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“The next six months was like mental boot camp. I saw Lauren twice a week and read countless books on sexual abuse and repressed memories. Sounds like good reading, doesn’t it?” she joked.
“Yeah,” he agreed, sipping his wine.
“I learned that repressing painful experiences is actually fairly common and is what basically allows someone to live a fairly ‘normal’ life while being almost completely unaware of the existence of such painful experiences.
“It’s a subconscious coping mechanism. And it made perfect sense why my subconscious would lock something shitty away and keep it there. Because how else was I supposed to get through Saturday nights with Carter, then take a math test at school on Monday, hang out with friends after school, go on dates with boys, fall in love, get married, and have sex with my husband?
“It especially made sense why locking shit away was helpful when I started remembering things that made life really difficult.”
“How difficult?” David asked quickly, twisting to look at her. “Like wanting to die, difficult?”
His face was so close to her, that she could see the individual flecks of gold in his hazel eyes that made them so beautiful. “More like there were days when I didn’t feel like living,” she clarified. “I’m not sure if you can understand the distinction, but I didn’t want to kill myself. I didn’t want to die … I just didn’t always want to be alive. Does that make sense?”
“A little.”
He turned to face forward again. “So, if this coping mechanism is supposed to help you live a ‘normal’ life, then why doesn’t the coping mechanism last forever?”
“Because not knowing was no longer helping me,” she answered. “See, the disconnect is vital for early survival, but it isn’t perfect. The body itself can’t be fooled because it has its own memory and remembers every trauma inflicted on it, which is why it didn’t matter that I loved you and wanted to enjoy sex with you. My body wouldn’t let me enjoy it because it couldn’t forget past traumas or stop reacting to them, even though you had nothing to do with the past traumas, or that I had no memories of them.
“So, basically, there’s no changing how the body reacts until the memories are revealed and dealt with and this only happens if your coping mechanism becomes counterproductive.”
“I don’t understand. Why had it become counterproductive at that particular time?”
She slid her hands up and across his chest, clasping them together and resting her chin on his shoulder. Instead of making him relax, the added ‘comfort’ immediately made him brace for an impact he knew he wasn’t going to like.
“Because that’s when our marriage ended,” she said quietly. “That was ultimately the catalyst for the flashbacks.”
“Are you kidding me?” Grabbing his glass of wine from the coffee table, David practically chugged it, barely tasting it as it went down. “Fuck. I knew I was making the biggest mistake of my life that night. I shouldn’t have left.”
“Please don’t think like that,” she implored him. “At the time, yes, it was terrible, but it turned out to be the best thing that happened to me. I mean it, David. Listen to me. I was never going to heal without a tipping point. I never blamed you, or hated you for leaving. Not even when it hurt like hell. I can say now, with all honesty, that I’m grateful you left me. My not knowing was harming me and harming our marriage to the point where it couldn’t survive and it wasn’t in my best interest to remain in the dark any longer. Losing something vital was the kick in the ass my subconscious needed to let me remember.”
“You seriously want me to feel good about leaving you?” He reached for the bottle, only to be dismayed when he was only able to get half a glass out of it.
“In a weird way, yeah, I do.”
He took a deep breath, as guilt, remorse, and shame flooded him. It didn’t help to be told she was grateful he’d left because the bottom line was that she’d had to go through everything on her own. So, even if it was true that his leaving was what led to her salvation, David wasn’t sure that was something he’d ever be able to embrace. “Okay, well, I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Well, how about you just quit feeling bad about it?”
“That’s basically the same thing, Paige. That’s just another way of saying I should feel good about it.”
“I’m begging you to try and let your guilt go. It took me a long time to let go of mine, but if I can do it, so can you.”
He turned back to her. “What the hell did you have to feel guilty about?”
Paige pressed her lips together for a moment. “I never told you this, but after we’d been together for several months, I went to see my gynecologist, because I thought something was wrong with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sex was still sort of uncomfortable—”
David held up a hand, cutting her off. “Define uncomfortable.”
“It was a little painful,” she admitted quietly. “It was only painful for like the first thirty seconds or so, but—”
“That doesn’t actually make me feel better,” he broke in, rubbing at his face with both hands. “Thirty seconds can be a long time if there’s pain involved.”
Had he really thought the worst part of the night was behind him? Knowing sex had been painful for her, for any amount of time, made his eyes burn again and he was afraid that before the night was over, he’d be crying for real.
