DEAR DIARY — Part 3
September 23rd
This week has actually been better. Not easier, exactly, because I still feel as though I am buried under reading, notes, and deadlines, but better in the sense that I do not feel quite so frantic all the time.
The sessions with Adam have been helping more than I expected. Every time we do them, I come away feeling calmer in a way that lasts longer than I think it should. It is not that all the pressure disappears, because obviously it doesn’t, but the pressure feels less sharp somehow. Less like it is pressing directly against the inside of my skull. I can still tell I am overworked, but I do not feel as if I am on the verge of snapping every other hour.
I had my geography test today, and I honestly think I did brilliantly. I came out of it with that rare feeling of actual certainty, which almost never happens for me because I usually walk out of exams and immediately start replaying every possible mistake. But this time I felt good. Really good. I knew the material, I was clear, and for once I don’t think that confidence is misplaced.
Campus is starting to feel more normal now too. The first weeks always has that artificial, stiff feeling, as if everyone is still performing the version of themselves they want the semester to see. But now people have settled back into old rhythms. Rachel and Kelly and I have already fallen back into the habit of meeting for coffee between classes when we can, and those little pockets of time help more than they probably realize. Even just sitting with them for twenty minutes makes the whole day feel less relentless.
I have also resigned myself to the fact that the library is once again going to be my second home. I have spent so much time there this week that I am beginning to feel I should be paying rent.
Adam told me the other night that I seem less tightly wound lately. I laughed when he said it, because I certainly do not feel relaxed in any general sense, but maybe compared to how I was two weeks ago, he is right. At the very least, I am not in quite such a constant state of panic.
Which, honestly, feels like progress.
September 26th
It has turned colder lately.
Or at least cold enough that I should probably stop pretending it is still summer. The air has changed completely over the last few days. Mornings have that sharper feeling now, and by late afternoon there is already that creeping chill that makes you realize the season is shifting whether you are ready for it or not.
I have noticed it especially because I am somehow still wearing my summer clothes. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I just cannot seem to make myself cover up properly yet. It feels too soon. I keep reaching for lighter tops, thinner fabrics, bare arms, as if I can hold onto the end of summer just by refusing to dress for autumn. I know that is absurd, but there it is.
Ava is not the only person giving me strange looks anymore.
To be fair, not all of those looks have been disapproving. A few of them have actually been... flattering. There were a couple of guys staring today, and while I acted vaguely irritated, I would be lying if I said it did not give me a little thrill. That feels embarrassingly shallow to it, but it is also true.
What is odd is not even the attention itself. It is the fact that I have been thinking about clothes so much at all. Usually I put something on and that is the end of the matter. Now I catch myself actually noticing things—cuts, lengths, how something fits at the waist, whether a top sits a little shorter than I ed, the way people react. It is unlike me.
Maybe I am just tired enough that thinking about clothes feels simpler than thinking about school. There are certainly worse forms of distraction. And I suppose if I am honest, it has been strangely pleasant to let my mind rest on things that are immediate and unserious for once.
Work is still intense, of course. The double major is already beginning to feel like a very ambitious decision, and I have had several moments this week where I have wondered whether “ambitious” is simply the polite word for “slightly insane.” But at least I am still keeping up.
I’m seeing Adam tomorrow, and I’m already looking forward to it more than I probably should. I do not think I realized how much I’ve started depending on that feeling afterward—the quiet, the warmth, the strange looseness, like the whole inside of me has finally unclenched. It’s becoming something I count on.
September 29th
Something strange happened this week, and I still do not quite know what to make of it.
Yesterday I was at home trying to work, and I just could not get into it at all. Usually even when I am tired or distracted, I can eventually force myself into motion by sheer determination. But this was different. I was sitting at my desk, staring at the same pages of notes, rereading the same sentences over and over, and none of it would stick. Worse than that, I started to feel almost panicky. Not a full anxiety attack, I don’t think, but close enough that I had that awful trapped feeling in my chest and shoulders, like I could not settle into my own body properly.
So I gave up and took a shower.
The shower did not help as much as I hoped it would. I still felt restless afterward, still too agitated to focus, and I standing there in my room feeling absurdly frustrated because I had already wasted so much time. Then, while I was going through my dresser looking for something comfortable to put on, I ended up pulling out my bikini that I usually only wear around a pool or when I’m at the beach on vacations.
I honestly do not know what made me reach for them except that I suddenly could not stand the feeling of being bundled up or constrained. I wanted to feel less restricted. Less held together.
And oddly enough, it worked.
