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Reinventing yourself turns out to be more expensive than advertised, and Phoenix is a terrible place to do it.

I’m sitting in my studio apartment—all four hundred square feet of it—sorting through client intake forms that feel like playing house with my psychology degree.

The space is aggressively neutral: beige walls, beige carpet, beige everything, like someone tried to design personality out of existence. It matches my current state perfectly.

Six weeks since I fled Chicago with three suitcases and what was left of my dignity. Six weeks of pretending Dr. Chelsea Clark never existed, that I’m just Chelsea now—private practice therapist helping soccer moms work through anxiety and college kids navigate relationship drama.

It’s honest work. Necessary work. And it’s slowly killing what’s left of my professional soul.

“So tell me about your mother,” I say to Jennifer, my two o’clock appointment, because sometimes therapy really is that cliché.

“She’s fine. Supportive. Maybe a little too involved in my dating life.” Jennifer shifts in her chair—the one expensive piece of furniture I bought, because if you’re going to rebuild your career from scratch, you might as well have good seating. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“No?”

“I’m here because my boyfriend doesn’t want to have sex anymore, and I think it’s because I gained fifteen pounds over the holidays.”

And there it is. The slow descent from treating professional athletes with complex trauma to discussing holiday weight gain.

This is what my doctorate gets me now—fifty-minute sessions about sexual frequency and body image issues that I could solve in ten minutes if clients actually wanted solutions instead of validation.

“Have you talked to him about this directly?” I ask, scribbling notes I’ll probably throw away later.

“I dropped hints. Wore his favorite lingerie. Joined a gym.”

“But have you asked him what’s going on?”

“What if he says yes? What if he admits I’m too fat now?”

“And what if he doesn’t? What if this has nothing to do with your weight?”

Jennifer stares at me like I’ve suggested she perform surgery on herself. “But what else could it be?”

He could be dealing with work stress. Performance anxiety.

Depression. A million things that have nothing to do with your body and everything to do with his own insecurities.

But I don’t say that. Instead, I guide her through the process of having an actual conversation with her boyfriend like it’s revolutionary therapy instead of basic human communication.

When she leaves, I have twenty minutes before my next client. I use them to stare out my single window at the parking lot of a strip mall that houses my office between a nail salon and a tax preparation service. This is my view now. Asphalt and disappointment.

My phone buzzes—the new phone, with the new number that only six people have. A text from Dr. Rutledge, my former thesis advisor who helped me set up this practice.

Rutledge: How are you settling in? Any interesting cases?

Me: Define interesting. Today I’m counseling someone about holiday weight affecting her sex life.

Rutledge: We all start somewhere. Remember, you’re building something new.

Building something new. Right. Because what I had before was just rubble waiting to be cleared away.

Never mind that it took eight years of education and two years of specialized training to get where I was.

Never mind that I was good at what I did, before I let my personal life contaminate my professional judgment.

My three o’clock is late, which gives me time to check news feeds I’ve been avoiding. Old habits die hard, and apparently masochism is one of mine.

ESPN: “Hendrix Signs Two-Year Deal with Boston Blizzards”

The headline makes tears instantly prick in my eyes.

Damn it. I can’t help it. I’m so fucking happy he’s found something else.

I prayed for this moment. I click through to the article despite knowing better, torturing myself with details about his “fresh start” and “new opportunities in hockey.” There’s a photo of him at the signing ceremony—suit and tie, professional smile, looking like someone who’s moved on completely.

“I’m excited for this new chapter,” Hendrix said in a statement. “Boston offers the chance to focus purely on hockey without outside distractions.”

Outside distractions. That’s what I am to him. now. A distraction he’s putting an ocean between himself and, like I’m a bad habit he needs geography to break.

My four o’clock finally arrives. Marcus, a college senior convinced his roommate is stealing his food. We spend forty-five minutes discussing the psychology of communal living and whether passive-aggressive note-leaving constitutes healthy conflict resolution.

By six, I’m done pretending to care about other people’s small problems. I lock up the office and head to the grocery store, because this is my life now. Buying dinner for one and pretending domestic routine can fill the void where my ambition used to live.

The Whole Foods is busy, filled with young professionals buying organic everything and families navigating dinner negotiations with toddlers. I’m in the wine aisle—my most frequent destination these days—when I hear someone gasp.

“Oh my God, is that her?”

I turn, hoping they’re talking about someone else, but three women in yoga pants are staring at me with the kind of recognition that makes my skin crawl.

“It is! The therapist who slept with that hockey player!”

“The coach’s daughter?”

“I saw her picture everywhere. What a scandal.”

They’re not even trying to whisper. Other shoppers turn to look, phones appearing like vultures sensing carrion. In Phoenix. Six weeks later. Two thousand miles from Chicago, and I’m still the woman who fucked her client and destroyed her career.

“Excuse me,” the tallest one says, approaching with phone already recording. “Aren’t you Dr. Chelsea Clark? From the Outlaws thing?”

