In Therapy Today

In therapy today I talked about the sexual abuse. Somehow I guess in spite of all the talking we’d done about it, I’d never told him what happened. We’d just talked about the effects of it upon my life. In the past whenever it came up, I just avoided talking about the details… well, not even just details… anything whatsoever about what happened. So, today, when he asked what happened, I told him. I told him everything I remembered.

I realized as I was telling it and afterwards too, that I was telling it in such a way that it sounded like I didn’t care about it any more – like it didn’t gross me out or hurt. I guess that’s some sort of a defense mechanism. And, duh, he’s a therapist, I’m sure he knows better. But I realized that this was good for me. I had never told anybody the details. I’ve told many people that it happened, but not WHAT happened. I realize that telling what happened, at least to my therapist, is something that I probably have needed to do for a long time (but maybe just wasn’t ready to do until now.)

I’m resolved to tell it again next week, but tell it along with how I felt and feel now. I think that will somehow break the “spell” it has over me even now. What a freeing experience it was to just face it, say it, and the world didn’t fall in! I have no idea where the strength came from to just sit there and do that. I was so calm. It was so weird. My therapist said, “I feel like I just have to ask you about the sexual abuse again.” And I said, “Ask me what about the sexual abuse? I’ll answer whatever you want to ask…” because I really didn’t know, we’ve talked so much about it. What else was there left to know? And he said, “What happened?” I thought that might be the question he was going to ask, but I wasn’t sure. Somewhere inside of me I thought what harm can it possibly do to just go over it? It’s not like you haven’t done that in your mind a thousand times over the past fifteen-twenty years… I don’t know where that serenity came from… God? Topamax? Maturity? A combination of all three? It was weird but I’m glad it happened.