Session Two — Follow Up

It’s so strange walking into a behavioral health clinic office on a Saturday; it’s strangely quiet and feels like the place is a ghost town. The weird, post-apocalyptic feelings I get from standing at the check-in desk with no assistant sitting behind it is reminiscent of when I’d have to wait in the school’s main office after-hours. Just feels very… off. Luckily I’m not left waiting for too long; my therapist’s shoes can be heard all the way down the hall before she even enters the lobby. When she comes to greet me, she looks pleased to see me.

“Jessica, good! You came,” says the doctor, her clipboard in hand and glasses in their correct place atop the doctor’s nose. “I know weekend sessions are considered unorthodox, but I’m really glad you came.” She motions for me to follow, and so I follow her down a long hallway.

“I still don’t get why Saturday was even an option,” I say, “Plus, I wasn’t properly checked in. Will this session go on record?”

“Jessica, last time we talked, you mentioned having gone through therapy before. You said…” she says, reading through some notes, “it all started because a girl spread some rumors when you were children.” The therapist’s heels click on the linoleum rather pleasantly as we walk. It echoes, kind of like an ASMR video.

“Yeah. Hey, the record? This will count as having sought some treatment, right? Even though I wasn’t checked in?" I ask, rushing a bit to catch up to the doctor. “And… I mean I guess it’s a good thing. If it weren’t for Melissa having lied, I wouldn’t have had that one session where I had my first flashback.” I put my hands in the pocket of my favorite, plain black hoodie.

As we walk, the doctor scribbles down notes holding her clipboard the way a student holds her bundle of books. “What was the flashback about? Are you comfortable talking about it?”

She’s looking at me, attentive to both me and the direction she is walking while ready to write. I sigh, shrugging, “S-same stuff I have always had nightmares about my whole life. Still have them now… at twenty-nine,” I move my hair out of my eyes, watching the end of the hall come closer, ready to make a left turn. “My father… taking advantage. Actually, no… I’m just gonna say what it is, okay? Rape. It was rape. My first flashback was, very vividly, about my father raping me, hurting me, screaming at me, and… just being a monster. Am I checked in?”

“You’re dismissing the memory.”

“You’re dismissing my question,” I snipped back. “Unorthodox sessions still get added to the record, right?”

My therapist looks to me with a motherly smile, “You’re fine, Jessica. Don’t worry about that. Now… do you think you can describe the flashback to me?

“You’re asking me to relive a traumatic childhood event while I’m getting furious,” I sneer, still following the doctor down another long hallway, leading to an ascending flight of stairs that we climb. “But… I guess being able to talk about it promotes the healing.”

“Bingo. So… you’re with your father. He’s hurting you. What is he doing?” she asks, ready to write as we walk.

“I’m about six or seven?” I say, taking a deep breath as I begin to picture all that I say in my head with flawless details. “My father has his hands on my hips while he makes me sit on his lap. His pants are down and mine are too. They’re a weird, cheap, light blue felt-type fabric. Lounge pants, I guess. I’m wearing a Tweety-Bird t-Shirt with some snappy remark on it.”

“Why are your father’s hands on your hips, Jessica?” she asks, writing on her clipboard, her heel-clicking intensely echoing in the hall as we walk. I like that sound.

“So that I don’t fall off,” I sigh, “because he’s… holding me while he… sits me on his… his penis,” I start to shudder, “He’s… bouncing me up and down with his penis inside me. His hands are on me so he can… you know, use me.”

“What was your father using you for?”

“Sex.”

“No,” my therapist says, leading me to another flight of stairs, this time, descending. “Sex is an act of love between two people who consent. You did not consent. So, what was he using you for?” She looks at me so seriously, “Do not be afraid of that word.”

“Rape,” I gulp, following her down the stairs, “My father used… for rape. He raped me.” I shudder, watching it happen over and over in my head, feeling him inside me. “My father raped me.”

“Correct,” her voice turns soft again, “You were very small,” her voice echoes slightly in the silent hallway as we come to another turn. This time, we turn right. “Children do not have the legal right to consent or make adult decisions until they’re eighteen. Sixteen in some places, but eighteen in Wisconsin. It is heart-breaking, because children are never taken seriously in most of what they do. Many of them aren’t even allowed to stand up to the parents that hurt them.”

“I know…” I say, shrugging.

“So if there is anything in your mind right now saying that your father using you and raping you was in any way your fault,” says the therapist, coming to a door at the end of the hallway with a push-release bar, like in a hospital, “they’re lying. You did nothing wrong.”

“I know,” I say with forced confidence, following her through the door; it leads us to yet another hallway, identical to the first two. Thinking on her words, I realize that I do beat myself up a lot. I have some kinks and interests now that I’ve developed because of what my father started to create, but it doesn’t mean that it’s my fault… or that I’m some weird, tainted, ruined, unworthy person, right? Hmm… she’s good. This doctor makes me really, actually think.

