January 7th, 2014

I tell everything that happened to Dr. Fonseca during my Saturday session. She doesn’t interrupt at all which is nice. She usually does in order to ask a question.

“Do you think the video bringing back the past also brought back those negative feelings?” She asks when I’m done.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.”

Dr. Fonseca laughs, “I guess not. I also guess you’re smart enough to figure out that you started drinking to drown out those negative thoughts.”

“Yeah…”

“And this girl? What did you feel when you talked to her?”

“Feel? I don’t remember. I blacked out.”

“Try.”

I sit there as a duck. There isn’t much to remember but I don’t want to lie. I have like a five minutes worth of memory to work with, how am I supposed to get a feeling from that. Yet that warmth reminds. “I don’t know,” I shrug, “I felt warm and whole when I felt her lips. That’s like all I remember.”

My therapist smiles, “That’s enough,” and writes something on her Ipad. “Even if you don’t remember, do you know what happened while you were blacked out?”

“Andrew said Grace and I were being picked on by Amanda Myers. She publically shamed up and that got me pissed enough to drink more. He said I almost fought her, which I wish would have happened. She needs to get knocked off that throne of hers.”

“What did Grace and Andrew do?”

“Gracie ignored her, which I should have done. Andrew tried to defend me but didn’t work out so well. He isn’t well liked anymore for him to have supporters. It’s like they don’t even give a shit about us and what we feel, like words don’t matter.”

“They’re in high school, they think they matter. Once they’re out, they don’t.”

“So do you think what Elizabeth said was right? That it’s all bullshit and nothing really matters?”

“In a sense, sure, but it doesn't mean we can’t give meaning to things. Once you graduate those people won’t matter to you, Sara. One the people you want to keep around matter. I think with Elizabeth’s case her method of thinking wasn’t exactly healthy. That could've been because of the drugs or the people around her or just a mental disease that could have popped up out of nowhere.”

“Aren’t I the same?”

“No. You had an unfair life Sara. A kid your age would be broken with how much you went through, yet you’re still here. There are still a lot of things you haven’t shared with me, but I feel like our progress hasn’t been slowed down by that fact.”

I sit in silence for a while. I haven’t told her about my daydreams, remembering where I was a year ago. That’s a thing I haven’t told her about. Another is my mother. She knows she died when I was young but that’s it. “I can talk about it now.”

“You mean-”

“Yes.”

“Start whenever, take your time.”

I don’t hesitate. “My dad fucked me September 26th, 2012. It was wasn’t the first time, but it was the last. I couldn’t take it anymore so I just ran away without telling anyone but Emily. I ended up walking for miles towards Seattle without a real plan. I just wanted the fucking die whether it be a car accident, starvation or murder. I was still too scared to do it myself. I barely ate for the first week before the thoughts of killing myself became stronger. Eventually I just gave up on this alleyway downtown and slit my wrists to finally die.” I don’t say anything next. I don’t want to.

“Who saved you?”

“Lyle,” I stop myself.

“He’s the one who gave Elizabeth the gun right? The drug dealer?”

“Loan shark, business owner, politician. He did a lot of things.”

“What did he do to you?”

“My brother asked him to look for me. He found me, saved me, then kept me. It was in this restaurant-house that he owned and I was kept in the basement. I was slave to him. I cleaned the placed in chains after hours and forced to stay alive. I was broken at that point so everything was just on autopilot. I didn’t really care anymore. I think he just kept me just to fuck with my brother, like how he fucked with Elizabeth.”

“Sara, what did he do to you?” I stay silent. The memories try to come back but I block them. I don’t want them. “Sara, we’re really close. Just tell me what happened.”

I think if it wasn’t for Lyle’s existence, none of our lives would be this fucked up. I’m glad he’s in prison now but that doesn’t vindicate the effect he had in all our lives. He was just a shadow controlling the narrative behind the curtains.

There was this whole nationwide media coverage when he was arrested. The amount of shit he was apart of was absurd. Hours before his arrest he killed the husband of beloved artist, Emmah Melody Ryan. She commented that she knew his as a man called Sessions. I remember back in middle school there was rumor that there was a drug dealer that went by the name Sessions and that he was in every state. Lyle was that Sessions in Washington. Through that connection the FBI found Lyle’s ties with an old terrorist gang that ran in 90’s till it’s end in 2008. The world sort of celebrated a victory when Lyle was caught.

“Sara,” Dr. Fonseca repeats herself.

“He raped me. He liked to torture me by suffocating me but never enough to kill me, teasing me, taking that away from me. He made me sleep in my own shit. He fucking found it amusing!”

There’s a very strong silence. I close my eyes and take a breath and it feels good. It feels good to actually tell someone. It’s not something grand or spectacular but I had repressed those memories for the longest time and now they’re out. I think if I wasn’t in a broken conscious state at the time I would be dead right now.

Except now I kind of wish I was.

“Sara, are you okay?” Dr. Fonseca asks.

It takes me a moment to realize that I’ve been staring at my feet for quite some time. I don’t even know how much time has past but it feels like I’ve used up my hour. There’s no clocks in the room and I’m not allowed on my phone during sessions so who knows how much time has passed. “Do you believe in angels?” I ask.

