Chapter Thirty-Six
El
I was so happy I’d finally convinced Matt to try therapy. He was a bit reluctant at first, but eventually, he warmed up to the idea and agreed.
His one condition? I had to try it too.
There were so many people who valued therapy, preaching that it really helped them and encouraging others to try it.
I believed them; I always had. But I’d been too afraid to try it myself. The thought of telling a borderline stranger about my family’s and my darkest secrets was unnerving.
After all these years, Matt was still the only person in my life outside of our family’s walls that knew anything about what happened.
Ugly thoughts and memories had been buried so deep, branded into my brain permanently.
I wanted to let them free, to heal all the parts that my inner child was holding onto.
Craig, my new therapist, worked at the same practice as Justine, Matt’s new therapist. It would’ve been perfect for our appointments to align so that we could ride together, but it didn’t work out that way.
At first, I wasn’t sure how to feel about having a male therapist, but Craig’s reviews were all magnificent, and he specialized in childhood trauma, which was exactly what I needed support in.
Matt had shared with me how his first appointment went yesterday. He gave me far too many details about the waiting area, which I thought was cute, before sharing some highlights and thoughts about his first session.
When we agreed to both start therapy, we decided to keep each other updated on our progress, and that we could share as little or as much as we wanted about our sessions.
So, when I walked into Enlightened Counseling, only to hear the faint, sedative echoes of a waterfall, I smiled. For whatever reason, the waterfall was the part that Matt had focused the most on.
I seated myself for a few minutes, waiting for Craig to finish up with his prior client.
There was a pit in my stomach, a storm slowly settling above my head as each minute ticked by.
A door behind me opened. By the time I turned, I only caught the back of a girl’s head as she walked out, followed by Craig.
Not everyone looked exactly like their photos online, but Craig did. A certified psychodynamic therapist, there was something about his online profile that had called to me. I couldn’t even put my finger on it specifically.
“Eleanor?”
“Hi, yeah,” I stood.
His office was about the size of my bedroom, with low lighting and a pearly white couch that Craig motioned to.
The couch was so clean that I was scared to sit on it, afraid I’d somehow ruin it.
Craig sat across from me, head shaven and dressed in a blue button up with nice pants. Suddenly, I felt underdressed in my leggings and sweater.
“Do you prefer ‘Eleanor’ or is there something else that I should call you?”
“‘El’ is fine,” I replied.
“‘El’, it is,” he smiled.
The couch vibrated beside my ass, and I dove for my phone. “Sorry,” I muttered. “I forgot to put my phone on Do Not Disturb.”
Craig caught sight of my lock screen, grinning ear to ear at the photo of Matt kissing my cheek. “No worries. Is that your partner?”
“Yeah,” I nervously smiled. “Yeah, that’s Matt.” My gaze drifted to the side table beside Craig’s chair. A picture frame with a heart on it cradled a photo of Craig and a man, holding each other tightly. “Is that your partner?”
“Yes. We’re engaged, actually.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” he beamed.
I grew quiet, waiting for some sort of direction of what to do or say next.
“So, tell me why you wanted to start therapy.”
A shiver ghosted my skin, and we hadn’t even gotten into it yet. But I knew what was coming. That was the issue. I knew I was going to, for the first time in my life, say aloud all the unwanted thoughts that crowded my brain.
“I seem to have trouble slowing down, relaxing. I constantly feel the need to stay busy, but I know it’s not good for me to do that. Matt encouraged me to try therapy,” I explained.
“Workaholic?” Craig teased.
I smiled, the taunt allowing me to breathe a bit smoother. Maybe I didn’t have to remain so serious or professional through all this.
“Very much so.”
“Well, now that I know the why, I wanna learn a bit more about you. Tell me about your habits, how you stay busy, and some of the important people or things in your life.”
The emphasis remained on Matt, dance, school, and my friends. I mentioned my family, but when I kept it brisk and vague, Craig seemed to pick up on it, raising a brow when I changed the subject like a switch flipping.
