Page 17 of Nyx

Chapter 5

Nyx

"Notice that," Slick says.

The two words have the ability to make my mind dig deeper, but I don't know whether what I'm seeing in my head is something my mind has remembered or something it's created. Sometimes those visions are a twist of both.

The entire point of EMDR therapy isn't to get rid of the memories. It's to process the memories until they no longer trigger those fears and unwanted reactions.

"She's angry at me," I say, my voice sounding distant even to my own ears. "What?"

"What are you seeing?" Slick asks.

"She hit me," I whisper, somehow knowing this is a memory and not something my mind created.

"A new memory?"

I nod, my eyes still tracking the dot moving on the light bar.

"I hid her bottle of vodka," I explain, the memories leading up to her striking me flooding my mind. "I thought if she couldn't find it, she'd stop drinking."

"This is after the final altercation with your dad or before?"

My hands tremble, and even curling them into fists until my nails dig into my palm doesn't stop them from shaking.

"After," I whisper. "I should've just left well enough alone."

"Notice that," she says.

But I can't. I can't seem to focus on anything other than this movie playing out in my head as if I'm reliving every second over and over.

The yelling, the strike of her hand on my face, my complete shock that she would hit me after all we had been through.

How could I have forgotten that she had hit me?

I lift my hand to my face, pressing my palm to my cheek, both in my memory and in the present.

"You hit me," I whisper.

"Gonna do a lot more than that if you don't give me that fucking bottle of vodka!" she screams, rage filling her eyes as if I'm not standing there, larger in stature than my father ever was.

"She was aggressive," I whisper, remembering how many of those nights started, including the final one.

Memories flood back, making me realize this happened a lot when my father was alive. They'd both start drinking, and then they were at each other's throats. My mother often reasoned that she was at fault after a beating. Had she not instigated an argument, then she wouldn't have been hurt.

She wasn't to blame. Both of them were volatile when they were drinking, but that never means it's okay to get violent. I'd never say my mother deserved to be beaten, no matter how loud and combative she got.

My father was violent even on the days she hadn't been drinking, but she could never understand that reasoning either.

"Go ahead and go back to your safe space," Slick urges.

As if controlled by her words, the memories of my mother fade. In my mind, it takes a plane ride, a train trip, and then a boat to get back to my island. My breathing slows as I mentally feel the warm sand under my bare feet.

I glance up at her once I'm inside the bunker.

"I wanted to stop before we got too far into those new memories," she explains.

"Can we have another session tomorrow?" I ask, wanting to get to the bottom of why I remembered her hitting me when it's not something I ever remember thinking back on.