Chapter 6

Laura's Story:

I stand in front of my mirror, staring wonderingly at me. I am as I've always been, if the image is to be believed. I'm still 5'5" tall; I have the same shoulder-length brunette hair, and green eyes. My complexion is still creamy smooth, though I'll be thirty years old this Fall. Those faint little freckles are still there across the bridge of my nose. When I take this dress off, I'll see the same 36C breasts I've had since Alyssa was born. The left one droops the tiniest bit... it's a tad lower on my chest than the right. Mark has always said he can't see it. Both of them were perfect to him. I wish they were but I know different. My hips sweep out from a narrow waist in a gentle arc. Mark used to love to sweep his hands down my sides and over the curvature of my hips and on down my thighs. He used to like to just watch me walk around. He said only a beautiful woman could glide over the floor, swaying the way I did. He doesn't say that anymore.

I don't know who I am these days. I look in my eyes in the mirror and try to see but they show me nothing. I cannot explain to Mark how much I hurt because I have caused him such deep pain. The shame of sleeping with another man is constantly on my mind; I can't shake it. If there were some way of explaining to my husband, my love, how I truly feel, I would do it. He won't listen to me though. I'm afraid I've hurt him too much.

We haven't talked much since that day when Mark walked out of the doctor's office--just briefly, and about things to do for, or with, Alyssa. I don't know what to say to him anyway. Doctor Jamison says I need to let my guilt slide away but I don't know how to do that. I am guilty... guilty of cheating on Mark, and Alyssa too. My God, the memories of what I said to him the last night I was with that Brian haunt me day and night. I can't sleep without hearing those awful words again. I don't deserve a man like Mark. He's right to have pushed me away the way he has.

I can't explain how those long months when I was seeing Brian seem so unreal to me. It was as if I had pillows for shoes--the ground didn't feel solid under my feet, except that... at the same time, in my head, I saw me walking down the edge of an endless razor blade. It was like if I made the slightest misstep, I would cut my feet to ribbons... and I would fall... and then I would die. That was how I saw my life.

How do I explain the fog that filled my mind for so long? I couldn't think. I couldn't reason. When Mark talked to me, all I heard were incomprehensible sounds that were lost in the screeching noises already filling me. I wanted to hear him but I could not.

It's so very hard to remember the things I did. I try; I need to comprehend them so I can get better but there's nothing to hold on to. Everything that went on in those days... in the months; they feel like they happened to someone else... except I was there... watching me do them. Doctor Jamison nods when I say these things. She says she understands what I talk about, but she can't really. No one can. Sometimes, it's like I will explode and all the pieces of me will fly apart to lay scattered on the ground. I don't know where all this will end. I think I will end some day and then things will be peaceful again.

It's been three months now... three months since Mark and I talked to Doctor Jamison in her office. I'm better now. I'm not afraid anymore when Doctor Jamison wants to put me into what she calls a light trance. She can do that very quickly now. She doesn't snap her fingers or anything like that stuff you see on stage, but I can focus so much better now and she can ask anything she wants. I'm not embarrassed by anything she might dredge up anymore. She's found so much and later, when she brings me out of it, she makes me discuss whatever she talks with me about when I'm under.

Sometimes, when I just talk about it outside of deep relaxation, it goes away like it never was actually there to begin with. I don't understand how that can be, but Doctor Jamison says not to worry about it; it's just my mind dealing with whatever it was and resolving it. She says that's why she brings those issues up. It's so I can consciously face them and put them away like clothes I no longer want to wear... clothing I don't need any longer.

It does feel good to set them aside. I feel fresh and clean again... but the hurt always closes back in when I think about my little girl and my husband. "Baby steps," Doctor Jamison tells me. Big problems don't get solved easily, she says. It takes time and lots of work.

There are times Doctor Jamison has to help me deal with a problem in a different way. Like with my father and mother... Doctor Jamison talked them into coming down here from Albany for a week. It took all I had to face my father and tell him how bad he made me feel when I saw him come out of Aunt Ruth's room with his shirt outside his pants and stuff. I told him that when I saw Aunt Ruth in that black camisole, kissing and hugging him... I told him I wanted to hurt him when I saw that. Didn't he know it was wrong? I asked him why--but I really was screaming at him. I made my father cry. I never saw him cry before.

