Travelling

She thought how strange it was to be sitting in an office with her eyes closed, thinking about something that happened twenty years ago. And then to not just think about it, but really dive into it, and imagine herself back into that moment, or succession of moments, that have never left her. To watch and listen as the self she was then, and the self her father was then, spoke to each other. They weren’t speaking, they were shouting, their mouths were making ugly shapes, their words hurt, their words flung sharp stones and ragged glass.

I need to leave this poisonous house.

You’ll end up in the gutter.

The psychologist takes her through these moments again, she is there with her, asking her to reimagine them. What would you have liked your father to say to you? What would you have said to him? How would you have liked him to respond? She didn’t think she’d be able to create this dialogue, and was surprised when she stumbled out a few words, then those words became stronger. Then she was there, her present self, with her younger self and her father; she was there, and she was talking to her younger self. What would she say to you now? What would your younger self ask you? What would you say to her?

She marvelled at the incongruous contrast of that inner reimagined dialogue, that time travel, created in that cocoon of healing and restitution, with the bustle of the shopping centre crowds, the random conversations, the smells of anonymous meat and fat, the scratched tiles. Babies in strollers. Pierced eyebrows. People who knew nothing of where she had just been.