Chapter 18: The Shape of Healing..(2)
(Ryder)
I sat stiffly in the chair, my arms locked across my chest like maybe I could hold the words inside, keep them from spilling out and making me look even weaker. The office was too quiet. Every tick of the clock sounded like a dare, asking me how long I planned to keep my mouth shut. Dr. Mason didn't push. He never did. He just leaned back, waiting with that kind of patience that didn't feel like pressure, more like... cover. Protective, almost. Like he was holding space for me without saying it out loud.
I told him about the night the glass cut me—the scream, the blood, the kitchen floor gone red—and when I finished, the room stayed quiet for a beat too long. My hands were still shaking from the memory, my throat raw as if I had screamed all over again.
He folded his hands, watching me closely. It wasn't pity in his eyes but a clinical precision wrapped in empathy. It was like he was cataloging every detail I hadn't even said out loud.
"Ryder," he said, his tone steady, "what you described, this incident with the glass, it didn't exist in isolation. Do you see that?"
I shifted uncomfortably. "I... I guess. I mean, it just felt like it came out of nowhere."
"Out of nowhere?" His voice stayed calm, but he tilted his head slightly, as if he wanted me to examine the words I had just used. "Tell me, before that night, what were the patterns? The words she used. The way she spoke to you. Can you walk me through that?"
My stomach tightened. "It was constant. The insults, the yelling, twisting things around. Making me feel like I remembered wrong, like I was crazy."
"Gaslighting," he noted softly, without judgment. Then he leaned forward a fraction. "And how did you respond to that? When she said you were wrong, when she twisted your words, what did you do?"
I rubbed my palms on my jeans. "Mostly... I just stopped arguing. Tried to keep the peace. If I fought back, it only made things worse."
He nodded once, as if that was exactly what he had expected me to say. "That's important. You stopped resisting. You adapted your behavior to minimize conflict. Do you see how that created a dynamic?"
I frowned, uneasy. "A dynamic?"
"Yes." He sat back, hands still folded neatly. "Think of it as a chain of behaviors. First, psychological aggression—insults, humiliation, gaslighting. That's what we call coercive control: systematic attempts to undermine your autonomy and distort your sense of reality. Let me ask you this: when she insulted you, did you feel free to leave the room? To stand up for yourself?"
I shook my head. "No. If I left, she followed. If I stood up for myself, she screamed louder."
"Exactly." His voice was calm, but precise. "Over time, those tactics restricted your freedom of response. In operant conditioning terms, she punished disagreement—through rage, humiliation—and rewarded compliance with temporary affection. That reinforcement pattern narrowed your behavioraloptions until you were conditioned to silence, to submission. Does that sound accurate to your experience?"
I swallowed, nodding slowly. "Yeah... it does."
"And once that conditioning was in place," he continued, "the abuser often escalated. They tested boundaries with more intense acts. Let me ask you: before the glass, were there smaller physical incidents? A shove, a grab, a block at the door?"
The breath caught in my throat. "...Yeah. She shoved me a few times. Once she grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise. I told myself it didn't count—it wasn't a punch."
"Not a punch," he repeated quietly. "So you minimized it."
I felt the words land heavy. "I did."
He leaned in just slightly, his voice softer now. "Ryder, what you described with the glass—it wasn't sudden. It was the end-link of a chain. The insults. The gaslighting. The shoves. All of it was escalation. The physical violence didn't appear out of nowhere. It was prepared, rehearsed in the smaller acts of control."
My chest felt tight, like I couldn't get enough air. I stared at the floor. "So... all that time I told myself it was just words, just shouting... it was already abuse?"
He let the silence stretch for a moment before asking, "When you felt small, doubted yourself, lost trust in your memory—did that feel safe?"
"No."
"Did it feel respectful?"
"...No."
"Then why would it not count as abuse?" His tone was gentle, not accusatory, inviting me to sit with the logic.
I didn't answer. My throat was too tight. But something in me shifted, like a gear catching.
He finished, still calm, still professional: "Abuse is rarely one explosive act. It's a process. A progression. What happened with the glass was not a sudden explosion, it was the culmination of coercive tactics designed to wear you down until physical harm became possible. That's the pattern we needed to name. That's how we started breaking it."
