"You sound quite determined about this, Kiera." says Doctor Delany. It's Tuesday morning and I'm seated on the large leather couch in her office. I've finally got up the courage to come in here on my own. This is the first step in fixing everything I've destroyed. I'm going to make myself remember.
"That's because I am," I tell her, "I know I can't move forward until I deal with all of the things I've forgotten." It's true. My past has been holding my life hostage. Ever since the night my family died I've been playing a never ending game of clue. Every time I think I might know what's going on, somebody drops a hint that there's more to see. I'm just chasing answers; that isn't living. I need to know what happened to my family and the way to unlock those answers is to remember everything I heard and saw that night. It seems farfetched and I've been down this road before. It hasn't led anywhere good but I need to try I'm desperate and it must show on my face because she gives me a pitious look.
"I understand why you might feel that way," she says nodding her head. Her short brown bob falls forward on one side of her face and she brushes it back as she says; "However, I wonder why you're suddenly so adamant about this route." I sit a little straighter. Right, I knew this would eventually come up. I've been mentally preparing myself to deal with all of this head-on because that's the only way to fix this mess I've created for myself. It was inevitable but I thought I'd have more time to figure out how exactly to approach the Dastan situation before I had to bare my soul about it. "Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but until very recently you were off the opinion that it was pointless to fix your memory and that you should attempt to lead a normal life in spite of it."
It's true, I did say that. I said it and now I regret it more than anything. Had I known I would turn into this... This monster, I'd never have walked out on therapy. I'd given up on getting my memory back a long time ago. After the first few months of trying to undo the damage I'd realized that nothing was working. In fact, therapy seemed to have been compounding the problem. The more sessions I had with Doctor Delany the more episodes I'd had. It eventually got to the point where I couldn't go a week without finding myself in a strange place or waking up in a panic looking for my parents and not believing anyone who told me they were dead. I think those were the worst weeks. I'd had to relive the horror of finding out they were gone so many times, had to experience the grief of their loss multiple times. I'd had to force myself to come to terms with the fact that I was utterly, irrevocably alone for the rest of my life over and over again.
When I made the decision to leave therapy my friends supported me. Emma thought it was for the best considering I'd been more and more depressed the longer I didn't see any results. Haider had hope that if I just gave it enough time everything would right itself. And Doctor Delany, well, she said that perhaps the reason why therapy wasn't helping me remember is because deep down I didn't actually want to remember.
I'd been upset by that for a long time. How dare she say I didn't want to remember when I was putting so much effort into figuring out what happened to my family? Her implication that I was intentionally doing this lit a fire of rage somewhere inside me and I'd channeled all of it into rebuilding a normal life. I went back to college, worked three times as hard, got an internship at an online paper, and made my life into something resembling functional. Now, I think I understand what she meant. It wasn't that I was making myself forget, it was that I didn't want to confront the truth of it. I wanted it to be like I died that night too. I couldn't cope with the fact that for some reason I survived and they didn't. I wanted to understand why I was forgetting things but I didn't want to see how what I'd forgotten had changed who I was on a fundamental level.
Dastan forced me to acknowledge that last Saturday. He was angry and lashing out to hurt me. But he'd done it by holding up a mirror and forcing me to take a long hard look at the monster I'd let myself become. I don't respond to Doctor Delany's question but she seems to understand that it's not because I don't want to but rather that I don't know how to give a voice to the battle raging on inside me.
She gives a sharp jerk of head in understanding, "I hope you know this won't be an easy process. It's going to take time before you see results and even then there's no guarantee that anything we uncover will be long-lasting. Your situation is tricky in that way."
"So, you're saying that even if we get me to remember I might just forget again?"
"Yes," she doesn't hesitate. I appreciate that she isn't trying to handle me with kid gloves like everyone else in my life does. "You repressed those memories in an attempt to protect yourself. It's important to recognize that what's going on isn't your brain punishing you. It's actually a protective mechanism; what you experienced was so traumatic that your subconscious mind hid those memories from you in an attempt to save you from having to confront the truth of it, to not have to remember the details."
I get what she's saying, I do. But the problem is that this definitely feels like a punishment. A punishment for surviving what should have killed me, maybe. She keeps saying something about how this whole thing is going to work, I've heard it all before so I tune it out, I'd rather not think too much about what I'm going to have to make myself do in the weeks to come. Rather not think about all the things I'll probably be forced to see before this is all over. "It's important that you have a strong support system during this process,"
That gets my attention. "Actually," I begin hesitantly. Something in my tone must be unusual because she turns those eyes that miss nothing on me, "I'd rather not have my friends involved in all of this for now." There's a slight rise in her eyebrow but she contains her expression giving nothing away. "I just don't want to give them hope in case this all turns out to be for nothing." I tack on as an afterthought. I wonder if she knows I'm lying. It is sort of her job to know when people are lying to her and themselves. There's a voice inside me that says maybe it's not the best idea to lie to my therapist, I ignore it. I don't want to acknowledge the real reason of why I don't want anyone to know by saying it aloud.
I'd rather not give my doubts a voice. That's the other big revelation I had the night of gala; the people in my life haven't been entirely honest with me. I'd been so secure in the fact that I knew each of them right down to their very core but Haider proved me wrong. There's more going on than they've led me to believe. Whether that's because they think I can't handle the truth of the situation or because they have something to hide, I don't know. What I do know is that there are things that Haider has been keeping from me, and I can't help wondering if Emma knows it. It's difficult to believe she doesn't; Emma doesn't miss anything and I'm sure she must have picked up on Haider's deception at some point. The question is why she hasn't said something about it. Is she protecting me or him?
Right now, I don't know who I can trust; I can't even trust my own mind. That needs to change because I'm tired of being lied to.
I'm tired of depending on everyone else to hold my life together, I'm done existing but not really living. I'm through being the damsel in distress, that's not me and it's time I got back to who I really am. Back to the person my parents raised me to be; not this selfish, thoughtless, inconsiderate, insensitive excuse for a human. I'm so done being everyone's victim, it's high time I take control of my own life and this is how I'm going to do it. Step one, remember.