“Have a seat.” He motions to one of the two overstuffed chairs in his office then swivels around to grab his yellow legal pad and pen.
I drop down into the chair I always pick, the one I’ve been sitting in one day a week for all these years. Not sure why I always pick this one, but something tells me Darren Gale—with a ton of letters after his name—would say it’s OCD tendencies or some psychobabble shit like that.
“So?” He leans back in his chair, legs crossed. “How’ve you been?”
When I first started coming here, I was barely speaking and he had a hell of a lot more hair. He never pushed me to talk about things until I volunteered, and he’d be happy to just sit and not talk at all if that’s what I needed. Often times it was. But now, he’s the closest thing I have to family.
“I’ve been all right.” I flick a ball of lint off the chair’s arm.
He hums in acknowledgment. “You sleeping okay?”
I shrug. “Had to take some Trazodone last week, but it’s been better since.”
“Dreams?” He scribbles something down.
“Yeah. Same ole same.”
He drops his gaze and busies his pen on his legal pad. “The little girl or the men?”
My stomach tightens at the mention of those dreams. “The little girl and the one where I’m stuck in the dark.” And sometimes the others.
“Are you writing in your journal as I suggested?”
I shake my head and study the floor. Filling pages with feelings doesn’t appeal to me. “Kinda. I write lyrics from them.”
“That’s helping?”
“Yes.” Not really.
He puts his pad and pen on his desk and leans back in his chair. “This is good. You’re processing the nightmares in a way that works. The sexual dreams with the men, that—”
“Stop. I know what you mean.”
“Rex.” He gives me the look. The one that says skating around my issues won’t lead to progress.
“I just . . . it’s hard enough to dream it. I don’t want to hear you talk about it.” I grip my stomach and nausea builds in my throat.
The dreams. Flashes of different faces. Older men with hungry eyes, licking their lips, reaching out to touch, and all the feelings that come with it. The terror, pain, and helplessness. For years I thought those dreams were telling me I’m gay—even though I’m not the least bit attracted to men—but why the hell would a teenage kid dream about them in this way?
“I understand. I do, but if these are actual memories, then we can work on molestation victimization rather tha—”
“I’m not a victim. They aren’t memories. They’re . . . they can’t be.” I tug on my lip ring to keep my fingers off the rubber band at my wrist.
“Just because there’s no proof doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“Exactly. I would’ve told someone at the hospital or my case worker from the home.” Hope drips slowly, freeing my lungs enough to take a full breath.
There’s no record of me being abused, only that I tried to kill myself when I was ten and was taken out of foster care and put into a group home for troubled kids.
His eyes go soft with sympathy that just pisses me the fuck off.
“There are people out there that go through lifetimes of abuse and never talk. You tried to kill yourself, Rex. It’s important to ask yourself what would drive a ten-year-old boy to do that.”
I wasn’t trying to kill myself. At least, I don’t think I was. I have a vague memory of pressing the sharp piece of metal into my skin and dragging it down my arm. It was exciting. It made me feel hopeful. I just can’t remember why.
“In your professional opinion, I was being molested and I tried to kill myself. Those seem like two pretty fucking significant things. Why don’t I remember any of it?”
“We’ve talked about this, how children handle trauma differently than adults. They unconsciously lock away the traumatic memories as a form of protection. It’s not that you don’t remember; it’s that your mind won’t allow you to unlock the place where they’re stored.”
I groan and pinch my eyes closed. Accepting that I was sexually molested by men, many different men, is more than I can stomach. And the dreams, they’re so vivid: the conflicting feelings of hating what’s happening to me, but not being able to control my body’s reaction to the touch. I break out in a sweat and wipe my palms on my pants.
Why would any living breathing human being allow that to happen to a kid in his care? God! What kind of a sick fucking world is this? And if the memories are locked in there and somehow they get unlocked, what then?
My skin feels alive, and I’m overcome with the urge to race out of here. “I’m sick.” The words are meant for only me and come out strangled.
“You’re not sick. You were an innocent child who trusted those who were trusted to take care of you.” His words are clipped with anger. “If there was a way I could get more information about the different families, investigate and find out what happened to you, I would.”