Once I put it on, the anxiety eased off enough that I could sit back down and get through the rest of my work. Not perfectly, and not instantly, but enough that I was able to focus again. Then today I did more or less the same thing—came home, changed into the lightest, most comfortable things I could find—and I had one of my most productive afternoons all week.
It is a little ridiculous, when I write it out like this. Apparently the secret to academic success is to wear lighter close
Still, it really did feel good. More than good, actually. There was something almost liberating about it. Like I could finally breathe and think at the same time.
It helps that I do not pay separately for heating in the apartment, because I absolutely had to turn the thermostat up to make all of this remotely comfortable in the cold. Which is its own kind of absurd.
What makes me wonder, though, is whether any of this has something to do with the sessions Adam and I have been doing.
I think I’m going to ask him whether that makes sense, or whether I’m imagining patterns where there aren’t any.
October 1st
I asked Adam about it.
I told him I had been noticing little changes in myself lately—not dramatic ones, just odd things that seemed too consistent to ignore. Feeling calmer after our sessions, obviously, but also feeling more aware of comfort in general. More sensitive to what feels restrictive or tense. More able to work when I feel physically relaxed, and much less able to function when I feel stiff, uncomfortable, or overcontrolled.
He did not seem particularly surprised.
According to him, it makes perfect sense. If I have been deliberately teaching my body to relax instead of staying braced all the time, then of course I might start noticing discomfort more sharply. And if I am associating certain conditions with feeling calmer and more focused, then naturally I might start preferring those conditions when I work. When he explained it that way, it sounded very reasonable. Almost obvious.
Still, I am not entirely convinced that is all of it.
Not because I think he is doing anything terrible—if anything, he has been nothing but helpful—but because every time I come back from one of those sessions, I feel slightly different. Softer, maybe. Less severe. Less determined to force myself into whatever shape I think I am supposed to hold. It is hard to explain. It is not as though I become a different person. It is more that some tight, rigid part of me quiets down for a while.
And once you notice a change like that, it becomes hard not to keep noticing it.
I cannot decide yet whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it is both.
What I do know is that it feels good.
Hypnosis Experiment Log
Subject: Jessica Sandler
Date: September 30
Further suggestions have now been introduced, though I am trying to keep the structure measured.
One of the most useful additions has been a simple progression framework: when Jessica feels she has absorbed the central focus of one session, she can move naturally into the next. I want to know how much of her response belongs to the ritual itself, and how much depends specifically on my voice, my presence, and the intimacy of being guided by me.
That question has interested me even more since returning from California.
Before I left, every session was live, with me leading her down into that softened, receptive state in real time. Now I want to see whether that response can sustain itself through recordings—whether Jessica has begun to crave the feeling on her own, whether she can slip into it even when I am not physically there to bring her into it.
The first session was intentionally uncomplicated. Its purpose is pure relaxation: breath, release, quiet, heaviness, warmth. The familiar descent. I wanted it to recreate the sense of relief she already associates with me and with these sessions, and to strengthen the idea that she can reach that state more and more easily.
The next sessions were builds from there.
Jessica has already started paying more attention to her clothes, to the way certain things sit on her body, to the difference between feeling constrained and feeling open. More interestingly, she has begun noticing when people notice her. She claims to be embarrassed by it, but she also re it.
So I leaned into what was already there.
The suggestions in the second session was framed around ease, confidence, and physical self-awareness. Around the idea that comfort can be pleasurable, that openness can feel natural, that she does not always have to hide herself inside the severe, careful version she usually presents to the world. If she chooses something lighter, shorter, softer against the skin, she is encouraged to associate that with relaxation rather than impropriety.
In practical , I want her to feel that showing more of herself can feel good. So I phrased the suggestions so that she would associate being relaxed with showing skin with her attire. The more sin she displays, the more relaxed she can be.
There is something undeniably compelling about the thought of Jessica letting herself dress in a way that feels less guarded, less tightly controlled, more aware of the fact that she is young and beautiful and worth looking at.
I have also included suggestions that she pay closer attention to what she wears and how it makes her feel, and that being noticed need not only as scrutiny. It can also be flattering and exciting. Jessica is more affected by attention than she likes to it, and I suspect part of her enjoys the idea of stepping outside the rigid image she has built for herself.
For now, I am still keeping everything indirect. Nothing forceful, nothing she would reject outright. If this develops, it will develop through reinforcement of desires already present in her: comfort, softness, the thrill of attention, the pleasure of showing herself.
That should be enough for now.