We cannot Say that We didn't See

This year, I had a conversation with my mother that brought back a striking, traumatic event from my childhood. I don’t know why she chose to talk to me about it at that exact moment, but I know that in the days that followed, I had this feeling of a gaping hole inside me. I kept going back to that scene. I already knew about it, but it was as if being reminded of it had broken something in me. I think seeing it as a child and being reminded of it as an adult made me realize things that maybe should have stayed buried. With that memory, I started remembering more things from my childhood in the projects, from what I had seen. Well, the horrors I had seen. I started seeing a dietitian and my primary care doctor, because I had constant stomach pain. They say the stomach is the brain and the heart of the body; it feels things. A nutritionist advised me to see a therapist before sending me for a battery of tests. I was a bit skeptical, but during the first call, I started explaining everything I had on my heart, everything I had lived through. I ended that call in tears. The more he helped me, the more I cried, because I needed to let out what I felt but had kept silent. It felt good to talk about it, but at the same time, it was a painful exercise to remember all of it and make peace with it. So I started sleeping badly, stewing in anger. From one session a month, I went to two a week. I thought the more I talked about it, the better I’d feel, and it was true, but I had to stop on my own, because I had already said everything. With my therapist, I was trying to understand the destructive ways other people behaved toward me. I thought about certain acts of violence, and about the fact that I still kept these people in my life. My therapist wanted to put me on antidepressants, but I refused. And then one day, one migraine too many. I dug through that medicine cabinet and came across that box. I took two at once and slept for at least fourteen hours straight.