“I’m sorry, you have me confused with someone else.”

“No, I definitely recognize you. My husband’s a huge hockey fan. We followed the whole story.” She’s closer now, phone lens capturing my humiliation in real-time. “So what’s it like being a home-wrecker? Was the sex worth destroying a team?”

“I—”

“I mean, he was hot, right? That Hendrix guy? I get it. But sleeping with your client? That’s just trashy.”

Trashy. Like I’m some porn star instead of a woman with a doctorate who made one catastrophically stupid choice about where to put her heart.

“Please stop recording me.”

“It’s a public place. I can record whatever I want.” Her smile is vicious, the kind women perfect when they smell weakness. “Maybe you should have thought about privacy before you became a homewrecker.”

“I didn’t wreck any homes.”

“No? What about your father’s reputation? The team? All those players whose lives you disrupted because you couldn’t keep your legs closed?”

I drop my wine. The bottle shatters against the floor, red spreading across white tile like accusation. The sound draws more attention, more phones, more witnesses to my ongoing humiliation.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” A store employee appears with a mop, professional concern masking obvious recognition.

“Fine. I’m fine.” I’m backing away from the women, from their cameras, from the growing crowd of people who know exactly who I am and what I’ve done. “I need to go.”

I abandon my cart and flee, practically running through the parking lot to my car. Behind me, I hear laughter and the unmistakable sound of social media uploads—videos that will probably be trending by morning.

“OMG guys, just ran into the hockey scandal therapist at Whole Foods! She’s hiding in Phoenix now!”

“Confirmed: Dr. Homewrecker is living in Arizona. Still looks like a slut!”

“Remember when this bitch destroyed the Outlaws? Karma’s real!”

In my car, I sit shaking for ten minutes before I can trust myself to drive. This is my life now. This is who I am forever—the cautionary tale, the punchline, the woman who thought she could have it all and lost everything instead.

Back in my apartment, I pour wine from the emergency bottle I keep for exactly this kind of day.

The client files spread across my coffee table mock me with their mundane concerns—relationship anxiety, family communication issues, academic stress.

Problems with solutions. Problems that matter to the people living them but feel impossibly small after destroying everything for love.

I grab the nearest file—Jennifer and her holiday weight concerns—and tear it in half. Then another. And another. Paper flies everywhere, session notes and treatment plans and intake forms scattered like confetti at the world’s saddest party.

When I’m done, my living room looks like a therapy practice exploded. Months of careful work building this new life reduced to shreds of paper and wine-stained tears.

My phone buzzes. Dr. Rutledge again.

Sarah: Saw some social media posts. Are you okay?

So it’s already online. My humiliation, viral and permanent, tagged and shared and commented on by strangers who know nothing about who I was before Reed Hendrix walked into my life.

Me: I’m fine.

Sarah: You don’t have to be fine, Chelsea. This is too much! I can’t believe how much of a deal everyone’s making this.

Me: I slept with hockey’s most notorious bad boy player and biggest bachelor who doesn’t sleep around. I know why I have all these haters. All these people wish it was them in those photos.

Mia: Jealous bitches!

Emma: Want to talk?

What would I say? That I’m drowning in the shallow end of psychology, treating problems that feel like puzzles instead of the complex human disasters I trained for?

That every time someone recognizes me, I remember exactly how much I’ve lost?

That I wake up every morning hoping today won’t be the day another video surfaces, another photo leaks, another piece of my dignity gets auctioned off to the highest bidder?

Me: I’m handling it.

Sarah: If you’re not going to talk to us, you should go to therapy.

Therapy for the therapist. How perfectly circular.

Except what would I say? That I’m grieving the loss of a relationship that never existed?

That I miss a man who’s moved on so completely he’s calling me a distraction in international press?

That I destroyed everything good in my life for fifteen minutes of feeling alive, and some days I wish I could do it again?

Me: Thanks, but I’m fine.

I’m not fine. I’m broke, professionally exiled, and apparently unable to buy groceries without becoming a viral sensation. I’m living in a beige box in Phoenix, treating people’s minor anxieties while my own major depression goes untreated.

But I’m also free.

Free from my father’s expectations and my own need to be perfect. Free from the pressure to be Dr. Clark instead of just Chelsea. Free from the illusion that playing by the rules guarantees you win.

I gather the scattered papers, thinking about Jennifer and Marcus and all the other people who come to me seeking permission to want what they want, to feel what they feel, to be messy and human and imperfect.

Maybe that’s enough for now. Maybe helping other people figure out how to be honest about their needs is worth more than treating elite athletes who think emotions are weaknesses to be managed.

Maybe building something small and real is better than maintaining something big and fake.

Or maybe I’m just making peace with failure because the alternative—fighting my way back to respectability—feels impossible from here.

My reflection in the dark window shows a woman I’m still learning to recognize. Messy hair, wine-stained shirt, surrounded by the debris of her former ambitions.

She looks tired.

She looks defeated.

She looks human.