Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Emory
Fourteen days and I’d settled into my new routine.
The one that included doing everything in my power to not self-harm.
Two days of therapy a week, at least an hour of exercise every day, and of course, a nightly check-in with Enoch that sometimes included a nice make-out session if we did it in person.
His family had flown home last night, and despite how much I wanted to spend the night with him, I had declined when he offered for me to stay with him.
I wanted to say it was because I was being ‘normal’ and felt like the relationship was moving too fast to be living with my boyfriend after only a month, but that would have been a lie.
Honest answer: I was scared of what would happen if I had a nightmare and attacked him again.
And I felt like I was becoming too attached.
I’d survived the last three years sleeping alone, so why the fuck did I feel like I needed him to fall asleep?
It was ridiculous and made me feel too weak, too vulnerable.
It was on my mind as I entered Sarah’s office and took my usual seat on the insufferable leather couch that deserved to be burned in a pyre.
“Hi, Emory,” she greeted with a smile, crossing her legs. “How’s it going with stopping the self-harm?”
“Just going straight for the throat I see,” I snorted. “Yeah. Fine,” I eyed the letter opener on the desk behind her like I had every week in the last two months. “Just might wanna hide your sharps because apparently I steal shit now.”
Her lips pursed with a nonverbal noise of interest and I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah. I stole from my friend. Crime of opportunity, I guess. It was fucking stupid and I wish I hadn’t but…desperate times and all that shit.”
“Have you been hurting yourself to cope?”
“No. I haven’t. Hence the desperation. I feel like—”
I cut myself off, stomach flipping as the realization stole my breath. Fuck, is that what it was? I felt like I could understand him?
“You feel?” she prompted.
“I feel like I can understand to a very minor degree some of my father’s actions.
Though I can’t say I’ve gotten high and watched my daughter get raped in the blood of her brother, beside his freshly killed body.
But—” I cut myself off at her audible gasp and moved my eyes away from the letter opener to gauge her expression.
She quickly snapped her mouth shut and cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry. Go on.”
In the three years I had been sporadically coming to Sarah’s office, she’d never once acted surprised or startled by anything I’d said. Not even when I told her I’d killed someone. So, this was…new.
“No, nothing. I just can kind of relate a little to him I guess and it feels pretty gross. I don’t want to feel like this.
Like I’d do anything, like I’d turn off my moral compass just to get that feeling, that escape.
I hate it. It reminds me how weak I am, how much like him I am, and I want nothing to do with him.
I’d prefer it if I got amnesia and forgot he even existed. ”
Sarah took a deep breath, waited to see if I was finished before commenting, “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of resentment?”
I scoffed, “Fucking yeah I do. That motherfucking cumwipe shitstain cocksucker was a piece of shit father and even shittier piece of shit human being. I’m glad he’s fucking gone. He’s the reason Javier and I had to join that fucking gang in the first place.”
“Who’s Javier?” she asked, back to her neutral expression of slight interest. “That name is on the bottom of your fear list.”
“Don’t even get me started on that fucker. He…” I shook my head, my hand going to my coin to squeeze it.
“We don’t have to talk about him today, we can continue working on apologizing or talk about cutting your hair. Or something else. It’s up to you.”
I sighed heavily, foot tapping the floor.
“Javier was my brother. I think he might have been a psychopath, or sociopath, I don’t really know the difference. And I know, I know, I can’t diagnose someone with Google but there was something wrong.”
She nodded slowly, “Well, tell me about him. Why did you think there was something wrong with him?”
“I didn’t think there was anything wrong, which was probably part of the problem. I mean, when you trust someone so deeply, why would you have a reason to ever suspect that they were lying to you?”
“What did he lie about?”
“Everything,” I scoffed. “He lied about everything, and I didn’t know it until it was too late.
I trusted him, he was my brother, he was…
my everything. My friend, my father when I needed it, my mentor, the person I looked up to, the only person in the world I trusted implicitly.
He said jump, I said how high. I would’ve done anything for him, and I did, for seventeen years. ”
“Do you blame yourself for being lied to?”
