A Room of Their Own by Rakefet Yarden (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

hide it and I can’t say it. I don’t want to share things with her for nothing. She can’t help me anyway. I’m a lost cause.

I was overcome by darkness and gloom. I couldn’t go there, but I couldn’t cancel with just a few hours’ notice. That would turn on the warning signals there, raising even more questions. I stayed in bed until 3 p.m. and eventually managed to drag myself up, get dressed and let Miko out alone for a walk. I didn’t have the energy to take him out or to take him along with me to Rotem’s.

I left the house at 3:30, got on a bus and knew that I’d be late.

Fifth Meeting

Terrible. Awful. I feel like dying, I thought to myself when Rotem asked how I was doing, as she usually does at the beginning of sessions.

“Fine,” I lied.

Rotem just looked at me, her eyes indicating that it’s all right, that she can tell I’m not fine, but I didn’t go along with it. I remained silent, didn’t want to open my mouth, scared of what would come out, of what I had to say, of all the pent-up pain inside me, the sadness and the loneliness flooding me and threatening to overtake everything. Again. How did this happen so intensely? And there I was − thinking that things were getting better.

I felt my eyes starting to well up with tears. Stop, stop it right now! Traitors! Liars! These tears aren’t mine. Stoppp! I don’t want this! But I couldn’t stop them, and I suddenly felt an adventurous one running down my cheek.

I lifted the pillow that was next to me and hid my face. I didn’t want her to see me crying. She doesn’t know me yet, so what right do I even have to cry in front of her?

She handed me a tissue. I heard her doing it, and could see a little bit from behind the pillow, but I didn’t want to take it, didn’t want her to see me. I wanted to be as small as Alice in Wonderland, to slowly disappear through the floor. Like the characters from that old song who move under the floor tiles and settle there.

It felt like an eternity. An eternity of silence and tears and praying to disappear, but to no avail.

I suddenly felt myself wiping away my tears and getting up. How did I even have the strength to stand up? “I’m leaving,” I mumbled.

“No, Dani. Please don’t leave. Stay for a bit longer. We’ll be in this together.”

I remained standing, and she stood up too. She took a step towards me.

“Please,” she said and I could feel her hand on me, and I could see us from the side, too. I sat back down again.

“Do you want to say something about what you’re experiencing?”

I shook my head.

“Do you not want to tell me? Or maybe you’re not sure,” she suggested. That helped me.

“I’m not totally sure. Not really.”

“We can try to understand a bit more together,” she offered. “Can you describe what’s happening with you? What you’re feeling?”

“I don’t know. I’m exhausted and I feel despair.”

Silence.

“Tell me some more.”

“I haven’t slept all week.”

“Did you have nightmares?”

I nodded my head. “More than ever before. Really powerful and realistic ones, every night. I eventually stopped going to sleep. Just a bit during the day.” My crying subsided.

“Do you want to tell me about the nightmares?”

“No, I can’t. It’s too hard. I don’t want to get into it.”

“That’s fine. We’ll do it at your pace. You’re the one who chooses when and how it’ll happen, and what you’ll need from me during the process.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the one dictating the pace. I’m right here with you, but we can’t have you feeling that you’re supposed to talk about things in a certain way or at a certain pace. It’s important for me that you know this is all in your control.”

I suddenly realized that I was looking straight at her. That almost never happened, but it did this time. I was really there, trying to understand what she was saying.

“Dani, I think that you’ve gone through some difficult experiences in your life, traumatic experiences, and that your brain is trying to banish them, but the body and the soul remember, and they can’t be tricked. I think that’s what you’re experiencing right now.”

Tears again. My heart raced. Rotem sounded like she knew what she was talking about from experience. Not just experience, from deep down inside. Not just quoting articles about trauma that she’d read. That made me believe her and want to share things with her, but then she grew distant, and so did I. I left the room to a faraway place, and the two female figures on the armchairs suddenly seemed like strangers talking among themselves about things completely unrelated to me.

“Dani,” she cut through the thick air in the room. “How can I help you?”

“You can’t.”

“Okay. I understand that this may seem like a very big question, but still, let’s just try to think about this very moment. What could help you go out into the week feeling a little bit better?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. Really. It’s hopeless.”

“What do you say we set up another session for Thursday? Can you make it? I’d like to see you again this week. It may be that once a week isn’t enough right now.”

“Yeah. All right,” I heard myself answer her.

I walked on the edge of the sidewalk. Right on the curb, almost falling into the street. Like in some kids’ game, daring myself to see how long I could keep myself on the outermost part of the curb without losing my balance. Cars passed by. Lots of loud, confused cars slowing down next to me or honking. The drivers not understanding who this strange girl is who’ll soon fall smack into the traffic. And I kept at it, in a world of my own. A vacant, quiet world. Not thinking about anything.