I yelled at my mother too. Why did she let him do it? Didn't she ever think how horrible it made me feel, knowing my mother was a cuckquean but not able to do anything about it. Why didn't she do something?

I didn't really realize how old my Dad and Mom were getting to be until I watched them cry in front of me. I couldn't take it. I kneeled down between their chairs and wrapped my arms around both of them. I just wanted them to love me and to love each other. We cried together and then Doctor Jamison talked quietly with all three of us for a long time. Mom, Dad, and I talked until we were all exhausted.

Mom told me how she found out early on she just had no sex drive at all. She told me she just couldn't get past the indignity of the sex act, the total exposure of one's self, the sweat and messiness. She said when she had me was one of the few times she got beyond all that and made wonderful love to Daddy. She said she was sorry but there'd been nothing she could do about it.

She'd been the one to suggest my Daddy go elsewhere. Her sister had been widowed the year before, and was a lonely woman. It had seemed like the ideal fit; her sister had always had a lively libido and was suffering without her man. Daddy was a healthy male and effectively had no woman. Mama told me everyone had been very careful at first but it was hard to make sure of where I was all the time. She was so sorry I had found out.

Daddy was too. He got down on his knees and held me while he begged me to forgive him. I told him I did, and it was the truth. It wasn't a huge brick wall I was running headfirst into anymore.

Doctor Jamison talked to Mom and Dad a few hours a day for the rest of that week. When they left to go home, they both looked a lot happier than I've seen them in too many years. Mom was hanging on Dad like she was a newlywed--like I used to look when Mark and I walked together.

I'm stronger now. It's been almost six months since Doctor Jamison first put me under hypnosis. I see things so much clearer. There are so many things that I did, said, and felt which I now see were so incredibly stupid. I can't imagine how I let myself get into those situations, for one thing. Why in the world I let myself get talked into going out drinking with those girls... I just don't know.

That was the start of it, I think. Doctor Jamison gave me a list of books to read and it was a revelation to me. Alcohol takes a woman and turns her inside out. Like one of them says, it's the most effective date rape drug in the world. It deadens the thinking processes and lowers inhibitions to the point of non-existence. Heavy drinking is such a self-destructive thing to do too. It makes the body react hard in order to throw off the poisons and it alters the body's chemistry.

Doctor Jamison has helped me figure out I was drinking hard so I could make myself numb and not have to deal with the things I was feeling. It didn't work. It only made me more vulnerable to Brian. It made it easy for him to get me to sleep with him even though I really didn't like him. I knew he was one of those men who think every woman is a "score," and who feel nothing for the woman as a human being. I knew he was a scummy thing to begin with and I knew it every time I let him do things to me.

Doctor Jamison and I think that I was degrading myself to bring myself down to where I figured I would be equal with my Mom and Dad and Aunt Ruth. They were the all of my life for so long. I guess something inside me was saying they were the best I could be and so I tried to be them. It wasn't working; I knew better from being around my dear husband and daughter. That was why it was tearing me up. It was hard breaking that conditioning but I'm here finally.

We also found out that a part of me thought Alyssa was a rival for Mark's affection. That was stupid but it made me feel resentful whenever she and Mark were around me. Doctor Jamison, and a specialist she called in, say it appears to have started when Alyssa was born... well, a little after. Many people call it postpartum depression... which is really just a depression that happens right after childbirth. I don't know why all that emphasis is put on it because it's not fair. Anyway, I never got close to any postpartum psychosis, thank goodness. There was never a moment when I wanted to hurt myself or my baby.

What did happen was that I was just so tired, exhausted all the time, but I couldn't sleep either. And I was so moody all the time. I thought Mark didn't love me anymore but I didn't know why I felt that way. He never did stop holding me and telling me how much he loved me. But it was like I was so remote from him and everybody else too. It didn't help that I had all those things in my head about Mom and Dad either. I was a mess.