“So… you have nightmares of this flashback,” the therapist says, her glasses slipping as she reads through her notes, “Do you get night terrors?”

“Not anymore.” I used to get a bit of sleep paralysis, but I never told anyone because there’s no way anyone would believe me. Just one more thing wrong with Jessica, you know? She just has to have all sorts of problems — everyone, feel bad for the poor, crazy lady! “They were mostly paralysis type terrors. That’s not happened since meeting my boyfriend, though.”

“Real miracle-boy huh?” she smiles, scribbling notes, “Okay. So recurring nightmares about a traumatic event. That’s normal in this…”.

“Why is it when I’m clearly in distress due to childhood trauma… or something I cannot control… professionals say it’s normal?” I ask, noticing that we’re walking faster, making another turn. “Are we so desperate to fit in that we are making pain and constant damage the new sense of normality?”

“Hmm…” she says, writing on her clipboard, “no, we mostly mean that the side effect you’re experiencing is normal to the condition.”

“I know, but… you get what I mean,” I sigh.

“How are you dealing with the nightmares?” the doctor asks, her heels clicking faster. “Do you practice any soothing techniques or follow any of your DBT Group Therapy exercises?”

“I never told you I was in DBT,” I say, concerned and a bit annoyed.

“It’s here in your records, you signed the release, remember?” This therapist seems all too carefree about all my inquiries. Why weekends? Is this being documented officially? Did I sign any release forms? “Was in the bundle when you filled out the first-time patient forms.”

“I don’t… remember that,” I breathe a bit harder, my head starting to feel a bit fuzzy.

“You’re exhibiting signs of anxiety right now… did anything worry or trigger you today?” the doctor asks, her tone very serious and not actually patronizing me like it would seem.

“Oddly enough, it wasn’t reliving the trauma. It was the fact that you won’t answer my questions,” I push, “I hate not getting answers… maybe it’s PTSD or something, but I feel like you’re not listening. All my life, nobody listened or reacted accordingly to anything important I would say…” I take a deep breath in, “Like the word ‘no’… for example.”

“Reacted accordingly?”

“Yeah, like if I tell you ‘hey, my dad raped me’ and you respond with a careless ‘oh, that sucks,’ that will one hundred percent piss me off.” I explain the best I can, following the doctor on a left turn, toward a staircase going up. “Don’t half-heartedly listen when you ask someone what’s the matter. I hate feeling like background noise, if I’m any noise at all.”

“You seem to have a touch of derealization, Jessica.” She mutters soft while scribbling on her clipboard, her heel-clicking reverberating in the halls, sounding like overly dramatic clock-ticking as she seemingly brisk-walks through the halls. “Basically, you’re feeling a bit lucid and that really only comes from your PTSD. Your father refused to obey you when you said ‘no’. When someone ignores you, or seemingly ignores you by not responding to an inquiry immediately, you feel that lucidity. You feel that terror of being unheard altogether… and the only thing that has ever happened to you while your words were ignored was… your father assaulting you.”

“Rape. He raped me,” I emphasize, “Just… ‘assault’ implies he could have done anything. I am referring to when my father would actively force his penis into my vagina, against my will, painfully.” I try not to tear up. “Raped me.”

“Okay…” my therapist says in an attempt to calm me. It’s not working. “So, Jessica… you never answered me. How do you self soothe when it comes to flashbacks, bad dreams, or these types of situations ?”

“I… guess I don’t. At all,” I say as the doctor begins to slow down, approaching another push-release style door. “I mean I have the means to soothe my anxieties. Like… I have all the things I need to make the picture, but I have negative-thirty experience in painting. Make sense?”

My therapist opens the door, letting me step past her as we enter the same lobby I’d followed her from. “It does. What I’m hearing from you is that you just live with this trauma. You could do something about the side affects, you just need to be taught how in a way that feels… real to you in your sensitive state of mind and emotion.”

“Yes, essentially…” I look around confused as the therapist closes the door to the lobby behind us, leading me to the front desk, still abandoned. “Weren’t we headed to your office?”

“I’ll pencil ya in for next Saturday, Jessica,” the doctor says, looking pleased, “Remember, you can email me any time if you need to talk before our session.”

“Wait… did we even have a…”

“Keep working on that, Jessica,” she says, turning her back to me as she walks toward the doors we came through “Recognizing signs of a flare-up or attack of some kind… that’s still recovery! You’re slowly learning to identify when your illnesses are about to act up. Thats good! See you next time, Jessica Snow.”

The doors close as the hallway behind them accepts her, echoing their push-release clicking that sounds like a very loud and bold click of a lock. I’m left alone in the lobby of the behavioral health clinic, surrounded by a stagnant silence. I look up at the only clock in the room, seeing that an hour really had passed since I came.

“What the actual Hell is going on here?”