“What happens next?” Dr. Nora asks.
“A plate breaks,” I say. “My dad yells, and my mom yells back, and it’s loud—” I swallow. “He throws a bottle, but it misses my mom. It explodes against the wall near me and Camilla. The smell is…horrible. My ears are ringing now.”
“Body?”
“Everything is loud and shaking,” I say. “My heart is beating really fast. My hands want to cover my ears, but Camilla is holding them. She’s whispering ‘one, two, three’ in my ear like we’re jumping rope. She’s shaking too, but still quiet. I can feel her legs trembling touching mine. My dad grabs Camilla, ripping her away from me.” I shake my head, not being able to look away from the memory of him putting his hand around her neck, from him yelling and cursing at her. “He’s hurting Camilla…I feel…tears. I’m shaking…I—” The sentence breaks. The room blurs, and I throw myself back into her office. “I hate this. I hate it. Why do I need to bring up memories like that? How is that healing?”
She doesn’t push. She never pushes. We both just breathe and wait for my body to fully come back and my mind to calm a bit.
“I know it feels cruel,” she says softly. “Picking at an open wound may seem painful. But what you’re doing is moving the memory from the emergency department to the filing cabinet, a safe place. Right now, when those sensory memories get triggered, your body reacts as if it’s happening now. Processing lets your brain re-file it asthen, not now. We do it in small steps, so your system learns it’s not dangerous anymore and won’t hurt you.”
I dig my fingers into my thigh until I think I might break the skin. “It feels like drowning right now.”
“Because you weren’t allowed to feel it during that time,” she states. “You had to become numb just to survive. Your mind and body are trusting yourself with more now. This is a positive sign toward healing. It shows us we are headed in the right direction.”
I hate that she’s right. I hate that I want to cry, and also to run, and also to curl up under a blanket and disappear. She hands me a glass of water, and her kindness causes me to tear up.
“You did something brave.”
“I sat in a chair and basically had a panic attack,” I reply sarcastically.
“Bravery can look very boring,” she says back. “Do you want to pack this one away for today?” she asks. “We’ll revisit it next time, maybe.”
“Yes,” I say too fast. Then soften it, “Please.”
When I leave, I’m on sensory overload. My phone buzzes, and I see a text from Bash checking in, asking if I want to grab coffee. I stare at it until the dots disappear. I don’t want to dump all this on him. He’s not my therapist. He’s already done too much saving in my story. I put the phone away and tell myself it’s a kindness to save him from my shitshow.
I don’t go back to the dorm. The idea of Simone’s eyes and Lani’s radar seeing right through me makes me want to peel my skin off. I text them a lie that’s half true instead.
PPP Group Chat:
Lydia: Stuck at the library catching up. Group tonight. Might crash early, so if you get back and I’m already asleep, don’t worry. I’m good. Love you
Hearts fly back,and I swallow down the guilt that comes up.
There’s a courtyard behind the humanities building, and I tuck myself under one of the big trees, wrapping my arms around my knees, and trying to breathe. The panic arrives regardless. The static gets loud, the edges of the world go fuzzy, my hands tingle, and my chest forgets how to expand. I stick my feet flat on the dirt, press my back into the trunk, count the veins in a leaf, but it doesn’t help. I try to find five things I see, but everything is out of focus. I give up on trying to distract myself from the panic, from the way my body is feeling like it’s being pulled away from me. I take out the bottle of hydroxyzine and stare at the small, harmless-looking tablet like it’s supposed to make this all stop. I hate how my brain whispers for something stronger. I hate that my mouth waters for a quiet I know can kill me. I stare at the bottle, wishing it were Oxy instead.
I don’t have anything stronger, thank goodness. I put the pill on my tongue and let it swim down with a long swallow of water, then wait it out. Panic doesn’t like to be looked at. It grows if you’re scared of it. If I hold it and don’t add any fear, sometimes it passes like a storm that never quite comes ashore. It does, eventually—leaves me wrung out and hollow, but still standing.
I pull out the paperback that stays in my bag for this exact purpose—worlds other than mine to climb into. I read the same paragraph three times before it sticks, before I finally get a full breath in.
72
Bash
I’m posted up, leaning against a wall, trying to read over an article for class that I can’t get myself to pay attention to, too wrapped up in my thoughts when I look up and see Lydia walking towards me.
I know her tells, as weird as that may seem. I’ve already learned what it looks like when she’s having a bad day before she even opens her mouth. Which she normally doesn’t because she always likes to pretend things are okay when they aren’t.
“Hey,” I say softly, wanting to reach out and pull her into me, but then I remember the last time I did that on a bad day, and it made her flinch away from me, and I felt guilty for that reaction, like I caused it.
She looks at me, and then past me, like she’s looking for an escape. “Hey.”
“Wanna sit?” I nod at the lawn. “Or we could walk.”
“Can we just go?” she asks. It might sound like a request, but it’s her telling me that’s what she needs.
“Yeah,” I say, falling into step beside her. We take the long way to avoid most of the heavy traffic areas, and I just watch her. I watch her breathing try to regulate; I watch her look off and search for things like she’s doing that trickin her brain to point out what she sees, and not stay stuck in her head. All the things people don’t normally pick up on unless you’ve had to do them yourself.
