Twenty-Four
July 17, Friday
Emory
I was only doing this because I wanted to be better for Enoch. I didn’t want to have another episode. I didn’t want him to see that side of me.
That’s what I told myself as I drove to my appointment with my therapist. What I told myself as I fidgeted with the drawstring on my sweatshirt and the silence taunted me to open my mouth. What I told myself when she asked me what it was I wanted to talk about today.
“Emory?” Sarah called when I didn’t respond to her question from several minutes ago.
“I…Is it normal to have, like, sleepwalking episodes where you can’t tell what’s reality and what’s a dream?”
Sarah’s brow furrowed and she shifted in her chair. “Can you describe these episodes?”
“Um, well, it’s usually that I wake up from a dream but I’m not really awake. And I think I’m somewhere else and I can’t get a grip on reality.”
Sarah hummed in thought, nodding her head.
“And are these dreams good dreams or bad dreams?”
“Bad. Definitely bad.”
“And do you remember them when you wake up?”
“Sometimes, but not always.”
“And how often does this happen?”
“The bad dreams, those happen all the time,” I explained. “But the whole sleepwalking thing, that’s more recent. I mean, it’s happened in the past before, but it hasn’t in a long time.”
Sarah tucked a strand of her hair that had fallen from her updo behind her ear and nodded.
“So, these bad dreams or nightmares, are they about things that have actually happened?”
“Yeah. But not necessarily a memory. I mean, there are aspects of the dream that are true to past events, but it’s not like an exact replica of events. And I don’t always remember them, or I only remember bits and pieces.”
“Okay. And when you wake up, you feel like you’re sleepwalking? What do you do exactly?”
I cleared my throat, cracking my knuckles to avoid digging my nails into my skin. It wouldn’t look very good if I self-harmed in front of my therapist.
“It’s only happened a couple of times. This time, I was at my boyfriend’s house,” I nearly smiled just saying that word, but fought the urge.
“Your boyfriend?” Sarah’s brow raised, a smile on her lips. “That would be Enoch?”
I bit my lip, trying not to smile like a maniac. I nodded.
“Okay. Sorry. Go on.”
I blew out a breath. “Right. I was sleeping and I woke up. I thought I was somewhere else, like, back in Texas at, um,” I paused, rubbing my hand across my forehead. I tucked my hair back behind my ear. “Well, back in Texas. And I concocted this whole scenario in my head because I got ‘triggered’,” I cringed at the word and rolled my eyes to myself.
She narrowed her eyes, and I groaned. “Is that another off-limits word?”
Sarah chuckled with a head nod. “Tell me what that means. What does being ‘triggered’ mean?”
I swallowed, trying to come up with the words that didn’t contain any clinical language. Things like anxiety, anxious, worried…she didn’t like them. Said they were too abstract.
“It’s like…like I’m scared. Like…like terrified. My heart races, I start sweating, I feel like I can’t breathe. Like this dread in my stomach that makes me feel like I’m going to puke and this feeling like…like something absolutely horrible is about to happen.”
