Beautiful things - jaylor story (peace book 4)

therapy and mortifying little sisters

** monday January 21st, 2036**

-taylors Pov- 

We drop kenzie and Ellie off at school before we head to the therapist's office. Aurora isn't happy about it but that was the condition for her to come home on Saturday. We don't kid around with safety in our house, and now she doesn't get an option to go to therapy or not anymore. Clearly the approach we were doing with trying to follow her lead and give her time wasn't working. So it's back to having therapy as a non-negotiable. 

"Mom, I don't like this. I'm going cause you're not giving me a choice, but I don't want to do this" she says and cross her arms as we walk into the office. "i'm well aware you don't want to do this. But after Saturday we aren't giving you a choice anymore. What you do get to choose is if you're going in alone or if you want me to come with you" I ask her, and she says she wants me to come with her. 

We sit down on annas couch, but aurora is grumpy and not even trying to hide it. "so aurora, I talked with the psychiatrist at the hospital, and she said something happened on Saturday. Could you maybe tell me in your own words?" anna asks aurora. 

"it's no big deal" she says and cross her arms. "It is a big deal if you tried to kill yourself" anna says and aurora rolls her eyes and tuck her legs close to her chest. "You don't know anything about me or what happened. If you were me, you would want to die too. So yeah, its' no big deal" she says nonchalant. 

"Maybe if you tell me a bit about what happened I might understand more than you think" anna suggests. Aurora is just getting angry over all of this "if you were sexually abused you wouldn't sit here and talk to a stranger about it. And if you haven't been you don't know what it's like. You don't understand, you can't understand. That would be lying. No one understands" 

I'm debating if I should say something or not "anna might not understand. But you know that I do" I tell her and brush her hair out of her face, maybe she has forgotten that. The look she has when she looks up at me is the look of a girl that's lost. So as she starts to cry, I wrap her in my arms and lift her into my lap. "I understand aurora. I know I'm not you, so I don't know exactly what It was like for you. But I do know what it's like when someone does something to your body that you don't want to happen" 

"Mommy I don't want to remember" she whimpers, and I take a deep breath "I know you don't. But hurting yourself isn't going to take the memories away. We need to find other ways for you to deal with this that isn't hurting yourself" 

I wish I could take this pain away from her, so she doesn't need to face it, but I can't. I'm like that with all my girls, I want them to not have to deal with any sort of pain, but that's not how life works. But this is a kind of pain I don't wish on any child, its wrong and I can't believe this happened to her. 

Eventually her sobs slow down, and she is finally opening up about what happened but stays tucked into my arms in my lap. It's heartbreaking to hear her talk about it but I can't let myself react because I don't want her to filter herself just because I find it hard. This isn't about what's comfortable for me, I need her to feel like she can talk about what happened and I will listen to whatever she has to say. There is no topic with any of the girls that's off limits. They can always talk about anything, good or bad. 

"so that's why I don't want to remember" she whimpers as she finishes speaking and sink further into my arms. "That sounds like it was hard aurora. How do you feel about it now. And do you think there is something that would help you cope other than hurting yourself?" anna asks. 

"It makes me anxious to talk about, I don't want to talk about that stuff. But it helps to not be too much alone. And it helps to do normal stuff like school and gymnastics. I want to feel normal even though I don't feel normal" she says and is clearly exhausted.