I shrugged, “I blame myself for being so na?ve. For not questioning things sooner, for convincing myself that my brother loved me like he should have. I just wish he was still alive so I could ask him the questions that I will never have answers to. It’s hard to let go, to move on when there is so much unknown left to wonder, to run circles in my mind at three in the morning. ”
“That sounds incredibly frustrating. What would you ask him if you could?”
I was momentarily stunned by the question. “I dunno. It doesn’t matter. He’s not here to answer.”
“I understand but perhaps getting them out of your head might be helpful.”
I tipped my head back onto the couch and sighed, closing my eyes.
“I’d ask him if he loved me. If he ever cared about me. I’d ask him his real motives behind testing me, and if he enjoyed hurting me. Why he lied to me. Why he let me suffer. If he was ever going to let me go to college. If he was ever going to tell me the truth…”
I trailed off when I felt the lump in my throat swell and the urge to cry rose to the surface. I bit my lower lip, wishing I could draw blood.
“Why don’t you think he loved you?”
“It’s fucked-up because I shouldn’t question it. It was his last fucking words, that he loved me, and yet here I am, wondering if he actually did.”
“Why are you questioning his love for you?”
“Because…because I don’t think love is supposed to hurt like that.
Enoch’s love doesn’t hurt, he’s never made me question my worth, he’s the opposite.
He’s constantly telling me how worthy I am of his love, of being loved in general.
He tells me that I’m strong, that I didn’t deserve all the bad things that have happened to me, that I’m not too fucked-up to love or forgive.
Now…looking back, I think maybe my brother just wasn’t capable of the kind of love that didn’t hurt. And…”
“I miss him,” I whispered in the silent room.
“I miss him and I hate that I miss him. That I still love him. That I wish he was still here. Even knowing what kind of person he was, I can’t stop.
I can’t stop loving him. And I hate it. It would be so much easier if I could, and I’ve tried…
Lord knows I’ve tried, but I just can’t.
And it only proves what he believed to be true—I’m weak, too weak to handle this world. ”
“Love is our greatest strength, Emory. It’s what makes this world a tolerable place. What gives us hope.”
Hope.
That’s what Enoch was for me. With Enoch I was strong even in my failures.
“Did he say that? Did your brother tell you that you were weak?”
I frowned. “Many times.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t strong enough. He said it when I couldn’t pass his tests—”
“Tests?”
“Yeah. At first they were about helping me not be such a crybaby, but then they just morphed into making me strong enough to withstand the threats of living in our home with our father, the people he brought home. So, my brother gave me mental or physical tests so I could prove to him that I was capable.”
“I’m not understanding. How did you prove capability?”
My mind raced with memories, until one stood out.
“The goal was always the same. Don’t cry, don’t show any weakness, and survive the test without tapping out.
They were usually physical, like, he’d sneak up on me, and I’d have to get out of a chokehold that kind of thing.
But one day when I was in middle school, I had come home wearing make-up.
I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, I just wanted to feel like the other girls in my grade, normal.
But my brother was really pissed. Lectured me about how I was being stupid for letting other people’s opinions of me matter.
Then he got it in his head that I must have had a crush or a secret boyfriend that I was seeking attention from and he really got pissed.
Said I’d soon find out how badly I wanted attention like a weak fucking puta. ”
I shook my head at myself.
“I didn’t understand what he meant until he ignored my existence for an entire month, wouldn’t make eye contact with me, would pretend I wasn’t in the room.
I finally snapped and attacked him. He won, for obvious reasons, but he finally broke the silent treatment.
He told me that if I ever let someone else’s opinions of me influence my decisions like that again, he’d tie me to a kitchen chair when dad’s friends came over and show me what kind of attention a weak puta deserved. ”
She winced and shook her head slightly. “And did he? Tie you to a chair?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I learned my lesson well enough.”
She hummed in thought. “Sounds like a complicated relationship. You think he was doing those things to you because he enjoyed it?”
“According to the people who knew him, knew his secrets, yeah. He tortured and killed people for the gang as an ‘outlet’ so he wouldn’t accidently hurt me too badly.”
“Well, I see now why you believe he might have had psychopathic tendencies,” she said with a nod. “You never questioned him? His actions?”
I placed my hands beneath my thighs to keep them from doing something stupid.