Rose petals

Chapter 33

EMDR: The theory behind this approach is that the eye movements or other bilateral stimulation help to activate the brain's natural processing mechanisms, allowing the traumatic memory to be re-processed and integrated in a way that reduces its emotional intensity.

Well, that's what Google came up with at 3:00AM last night while I was researching what exactly it was. I spent half the night replaying this new revelation in my head. It was like the record player I sometimes like to call a brain was malfunctioning and had this on repeat. I couldn't help but think back to every single little thing that happened in that five minute period.

The way Mason and dad walked up to me with looks of remorse and guilt. The way their breaths were shallow. The way they looked at each other exactly twenty six times from beginning to end. The way I could quite literally imagine their hearts slamming against their ribcages as they spoke. The way the emotions in their eyes snapped back and forth between anger, guilt, sadness, and any other negative emotion there is.

The other half of the night I spent researching what EMDR was exactly. The side effects, how it happened, who would do it, how long I'd do it for, when I would expect to see results, and any other question under the sun. I researched from who performed the first EMDR treatment and how it was developed, to the most recent case there is available online. I won't lie and say the side effects and the failed cases didn't scare me because they did, they absolutely terrified me. But that doesn't mean I wasn't still going to try it, it's not like i have any other choice.

I'm not the girl I thought I was. I'm not living the life I thought I was. Im not happy like I thought I was.

It's crazy how missing a gap of five years of your own life makes you question anything and everything. For all I know I could have new nieces and nephews. Elijah, Hayden and Hudson could be dead and everyone's covering it up. My brothers could be divorced. Mason could secretly hate me for something I did and now feels compelled to 'love' me. Heck we could even be married and have a kid!

Five whole years.

"You ready?" Mason asked softly as his unusually dull blue eyes stared into mine, snapping me out of my thoughts.

Nodding my head, I picked up my half empty water bottle I had been sipping on and stood up from the bar stool. Mom and dad were going to leave with us but they got pulled into an emergency surgery and had to leave, not before reassuring me that they'd make it before I went in for my appointment. Even if they had to hand over to an intern.

"We're still together, right? Like I didn't break us up and you didn't fall out of love with me did you?" I asked, swallowing the impossibly large lump in my throat. "A...and you're not with anyone right now are you? You're not married or anything? I mean if you are then I totally support you and everything." I rambled as I kept my eyes glued to my intwined hands in my lap.

"I proposed." He said after a few silent moments.

"Oh. Congratulations, I guess. Who's the lucky lady? Or man. I mean what if you completely lost all hope in women after I stomped on your heart and shattered it into pieces and made you like men instead?" I gasped, my eyes wide in shock. What if I did?

Before I even had a second more to elaborate on the possibility that something like that had happened, the car filled deep laughter. I feel as though I haven't heard that sound in a long time. He was laughing. He was looking right at me and the full blue eyes I was looking into before were twinkling just how I remembered.

"I proposed to you, my love. And before you ask if you said no and crushed my heart and made me flee the country so I'd never see you again, you said yes." He grinned as we approached a red light and stopped, giving him a change to completely turn to face me.