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The word stung.
“I certainly can help you with trauma. But you need to understand, there’s no erasing it. Trauma of any kind is something we need to learn to live beside. To walk with it, to embrace it. What we don’t want on our journey is for our trauma to direct our life, to dictate the way we live.”
It wasn’t what Ali wanted to hear. I don’t want it to walk beside me. I want to run and leave it in the dust miles behind.
“I was attacked. Someone I know tried… he tried to force himself on me.” She looked back at the orchid. When she went home, she would get a new one and forbid Cornell from watering it. “I get that it’s barely been two weeks. But I can’t waste time being stuck in it. And I am.” Ali grasped her arm. “All the time.”
“You’re right. It’s fresh. But what do you mean by stuck? Flashbacks? Nightmares?”
“Both.”
Linda nodded. “We can work on dissociating during the day. The more you tackle the flashbacks you have when you’re awake, the more that will help with what you’re dealing with at night.” She paused. “Could you tell me what you meant when you said he tried to force himself on you?”
Ali swallowed. “He did, actually. Force himself on me.” Her legs clenched as she remembered the memory of Graham’s long, thick fingers scrambling up her legs like some kryptonite-fed spider. “Just not totally.”
“What do you mean, ‘not totally’?”
Still looking at the orchid, Ali repeated, “Not totally.”
“Ali,” Linda said commandingly, waiting until Ali met her eyes. “Force means there is no consent. Did you say yes?”
“Stop it. Please, stop it!”
Ali shook her head softly at Linda.
“So when you say ‘not totally,’ do you mean there was no penetration?”
Penetration, she internally repeated.
It sounded clinical, definitive, like she was reading a report. I can handle that. “Not with his… he used his hands.” She rubbed the tops of her thighs and then crossed her legs tightly again. Her stomach kept churning, and she could taste the vomit rising.
I don’t want to do this.
Linda leaned forward, balancing her elbows on her knees. “There’s a word for that, too.”
When Ali raised her eyes to look back at Linda, she felt a tear drop down her cheek. “What’s that?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“I think,” Linda began, “it’s something that might be more helpful if you say it before I do.”
* * *
Ali didn’t say the word. She didn’t say much else to Linda. Or her mother. The drive home was even quieter than the drive to the appointment, and Ali felt exactly how she knew she would—even more suffocated by her own thoughts.
She went into the house, ignoring Porter waiting impatiently by the door, went upstairs into her room, stripped off her clothes, and stomped into her bathroom.
The water wasn’t hot enough despite the steam being so thick, it made her dizzy. But Ali scrubbed with force and determination. I’m erasing it. Done. Deleted. Graham can stay back here in the septic tank like the shit he is.
She ran her loofah over her arm so hard she felt it prickle with blood as the skin left with the soap down the drain. Ali could feel the sting, the relief when she stopped scrubbing. It reminded her of something Linda had said earlier that afternoon.
“One immediate thing to work on is focusing on the present, being mindful of it.”
Ali shook her head. “What do you mean?”
“We call it ‘grounding,’” Linda began, “a tool that we can use to exercise our mindfulness and fight these dissociative states where you feel like you are back at the night of the incident.”
“How does it work?” Ali raised an eyebrow.
“It’s a 5-4-3-2-1 sensory method. So, for example, you start with five things you can see —”
