Content Warning: This piece contains references to childhood sexual abuse, trauma, and dissociation.
As a therapist,
I am not here to save my clients.
I am not here to help them.
I am here to witness.
To hold space.
To let them put the pieces together and speak their truth.
This is one of their stories.
———
I don’t even remember how it started—what we were talking about before it veered, swerved, turned inward like some goddamn auto-psychoanalytic ambush. One minute we were on something innocuous, or maybe not so innocuous—my tendency to say yes when I mean no, to allow people to treat me like some interchangeable, dispensable utility. A body. A function. No resistance. No voice.
And then the question. Or was it me? I honestly don’t know. Did she ask if I’d been sexually abused as a child, or did I bring it up preemptively? I can’t tell anymore. What I remember is the hesitation. The possibility. That maybe it had happened. That maybe the not-knowing was its own kind of knowing.
Then the pieces started falling into place. Not neatly, not cleanly—like debris after an explosion. A revulsion toward male sexuality so visceral I could practically smell it in the room. A total rejection of the sexual act, experienced again and again as a kind of punishment I’d been sentenced to without trial. I never wanted it. I never enjoyed it. I endured it. Like a dental procedure. Without anesthesia.
And women—yes, some kind of attraction there. Not erotic, not exactly, but at least not repellent. Not intrusive. Not looming. There was comfort there, safety, even desire, maybe. Or the idea of desire.
And the bathrobes—this is the absurd part, the tiny absurd detail that somehow contains everything. I can’t stand bathrobes. Men in bathrobes. Myself in a bathrobe. Domestic softness turned threatening. As if softness itself could be weaponized.
There’s this image I have—being in bed, under the covers, with a man beside me. It feels like a cell. Not a room. Not intimacy. Captivity. A man becomes a wall. The air thickens.
After sex—and it’s always after sex—I have to get up. I have to dress. I have to leave the bed, reclaim something. What? My skin? My spine? Some part of myself that retreated during the act and now has to be coaxed back out.
And this idea I carry, like a hidden contract: if a man loves me, he wants sex. If he does something kind, it’s a prelude. If he gives, he expects. Love, affection, generosity—none of it free. There is always a price. And the price is always the same.
My father. I can’t even begin. The disgust isn’t intellectual. It’s biological. Subcutaneous.
And my mother—ah, my mother. She didn’t do anything. That’s the tragedy. That’s the crime. She knew. And she did nothing. She let the silence grow mold.
I drank. Of course I drank. I dated married men. Of course I did. I was the other woman. The shadow. The secret. The unnamed. The one left off the invitation list, the one who slips out the back door when the real life comes home.
And it all makes sense. That’s the worst part. It’s not random. It’s not chaos. It’s a system. A system built from pain and shame and learned obedience. It functions. It works. Until you try to leave it—and then it turns on you."
And still, I stayed. Because leaving felt like another violation. Because sometimes the cage is safer than the open air.
————-
Being a therapist is not about solving or saving.
It’s about witnessing. Listening.
Finding the edges of the story and slowly, gently, putting the pieces together with the client.
Sometimes, you already see the whole puzzle—long before your client can even name what they’re holding.
And so, the work asks for patience.
Sometimes all it takes is a word.
A look.
A gesture.
The right kind of silence.
You have to be ready to hear the worst.
And more than that, you have to allow it to be spoken.
To make space for what was once unspeakable.
That’s when healing begins—not with answers, but with the courage to speak the truth, and the certainty that someone will stay to hear it.