grinned,