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"Stay." I shifted closer to his chest and remembered he was a teddy bear not a monster. "Please."
His hand moved and then settled high on my back. He said with an exasperated sigh, "Fine."
He didn't want to be with me now. He had only wanted to be with me, and now, he hated me. Probably as much as the woman he did want to be with but shouldn't.
***
Once we got through the awkward as fuck afternoon where I woke up in his arms only to realize that I had left my tears, snot, and drool all over his chest, I was able to pick up my car and go to my doctor appointment. I sat in the chair and explained the dream. I had so many more issues, but that was one I needed to deal with and thankfully that dream gave me an outlet to talk about it.
The doctor looked at the computer screen and then dropped some new knowledge on me. "Well, it says right here you had several sessions of therapeutic hypnosis. Too many, to be honest with you. I'm guessing you've encountered something or someone who is triggering that memory stronger than the method that buried it for you because it also says right here you were... assaulted when you were thirteen, during a stay at your family beach house." She was reading and I couldn't tell if she was convinced that was true based on her expression. “I…will need to look into this a bit more…if that is okay with you.”
"I'm not a virgin." I watched the woman's face as she looked from the screen to focus on me. Her expression softened as I explained. "I was never interested in sex. In my body. I thought I was intellectually smarter than that, than my hormones. My dad signed those papers, right?"
She looked and then nodded. "Why?"
"Because my mom would never agree to that type of therapy. You know who he is." Now, I did, too. I continued, "You know why it would be important for his only daughter to not run around like a head case." I smiled, but I was not happy.
"Well. Now you know at least some parts of it was real. What's the trigger?" she asked.
"I was interested in a football player. He's... large. I freeze up around him." I looked at the floor and asked, "Am I broken? Like, will I never be able to be with him?"
"You're not broken, Holly. You can't expect to know what to do when you don't even know what is going on. Now you know some of it. Now, you can decide for yourself if this is too much of a resemblance or if you can get past it, but thanks to suppressing whatever this is, and I can barely read the writing. It truly looks like…well, anyway, these notes are not transcribed." She was looking at the screen disapprovingly again. She shook her head and said, "You have to deal with it either way." She wrote some notes on her pad. “I have your permission to—”
“Yes. Whatever. Do what you need to do to read my file, but I need to deal with this current situation not the scribbles in my past.” I was getting really aggravated. It was a new feeling. I gulped down the sour taste that washed through my mouth. “Did he… make me… like this?”
“Like what? It says here he influenced behavior to…” she sighed. “Improve ladylike behavior.”
"How?" I asked. And then I had a new question, "What would be a sign that he controlled things with that? Like...if I wanted a big bowl of sugar sweetened—" I made a face. "I get a bad taste in my mouth."
She winced. "Holly."
"He did that to me. How. Do I." I was gritting my teeth and trying to remain polite when inside of me I was about to rage no matter how disgusting it tasted on my tongue. "Fix. This?"
"Everyone is different, but here is a list of some groups. Some podcasts, some websites. Ignore the one your father created for his philosophy as he obviously is a huge proponent of erasure therapy in addition to what he calls subliminal influence. He may have taken that away or just altered it. I don’t know yet. I’ll do my best to find out.”
“No hypnosis.” I was done with that shit for sure.
“No. I don’t practice it anyway. Just… do your best to recover your memories. Think about the next school year, choices you made, people you were around. It's possible those memories are tainted because of those alterations but maybe if you can sort through some of the good ones, you can get closer to truth, unlock others that are suppressed as well.” She typed a moment then looked up at me again. She was holding back some emotions of her own as she said, “He wasn't trying to help you quit smoking. I don’t want to believe he hurt you like this on purpose. He’s just another person manipulating something they don’t fully understand to suit their own needs. In the process, he hurt you and this potential partner of yours way more than he could have predicted."
"So, there is more?" I asked.
"It's layers and layers of memory, events, and he worked on this from that summer to the last meeting you had with him." She turned the screen toward me. "Last year."
Son of a bitch! No wonder I was perfect in high school. He ‘brain poisoned’ me to be who he wanted me to be.
You are a Brave Diva, Holly. You have always been a spitfire. That flame will come back. You have to want it though, fight for it.
Oh fuck. My father also did sessions with my best friend. She was tired of... she resisted all this shit. I remember her saying things like, I don't care if I'm fat. I want to be happy not eat salad every day.
My mother's voice rang that mantra again through my head.
I had lost myself and didn't even know it. So much made sense about why I didn’t really know who I was anymore. Why I felt like a shell of a person. "So... If I just... I don't know, just... went... wild—"
"It wouldn't be the first time someone had that reaction to an assault. Many women begin to act out as a means of establishing they have control. I don't recommend it, Holly. I recommend you do the work and take the steps to heal, instead. Make sure what you remember is accurate.” I hadn’t told her how he turned into a monster. Just the part about the assault. I was already feeling crazy on a whole new level, didn’t want to add the fangs and claws into it.
I nodded.
“You sure you don't want a prescription? It could help." I shook my head no. My football-playing boyfriend might try to overdose on it. His sanity, mine. I was about to laugh. No. I had no intention of helping myself to anything other than everything I ever thought I might want and then felt some terrible taste, stomachache, or strange little restraint tug at me, so I never got it, did it, tried it. He didn't want me to be wild. I was just a girl. A girl about to go wild because I didn't see a way to save myself, much less Stormy, so... yeah. It was about to get hectic.
