My Book. Enough Said #2

The latest piece of my book. Thanks for reading!

In my mind though something different was going on, something dark was unfurling as I began to think back to my times with Rob. Hit me? No. Rob had never hit me. Sure, there was that time that he twisted my arm a bit. Sometimes he would force me to do things but that was not hitting. Besides, I am so small and he was so big. He did not know his own strength. He always said he was sorry afterwards too. “You are so weak and small! You need to be toughened up! I’m doing this for your own good.” He would say. It is true. I am small and weak. I want to be tough. That was not hitting though. That was not what Jess was asking, was it? Was it?

I finished relaying this story to Marilyn, the words just matter of factly tumbling out as if I was reading some passage from a book aloud. Then I just stopped. I had no idea what to say next so I simply looked at her. The silence in the room was palpable. It felt as if a giant pendulum was swinging through the air cutting into it. I watched Marilyn uncross her legs, straighten her skirt and she look at me for a minute before she spoke. “Well, I was wondering when we were going to come to this.” She said. “We’ve only been dancing around it for the last year and a half in these sessions.” She said it easily and in a measured tone. There was no hint of sarcasm or anything else. She only looked at me, gauging my reaction.

“What?” I asked. I suddenly felt as if I could not breathe. My chest was tightened and the room narrowed just a bit. I dug my nails into the couch and looked into my lap. “What do you mean? You know why I come here. My problem is that I am having trouble with being away from home and my friends. I am concerned about them and I like this outlet to talk about it. That is not my problem. I think that I am just having a hard time with the break up from Rob still. I don’t…” I stopped talking. I felt my face change then from one of denial to sadness. I knew. In just this instance, it was clear. Finally. All those years with Rob. All those times he was “toughening me up”, those were not typical easy-going, normal moments teen-age girls have with their high school boyfriends. It was more than that though. Marilyn was right. This was why I came to these sessions. It was not that I was homesick. It was that for the last five years of my life I had held a secret so deep inside myself that I had been blind to it. I never saw it for anything more than what Rob told me it was.

I began to cry. Sobs racked my body. My shoulders shuddered and I grasped at the tissues Marilyn offered to me. I began to scream. Normally quite shy and reserved I no longer cared that someone was watching me howl like a wounded animal. I did not care who heard me because at last I was being heard.