Together

51. Mine

My emotion are naked, they're taking me out of my mind
Right now I'm shameless
Screaming my lungs out for ya
Not afraid to face it
I need you more than I want to
Need you more than I want to
-Camila Cabello

Talking about trauma is not easy. It's why JJ preferred to avoid it most of his life. Who wouldn't? Why would anyone want to talk about something that felt so embarrassing and shameful. It didn't exactly make you feel good to believe that your dad was hitting you because you fucked up or that your mom left you behind because again, you fucked up. So, obviously openly admitting it was going to be challenging.

And yet, JJ sat in Dani's oversized chair while she asked him questions about it week after week. It was hard at first. She eased him into it. She had him just say what happened first. Just the story. The first time he could remember it happening and then it went to the worst time he could remember and then the last time. He wished they were all the same, but they weren't.

After that she started to ask him the old classic, how did it make him feel? He scoffed at the question. Seriously? How did she think?

"No, no," Dani corrected softly. "How does it feel to talk about it?"

Saying out loud what happened was weird as fuck. He was so used to keeping it a secret that actually hearing it out loud almost made it feel unreal. Like, fuck, did that really happen? Are we sure he wasn't just making it up in his head?

Dani normalized those feelings. When you pretend something isn't happening for so long it does feel unreal. Not to mention your brain really wishes it wasn't happening and, especially in young children, will go to great lengths to block a lot of those memories.

It's why it was so hard those first couple weeks, especially right after sessions. Dani explained that trauma treatment felt bad before it felt good. As he started to talk about what he could remember suddenly more shit that he had pushed away started to surface. Like opening pandora's fucking box.

But Dani knew that was a possibility when they started. Warned him even. So, they were prepared. Kie and Shoupe checked in, he did his breathing exercises and visualizations, and Dani made sure he had appointments every week so they could keep going.

Then she started having him talk about his thoughts.

"What does that memory say about you?" she asked, after he had gone through retelling what happened the last time it happened. The night of hot tub break down.

Dani explained that trauma tells us things about ourselves. Almost always negative and untrue. It hurt to admit but JJ blamed himself for it. For all of it. Thoughts like it was his fault, he was a terrible son, he was a piece of shit, and pushed his mother away we're the main ones.

Turning those thoughts around was a process and took the longest. Dani was gentle but challenged his thinking constantly. She asked questions like,

"What if it happened to John B? Would you say he deserved it?"

"Fuck no," JJ spit back immediately.

"How come?" she'd asked, curiously.

"Because he's just a kid."

"Okay," Dani would remark. "How come it isn't the same for you? Weren't you a kid?"

A lot of the questions went like that. Poking holes in his arguments for blaming himself. Making him look at things differently. Once she asked him if an eight-year-old was physically capable of fighting back a two-hundred-pound man. It was strange how obvious the answers were but that he believed the opposite for so long.