Politely, he waited until I was done speaking before attacking the pinpointed issue.
“What’s your relationship like with your family members?”
Broken.
Detached.
Virtually nonexistent.
“It... could be better,” I admitted.
“And why’s that?”
“We’re just a bit... emotionally disconnected.”
He gave a kind, encouraging smile, repeating, “And why’s that?”
I was tiptoeing around the truth, sweeping it under the rug the same way everyone else had for nearly a decade. Would it be better if I just spit it out? Would it feel better to say the words aloud? Or would it still hurt all the same?
Fingernails digging into my palm, I stewed on it for a moment, my brain turning into a jumbled mess. I could feel my blood pounding faster through my veins, heart ramming a bit harder against my chest.
I almost wished he could read my mind, so I didn’t have to explain it at all. But the only person with that superpower was Matt.
I’d rather chew glass than talk about this out loud.
“My mom had an affair when I was younger,” I spit out.
“Okay,” Craig sat back, nodding. “How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
“Ah, rough age. Old enough to understand everything going on, but too young to do anything about it.”
“Exactly.” With a hasty exhale, I tried to relax into the couch, but my mind wouldn’t let me. I was stiff, a robot.
“How did you find out?”
“I... woke up to them fighting one night.”
“Did they fight often?”
I shook my head. “Not before that, no. But when all this came to light, they were fighting every day.”
“And how long did that last?”
“Maybe four or five months.”
Seeing Craig’s brows jump made me realize how long of a time that actually was.
Four or five months... That was well over a hundred days of living in a war zone of a house.
Some of the fights were worse than others, and there were some hideous, horrible things they’d said about each other that were so terrible to hear that I believed my brain had permanently tried to erase them.
My dad was a successful man; that was no secret.
We’d had a beautiful house, a beautiful life.
I understood that I grew up privileged. I never had to worry about money or necessities, and yet, how much did all the money matter when the inside of that house was so ugly?
We weren’t a solid family unit; we hadn’t been since I was a child.
My father had grown up in poverty. With a single mom that worked three jobs to keep their family afloat, he grew up with dollar signs in mind. And he had to learn the hard way that money was an object— it couldn’t buy happiness.
“That’s quite a long time to be living in fight or flight,” Craig said.
Living in fight or flight.
I’d never thought about it that way.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Yeah, it is.”
“Do you think you were living in fight or flight throughout all that? Did you feel safe at the time?”
I didn’t answer right away. I needed a bit more time on that one.
He was starting to ask the questions that I’d never bothered asking myself. And it wasn’t until now that I realized they needed to be asked.
“I... felt safe physically, but maybe not emotionally? I— I don’t know. I just remember that I hated being there during all that. I never wanted to be home.”
“And did you ever have the chance to leave when you needed to?”
My eyes were glossing over, tears filling the brims, but I didn’t want to let them loose. “I went to Matt’s pretty often.”
“Matt? Your current Matt?”
“Yes.”
Craig glowed. “You’ve known each other a long time then?”
“Yes,” I smiled faintly.
“That’s lovely. So, I’m assuming he’s been a good support system for you throughout the years?”
“He has.”
“And what about the rest of your family? Was there anyone else that was a good support system?”
My mind went blank. There wasn’t one single person or moment that I could think of besides Matt. He was the only emotional rock that I really had. Lo and I had gone through all that hell together, but other than experiencing it side by side, I didn’t feel like we’d helped each other through it.
“No, uh...” I stumbled, wrestling my gaze away.
The framed photo seemed like a safer place to look, a happier place.
Judging by the looks on Craig’s and his partner’s faces, there was nothing between them besides love and safety.
The feelings radiated over to me, reminding me that it was okay to speak freely here.
“My parents never really spoke with us directly about anything going on, and my sister and I kind of drifted apart throughout it.”
Nodding along, Craig sensed my uneasiness, but I was determined to power through.
He asked, “Do you feel comfortable enough to dive a bit deeper into this today?”
“Yeah,” I gulped. “Yeah, let’s do it.”