Retell therapy

November 18, 2003 8:46 p.m.

It wasn't the first symptom of my disfunction; but it was enough to lead to the first visit. That cliched leather lounge. How I laughed when I saw it. I stood defiantly by the window, smoking my Dunhill, my back turned. She sat in her big velvet chair, severe bun and notepad perched delicately on her crossed knees. I could barely keep down the bile that threatened, that would surely result in the contents of my stomache being deposited in this room in this hideous scene straight from a B-Grade movie.

I was fifteen and bitter. Living a lie that ate away at my soul, devouring myself from the inside out a little more each day. It all started one Friday night, a long road trip and tears like cyanide that fell from my eyes staining and corroding my skin. It all happened so fast, so swift that I can replay it all in slow motion, the emphatic embracing, the 'cry for happy' face worn by too many women and the slightly inappropiate glances from the men. And for the first time in my life I felt the arms of my father hold me as he cried pathetic tears, begging my forgiveness, pleading for my understanding at his absence and his choice to give me away. And inside I was numb.

Somewhere amongst the throng of people, the noise and the rabble, my eyes sought and found his. Those dark eyes so much like my own. Seventeen and angry he moved like a cat, with grace and fluidity. He smiled that smile; my smile, and as I slid into the passenger seat of his car I felt a warmth and belonging I had never experienced before. I found my safe place. He understood me, without words. He was the epiphany I had been waiting for, and now that I had found him, the world proclaimed me a whore.

People would whisper. Point and stare. As though I wore my sickness as a scar that traversed the length of my face. The truth was not the ugly breathing monstrosity that they believed they were trying to deliver us from. But the mud had been slung and so it stuck to my body, clinging in desperation like the silent mournful wail of the aborted feotus, never knowing sunlight.

She wanted me to tell her. Tell her how in the dark of the night, our lips touch, tongues search and two skins that dissolve into one, inside each other, around each other; a Hansel and Gretel fleshed out and malignant, infecting themselves and each other with their disease. She wanted me to tell her about nights of lusty passion, of throbbing and thrusting and ecstatic cries that escape from forbidden lips.

But it wasn't truth. All she wanted was a specimen. A broken shattered child, confused and delerious, feeding on her dellusions, consuming herslef from the inside out and retaliating against an absentee father and a neglectful mother by fucking her cousin until they repayed in kind their debt.

But it was never like that.

I loved him yes, I love him still. But there was no erotic rendezvous in the secrets of the night. There was no naked glistening skin sliding over and under. There were no tender kisses and lips that traced the length of necks. No legs that tangled in a post coital web.

And if there had been, they would be moments I'd hold in my hands like water. Something I could never fully contain that would spill over into my soul, drowning me. They'd be precious and illustrious and mine. I could never tell this cliche my hidden cancerous thoughts. I could never bare my soul to this parasite. I stubbed out my Dunhill, turned on my heel and slammed the door behind me. My first had now become my last. That door was closed to me forever.

~Vita