Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [116]
Isn’t it great?
I closed the cell phone, rested my forehead on the steering wheel, and gave myself time to decompress. I didn’t want to drive under the influence of disappointment. Not even to an AA meeting.
Melinda started my session where we ended the last. “A mother afraid to show affection doesn’t provide a healthy climate for showing any kind of physical tenderness,” she said.
“My mother never discussed sex, didn’t see herself as a sexual being, and certainly didn’t want to see me that way,” I said. “She warned me so often about being touched and how it could lead to pregnancy, I thought feeling good had to be bad.”
“You talked about connecting the dots with Carl, sex, and alcohol. Other dots needed to be connected. Like the ones we talked about last week,” Melinda propped a small white board on her desk. She drew circles with a marker as she talked. “Like this dot. Your mother's inability to feel good about being sexual and intimate.”
A few inches away, she made another circle. “Then, that experience in high school. God watched over all three of you girls that night. Maybe you haven’t even thought about that, but I hope you thank Him. You were assaulted by drunks, who threw beer on you, degraded you, and one put his hands between your legs. Just because his hand never reached his intended target didn’t make the whole incident any less invasive or repugnant.”
Those hands, from all those years ago, crawled on my skin. I looked out the window. “Well, he didn’t rape me.”
Melinda closed the marker. “Listen to me. Sexual assault is rape without penetration, but the stress disorders are the same. Clearly, this incident didn’t ‘go away.’ And it's the source of some of your avoidance or withdrawal behaviors.”
“I’ve tried to bury that night for over ten years,” I said. “The only people who knew were in the car with me. For certain, I wasn’t going to tell my parents. I shouldn’t have been there at all. I already knew how my Mom felt.”
“You didn’t cause this by being there, Leah. This was done to you. I want you to understand this connection of that experience not being your fault because the sexual abuse in your marriage isn’t your fault either.”
Confusion. A disconnect in my brain signaled an alarm. “I don’t think you understood Ron's file. Carl didn’t abuse me.” I shifted in my chair. Why didn’t she have candy on her desk? My hand itched.
Melinda moved to the chair across from me and crossed her legs, still holding her two-dot board and marker. “You weren’t sexually abused in your marriage?” She drew another dot. A small silver cross swung away from the hollow in her neck when she leaned toward me. “Really? So explain to me what I may have wrong.”
I stood and edged my hands into the pockets of my skirt. I rocked heel to toe, heel to toe.
Melinda sat back, her hair a black curly pillow pressed against the chair. “What's this all about?”
“It's uncomfortable, sitting so long. I need to stretch.” My trembling voice couldn’t make the lie sound like the truth.
“No problem. You can still explain to me what happened between you and Carl. Help me understand.”
“Do we have to do this? You obviously don’t believe me. What do you want me to say?” Isn’t living it enough? Do I have to talk about it too? I paced in front of the desk.
“Just tell me whatever you need to.” Melinda's soft voice spread itself like a blanket on my cold fear.
I sat again and kneaded the back of my neck, pushed my fingertips into my muscles.
“Abuse is different. It's not like he hit me. He didn’t.”
“No, of course not. Do you think that's all abuse is? “
I shrugged. “Well, I guess I did, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me that's not true.”
“You were sexually abused in your marriage. No is no is no.”
“But what's that submit to your husband passage in the Bible? Not that we spent much time in church or in God's word, but Carl remembered that one. He’d tell me wives were supposed to please their husbands.”
Melinda reached for the Bible on her desk. “Listen to this passage from