Page 1 of Blinded By Hate
Prologue
Jaclyn
Present
No one told me that therapy would take more than five years to recover a damaged heart. At the same time, my heart was never just damaged.
It was ripped in half and broken down to the tiniest piece you could imagine.
There is only one reason I didn’t just end it all after that night.
“How’s your heart feeling today, Jaclyn?” Patience, my therapist asks.
I force a small smile on my face and try to relax in the leather chair.
I’ve been seeing Patience for almost three years now. After the first year I moved to New York, I spent a good year rotating through different therapists until I found Patience. She has been super patient with me, pun not intended. Sometimes her advice isn’t why I come, sometimes I just want to cry it all out with no one to watch or judge.
It’s hard to cry in front of Junior when I’m always with him.
And crying on the subway home is definitely something I will never do because that’s just pathetic and embarrassing.
“It’s the same as always. It’s healed.”
“Are you still getting nightmares?” A guy in a black hood pops up in my mind and I can’t help but wince. Patience notices and she nods like she always does whenever she mentions him. “Time heals wounds, Jaclyn. It’s only been about five years.”
“I’m just done feeling like this,” I say, trying hard to not let a tear slip from my eye. “Every time I look in the mirror naked, I feel so disgusting and worthless. I feel empty.”
“But then you look at Junior and what happens?”
When she mentions Junior, I look at him on the floor. He’s laying down and watching his favorite movie, The Lion King. That little boy is the only reason I’m alive and am still breathing.
If I didn’t have him, I probably would have been six feet under.
“I feel like suddenly I’m filled with life again. Like there’s actually something living in here,” I say while touching my chest.
Patience smiles at me, it’s not a happy smile, it’s a sad one.
She knows all the gory details of that tragic night. She, my mom, my uncle, and Brandon are the only people who know.
I remember seeing my mom and I just broke down in her arms, wishing for it all to go away. She cried with me after I told her the details. She made me move back in with her for a good two years and then I moved out to New York when I got offered a journalist position. She always flies out to New York to visit and check up on me. She also calls every day to make sure I’m doing good and remaining healthy. She also loves talking to Junior as well.
We did have a big argument before I left for New York because she thought I wasn’t ready. But I still moved because I just needed my own space and to be alone with Junior.
“Like I said, time heals wounds. You have a huge wound, Jaclyn, and you sitting here and talking to me does help. You’ve grown a lot since you started seeing me. Each day is one step closer to finally moving on.”
“I just wish it wouldn’t take so long and that I could stop thinking about him and that night. I want the nightmares to go away. I have to sometimes sleep with Junior for those nightmares to go away and when they don’t, I scare him sometimes.”
“What happens when you scare him?”
A tear finally falls because I hate scaring Junior. He looks at me like he is scared of me and then he will run down the hall to Brandon’s apartment to get him to wake me up.
I wake up all sweaty and out of breath and I end up crying in Brandon’s arms before grabbing Junior and holding onto him.
“He cries and then tries to wake me up but sometimes I don’t wake up. Sometimes he would have to go to Brandon’s apartment to get him to wake me up. I try not to sleep with Junior much because of that, because I don’t want to scare him,” I explain before wiping the tears away from my eyes so that Junior doesn’t notice.
He’s too focused on his movie though.
“How are you doing with your eating?”