The Innocuous Memories

Therapy Session 005

RAENI

We sat in another silence that made me squeeze the ball in my hand. Tighter and tighter with each memory. Each file opened, unlocking a part of myself I never wanted to see ever again. I have tried my absolute best to avoid it and never look back on it ever again.

Today forced me to look back on things I never wanted to see. I could almost smell the blood, tastes his lips on mine. I grimace at the vivid feelings.

"He abused her? The same way Derek abused you?" He says it so bluntly but I guess it's his job not to attach emotion to it. He's doing his job.

"She fought back." I shy my head down in shame that I didn't fight back, that I wasn't as strong as my mother. "I didn't."

"Why do you think so?" He asks me and I lift my head up a tiny inch.

"I know I didn't. I just ran." A tear I didn't know was forming just slips out but I wipe it away immediately. I hope he didn't see that.

"You stood up to him. You gathered the strength to speak up and get him to change."

Was he even listening?

"It didn't even work."

"To you it might not have looked like it but that was fighting back." He pauses. "Fighting back, sometimes, could mean that you are withdrawing away from the situation. It isn't necessarily physically fighting back."

"I ran."

"You withdrew."

I withdrew.

"You don't have to be like your mom."

"I want to." My immediate answer surprised him, I could see it in the raised eyebrows. "She was my best friend and the woman I owed my life to. Even if she didn't believe me, I still loved her with everything in me."

"Why?"

I didn't know why. I didn't know why I wanted to be like her. I couldn't say it was because I loved my mother more than anything else in the world and I wanted to live like her. That's not reason enough to him but to me it is.

"You don't know." It was more a statement than a question. "Why did you love her, despite her believing her abuser over you? Most kids would resent their parents because of it, why didn't you?"

"She was all I had." I answer honestly.

"But she didn't believe you. Something traumatic happened to you and she didn't believe you. If I-" He paused. He couldn't say more or else it would a breach in his contract. It would be unprofessional. I knew what he was going to say before he even said it. 

"If I stopped loving her then who would I have after that?" Who would I love and who would love me? 

"Yourself." He wanted to say more. I didn't want him to say anymore. I didn't want to hear anymore. 

"I'm not enough."

"You hate to be alone." His response was almost immediate. As if he were waiting to say it but needed the right moment. "Lets touch into you." 

"I like painting." I was grateful for the subject change. The air got lighter and the creases in my forehead ceased. "I am an actual professional artist now, which freaks me out because a year ago today, it was just a hobby."

"What is it now?" He asks no longer writing on his clipboard.

"More than just a hobby. It's my job now and everyday I wake up and just feel better knowing it's my job." A small smile graced my face. I love painting, art in general. I love getting calls from people all over the world, wanting me to paint for them. I get to have fun and get [aid to goof around. Sometimes it's a serious case but other times, its not.

"How was it before?" He clears his throat and writes something down on his clipboard.