“Don’t think too much, just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind,” Julie continued. “Where are you: inside or outside?”

“Inside,” I replied as a memory flooded in.

“Okay, good.” Her voice was soothing, singsong-ish. There was a youthfulness to it that made me think of her as less of an authority figure and more of a friend. “What can you see?”

“I’m at my elementary school.” I recognized the coat hangers and cubbies, the children’s colouring pages taped to the wall. “Standing outside my grade one classroom.”

“Are you alone?” Julie asked.

“Yes.” I could see that the halls were empty. I stared down the corridor, bookbag in hand, desperately scanning, waiting for my parents to appear. “I’m waiting for someone to pick me up.”

“Okay, good.” Julie’s chair creaked as she shifted. “I want you to relax even deeper. Sink into the chair. Breathe.”

I nodded, my eyes remained closed. I inhaled loudly, and as I exhaled, I attempted to further relax my body, sinking deeper into the chair.

“Think about a time, before that, when you felt anxious. No wrong answers here, whatever comes into your head, just say it,” Julie continued. “Where are you? Inside or outside?”

“Inside, again.” I felt as if I were in the space between waking and sleeping. The heaviness of someone who had just woken up from a nightmare, fighting to stay awake so you wouldn’t drift back into that same bad dream.

“How old are you?”

I could hear the clock ticking on the wall. Muffled yelling. The crackling of the fire. Oil spitting. I was no longer sure of what was happening in my head and what was happening in the room. “Three-ish.”

“Who are you with?”

I turned my head, and William was standing there with his cascading blond curls. He was perfectly still, staring straight ahead. “My brother, William. We’re under the kitchen table.”

“Where are you?”

“My grandparents’ house.” I followed William’s eyes with my own. My grandparents and my father were screaming at one another, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Their faces were contorted, their arms flailing as their mouths moved, nothing coming out.

“What do you see?”

My grandfather turned and snatched a butcher’s knife off the counter. He held it out at my father. Threatening. I looked back at William, who had moved closer, wrapping his arms around me and trying to cover my eyes. Then the police. “The police are arresting Grandfather.”

“Do you know why?”

“No.” The officers were pinning him to the dishwasher, his hands behind his back. Handcuffs. A silver flask peeked out of his pants pocket. A fallen cigarette burning a hole in the linoleum tile. “I can’t hear anything.”

“Okay. I want you to go deeper now, Grace.” Julie sounded far away. I tried to reach out and touch her but my hand was too heavy to lift. Her words were clipped, not all there. “Think…back…a time…even younger…afraid.”

I was in water. Fully enveloped. I could see nothing, but I felt the pulsating ripple of the tide. A rhythmic dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum. It was outside of me, but it was a part of me. It shook me. It shook everything.