“Are you asking me if I’m religious?”

“No,” I shake my head. “I’m just asking about angels. Like guardian angels or something like that.”

“Like in the video? Elizabeth’s Angel?”

“I guess.”

“Do you believe you have one yourself?”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

Dr. Fonseca doesn’t say anything, instead she writes again in her Ipad. That’s not a good thing, this is the second time in one session. I look her back in the eyes when she finishes. “I’ll be honest Sara, I don’t know what to believe. I think that’s the beauty of it however as it allows for conversation and argument. Debates is how progress is made. Why are you bring this up?”

A trigger immediately happens. There’s a wave of memories about my mother that brings back the darkness. “A few days before our mother died, Andrew and I experienced our first snowstorm. I think it was the first time we ever seen snow as it doesn’t snow very often in Darkwood. When it was all over Andrew and I spent all day playing in the snow. I remember our mother kept telling us that we were gonna get sick because we were getting wet. Dad let us run around though. Remembering this assures me that he wasn’t a bad man. He loved us and then he lost her. I don’t think I can blame him.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“I’m not done,” I pause for a second. “I don’t blame him, but he could have done better, so I blame him for that. I hate him now and I don’t think I could ever see him again. I don’t want to. That day where we played in the snow, we held this competition to see who would build a better snowman. I won and my mom praised me. I think this made Andrew jealous so he pushed me through my snowman and I twisted my ankle. Back then I was always better than Andrew. I think that’s why Andrew became as smart as he did, because he wanted to beat me in something.”

There’s more silence as I gather my thoughts. “It’s okay, you can open up.”

“Since the moment Mom died, Andrew changed. A baby can figure that out but I think something else changed too. I tried my best to not be trouble but Andrew always looked for it. And yet despite that, Andrew was hardly ever punished for the things he did and yet I would be punished for merely existing. I think what changed is our guardian angel started protecting Andrew instead of me.”

“Do you think you’re feeling resentment towards your brother?”

It makes sense doesn’t it? After everything that has happened to me, Andrew has never once felt the pain I have. He gets away scot free for nearly everything. Guardian angels, what a joke. And the thought of hating my brother for it? They don’t even exist in the first place. That itself makes me laugh. “No. It just assures me that I’m a piece of shit who doesn’t deserve a good thing in her life.”

“Sara…”

“Fuck you! If that wasn’t the case than why the fuck did my own father have to fucking rape me?!”

“You can’t contro-”

“Fuck that! You’re just saying that I had shit luck to be born into this world!” I’m up on my feet before I know I am. My hand hurts from clenching my fists and yet I can’t seem to remember getting this angry. Dr. Fonseca just looks at me and doesn’t say anything. Now that I know that I’m angry I’m able to calm down. I’m able to take a deep breath and sit back down. “People like to tell me that everyone gets suicidal thoughts and it's no big deal, it’s apart of the human experience. Is that true?”

“Are you having suicidal thoughts, Sara?”

“Can you answer the question and not dodge it?”

Dr. Fonseca smiles and drops her Ipad to her lap. “Suicidal thoughts, even fleeting ones are symptoms of illness. There’s this myth that everyone has them and that it’s okay to have them. Truth is, because everyone has learned that it has become normal and thus don’t talk about it. This negligence of mental health is why I’m here, Sara.”

“Is that your professional opinion or your personal?”

Dr. Fonseca looks at me confused. Andrew has beated my brain with the idea that everyone has a morally correct opinion to counteract their actual opinion. He says we’re all lying to each other to seem like good people. “Professional, Sara.”

“Can I get what you think? Without the bullshit?”

She sighs, “I think yes, we all have a moment of weakness that gives us those thought at one point in our lives. I think it's part of being a human, but there are people who need help to overcome those negative thoughts.”

“Did you ever get them?”

“Sara, I don’t see what this has to-”

“I know. I know. I’m curious, is all.”

“Have the thoughts came up again?”

“Yes.”

I stare myself naked on the bathroom mirror inside my house. No, not my house. My adoptive mother’s house, not mine. I’m a guest here, always have been. Like this mirror I’m staring at isn’t mine. It’s borrowed. This naked body of mine isn’t mine. It’s borrowed. It’s been awhile since I’ve done this; just looking at myself without a filter. I get to examine every imperfection to the flaps of extra skin or the faint lines across my wrists. Dr. Fonseca doesn't know that I do this. I wonder if she’ll think it's healthy. Probably not. She’ll try to spin in on how I despise myself or some shit.

Still. I used to do this with a line of coke waiting for me. I wonder if Andrew still does it and if he would share. That feeling of being a queen would really come in handy about now. I can feel that empty void slowly growing inside me and the only way I know how to deal with it is with those white powder lines. I hate being sober. It’s such a shitty state of mind to be in.

Suicidal thoughts. I don’t even want to die anymore but they’re still here. They drive me to feel like it’ll be a lot easier dead.

What’s left of me, the real me, the sane; she wants to know who I fucked because it’s not fair that I don’t even know who she is. It’s what keeps me up at night. It’s what I need to know but I know it’ll be impossible to find her.

Then I think about my mother; my sweet caring mother.

Then about my father.

Then about Lyle.

Then I want to die again.