Page 21 of Letters From A Stalker

Her gaze drops as though she’s only just noticed the position of her body, and she uncrosses her arm too quickly.

“I’m cold.”

“The office is seventy-two degrees.”

“Maybe I have terrible circulation.”

“Maybe.”

She watches me for a moment, clearly waiting for me to challenge the excuse, but I let her have it. I’m beginning to recognize the pattern. When a question gets too close, Julia doesn’t shut down completely. She uses humor or a dry remark to put just enough distance between herself and whatever she doesn’t want me looking at too closely.

What interests me is that she still pushes back at all.

She spends so much time trying to make herself smaller, apologizing when she has done nothing wrong and folding inward whenever attention stays on her too long, but underneath all of that is a stubbornness she doesn’t seem entirely aware of yet. It appears in the slight narrowing of her eyes when she knows I’ve caught her avoiding something, or in the sarcasm that slips out when she feels exposed.

Her thumb moves over the sleeve covering the bite mark again, and my attention follows it.

“What did biting yourself do for you?”

Her eyes drop to her hand. “It stopped me from screaming.”

The answer gives the mark context immediately, and somehow that makes my reaction worse. She hadn’t been looking for pain. She had needed the scream contained badly enough that hurting herself felt preferable to letting it out.

The thought that has been sitting at the back of my mind since I first noticed the mark returns with sharper edges.

Who taught you that your pain needed to be quiet?

Anger moves through me so quickly that the pen tightens between my fingers. It isn’t anger at Julia. It’s fury at the instinct itself, at every lesson that must have come before it, until her body learned that hurting herself was somehow safer than letting anyone hear what was happening inside her.

“What made screaming feel less acceptable than biting through your own skin?”

“I was on a bus full of people.”

“That explains why you didn’t want to scream. It doesn’t explain why hurting yourself felt safer.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“No. You were reacting.”

“What’s the difference?” This time the question doesn’t come out as defence. It comes out as honest curiosity.

“Thoughts involve choice. Reactions are often learned.”

Her gaze holds mine. “Learned where?”

“That’s something we can work out together.”

She looks away first.

I notice the change in her breathing, the pressure of her feet against the carpet, and the way her grip has begun whitening her knuckles. She’s reaching the edge of what she can tolerate during a first appointment, and even though part of me wants to keep going until she hands me every piece of herself she has spent years suppressing, the thought has nothing to do with what she needs.

Push harder. Make her give you the rest.

It isn’t professional curiosity. It’s hunger. I ignore it.

“We can slow down,” I say.

“I’m fine.” She says and I wonder who is she trying to convince more — herself or me?