cleo
. . .
“Just breathe,Cleo. You’re safe here.” I closed my eyes, unable to stare at the tiny video screen on my computer anymore. My hand wrapped desperately around the stress ball my therapist sent me years ago after our first session. Once upon a time, it’d been a pristine white and yellow daisy—one of my favorite flowers. Now, it was split and faded after easing me through yet another therapy session.
“We’re getting a divorce. Thomas is staying in Montana with his brother, or at least that’s what he told me. I don’t know, and I don’t care. He can rot in hell.”
Memories of last night hadn’t stopped haunting me since I retreated to my childhood bedroom in the early hours of the morning and cried. Announcing my divorce at the dinner table might have seemed out of left field to my entire family, but it’d been a long time coming.
I wanted to say it lifted a weight off my shoulders, but that wasn’t true. If anything, I felt heavier—like the truth only added to the burden of shame I constantly carried around. It was one more thing I’d failed at. One more thing for people to pity me for when they passed me on the street.
Ashwood, Texas was your quintessential small town—complete with a picturesque town square filled with local businesses, two barely passable dive bars, and a population of busybody gossips who made it their mission to stick their noses in everyone’s personal lives.
I’d been back in town for six months, and I was still pelted with questions in the produce aisle. The interrogators fell into one of two categories—catty mean girls I went to high school with or little old ladies who’d known me since I was born. It was why I never went shopping alone anymore if I could help it. Getting asked why I moved home or when my soon-to-be ex husband would be joining me wasn’t my favorite topic of conversation. I thought if I kept my answers simple, people would ignore me and move on, but it only added to the intrigue.
It was why, after months of near silence about my unexpected return, I decided to blurt it out at the dinner table. I think on some level, my sisters, Josie and Lennox, already knew something had happened between Thomas and me. Other than a random question here or there, they knew I was a private person and respected that. Even my dad had bitten his tongue when it came to the whole surprise return thing.
My mom, bless her, was the opposite. The moment she smelled something sour, she was determined to find the source. I had a bit of a reprieve at the beginning of summer when she’d gone out of town for a month, but since she’d been back, she’d subjected me to an inquisition nearly every week.
“How long are you staying?”
“When is Thomas joining you?”
“Why hasn’t he called or come to visit?”
I don’t know, Mom. Maybe because he is an abusive piece of shit who gambled away his inheritance and drained our savings before taking out his frustrations on me?
“This isn’t working,” I said through gritted teeth. “It feels like I can’t squeeze hard enough to take the edge off.”
I could hear Laura, my saint of a therapist, rustling papers on her desk. “Then throw it at something.”
“What?” I stopped mid-squeeze, cracking open an eye. “Throw it at something?”
She shrugged. “Why not?”
“What if I break something?”
I looked around my room at my parents’ house. It hadn’t changed much over the past seventeen years, but it never really had to. Other than the cheesy boy-band posters that’d been promptly removed the first summer after college, my style hadn’t evolved much. The walls had always been a pale shade of powder blue—still one of my favorite colors—and I’d bought a white linen comforter set when I’d moved back in. There were two bookcases on the wall opposite my bed, filled to the brim with shelf trophies of my favorite books.
“What if you do?” Laura asked, bringing my focus back to the computer. “What would happen?”
“You know, sometimes I feel like you don’t know me at all,” I said, dropping the stress ball onto the table with a sigh.
Her laugh was soft, like tinkling bells. “You and I both know that isn’t true. Perhaps it upsets you that I know you better than most.”
Laura and I hadn’t known each other long, but she already knew more about me than most others. The only exception was my best friend Rachel.
Back in college, our dorm rooms were right across from one another, and we’d often found ourselves locked out on the weekends when our roommates brought “friends” over to spend the night. After the first few weeks of camping in the hallway, we decided to form a two-person study group in the common area instead, and the rest was history.
After we graduated, we went our separate ways like most do. We’d checked in on one another through social media from time to time, but never stayed in touch past that. It wasn’t until I sawshe’d opened her own psychology practice that I decided to reach out.
Making the first call had felt like hitting rock bottom. I wasn’t used to asking for help of any kind. In fact, it was the first time I’d done something just for me in years. The thought of adding my issues to someone else’s plate nearly broke me out in hives, but I did it anyway.
It turned out to be the best thing I’d ever done. While Rachel couldn’t take me on as a client, she was able to refer me to Laura. There were a lot of things I needed to work through, but my progress had been great. Looking back, I knew I wasn’t the same person I was when I started. But just because I could admit the therapy was working didn’t mean I always liked it. In fact, sometimes I ended the session hating Laura just a little and wishing I’d never reached out.
It was almost comical how processing trauma in a healthy way could be more painful than locking up the vault of memories and throwing away the key.
Almost.
