I wait, one leg crossed over the other, keeping my body relaxed. It enrages me that people can hurt other people the way Kelly has been hurt and the way I’ve been hurt. I don’t let myself get angry when I’m in sessions. I don’t let it show. I keep it in a little tin box, locked away with a tiny key deep down inside of me until the door is closed and the patient is gone.

Kelly looks toward the window, breathing deeply. Her cheeks reddened, and when she looks back at me, that betrayal is reflected in her eyes.

“It just feels like it keeps coming back,” she presses, the frustration lingering in her voice.

My throat gets tight… I know that feeling.

“I feel like,” Kelly begins, her voice thick with truth and emotion. “No matter how far away I get, no matter how much time passes, it’s still there.” She points at her chest. “Like it’s in my body, waiting for the moment I feel good, or I feel like I’m past it, or—” Kelly drops her hand to her lap, the tissue still clenched in her fist. “The second I let my guard down, it’s waiting to pounce on me again. Almost like it’s playing with me. Almost like I’m playing with me, because these are my—this is how I feel about what he did. I keep thinking I’m over it. But then something will happen and I’m right back in that house. All I want is to erase it somehow, and…I don’t know how to do that.”

“Where in your body do you feel that?” I ask her and she taps on her chest three times. “Right here,” she admits with her eyes glassy, “and sometimes my throat gets tight.”

I nod. “There’s a book I can recommend to you. You’re not wrong. The body holds trauma, and you don't have resolution or justice. It’s hard on the body when there was never an ending that makes you feel safe.”

She lets out a heavy sigh. Her eyes drop to her hands in her lap, her lip quivering. Kelly grits her teeth and the dimple in her chin disappears.

I sit with what she’s said for a few moments.

I don’t want to rush to respond to her. I want her to know that I’ve considered her words before I start talking.

And—

The way she said back in that house jogged something in my brain. That’s how I would’ve said back at school. That’s how I think back at school in my own head.

My mind races and I remind myself that I need to stop. It’s only the news and the recent events that have brought all of this up.