“Welcome. Take a seat.”
I looked around the office nervously, unsure of what to do and shaking down to my bones. I peered shyly at her again and she gives me a reassuring smile, looking pointedly at the seat opposite her. I take small steps into the strange room and plant myself at the edge of the sofa.
“So, tell me about yourself,” she calmly begins. She’s looking down and scribbling onto her notebook when she lifts her gaze and sets them on my trembling body. Her eyes soften and she shifts slightly closer to me and sets her notebook down on her lap. “Why don’t we do a short, fun little exercise?” she proposes slowly and after my silence, continues, “You just have to answer some simple questions. They’re real fun. Don’t worry,” she reassures me. “Now why don’t you lie down, make yourself comfortable and then close your eyes.”
I’m afraid to move at first but then I see her kind and patient smile and I slowly lower myself onto the soft beige cushions but my eyes refuse to close. I stare pointedly at the ceiling, eyes wide open and breathing shallow. I’m terrified of the images burnt to the back of my eyelids that stare at me in the darkness. They lurk in the shadows of my mind and come out everynight to haunt and eternally plague me. They visit me in the darkness of the night and I’m afraid of seeing them in the bright of day as well.
She notices this and quietly asks me what’s wrong. I swallow and answer her in a timid voice, “Everything comes back when I close my eyes. And they never go away.” She looks taken aback at my reply but quickly composes herself. She calmly tries to comfort me by saying, “Don’t worry. Whatever you may see or witness, don’t focus on them and on my voice instead. I want you to fully concentrate on what I’m saying and try to imagine them in your head, okay? And after that, tell me what you see.”
My eyes dart around the room as my body is tensed in anticipation of the horrible things I’ll relive once my visual protection is lowered. “Just give me a try, okay? I promise if it get’s too out of hand, you can stop whenever you feel like it,” she promises. I take a deep breath and make an effort to trust this woman. She seems quite certain of what she’s doing and is genuinely caring towards me. I let my eyelids close little by little until I see nothing but darkness. I release the breath I’ve been holding and relax my body a little from it’s tense position.
“Okay,” she sounds more cheerful now, probably because I don’t seem to be screaming or kicking at her yet, “I want you to imagine that you’ve just woken up from a bed. You sit up and you find yourself in a cottage. Describe this cottage for me.”
Slowly, the surroundings take shape from the darkness of my mind and begin to build the walls and rooms of the cottage. It is run down and in ruins, rotting. It has been deserted and scavengers freely roam the floors. The floorboards squeak underfoot and it’s walls mouldy. Dust coats the scarce furniture and little light is let in from the frosty windows. I relay the details to her and I heard the furious scribbling of a pen on paper. A few seconds later, I hear her begin her next request. “Now you’re opening the door,” and as she says this, I really am, “and outside are trees all around. How tall are these trees?” I quietly try to gauge the height of these imaginary trees and find them impossible to calculate. “They’re really tall and blocks out most of the sun. I can’t seem to place the end of the tree, it’s really tall,” I reply. Again, I hear her scribbling on her notebook and wait quietly in the quiet of my mind for the next piece of instruction.
“Great. We’re going to continue okay? You fine with that?” she checks when I reply with a few nods, my eyes still sealed shut. I can actually hear her smile before she continues, “You’re walking into the forest now, past a few trees until you stumble across a small table in the middle of your path. On the table is a glass of wine. How much wine is in the glass?” she questions. In my mind’s eye, the glass is full, right to the brim and I relay it to her. Immediately, I am met with another question, “Will you drink it?”
