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Before I Let You In -1-
Where would you like to start?

Hmm.

Is something funny?

That’s what I always used to say to my patients. It gives them a sense of control over the session. Except we both know I’m not in control here, don’t we?

Is it important for you to believe that?

I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to put me at ease so I open up and confess my darkest fears and then you can tell them I’m crazy. I feel crazy. You can write that down.

Why don’t you start at the beginning, Karen? When you first met Jessica Hamilton.

That’s not the beginning. It’s where all this started, I suppose, but it’s not really the beginning. It started way before all that, before I met Bea and Eleanor, Michael. It started with what happened when I was four years old.

Would you like to talk about that? What happened to you when you were a child?

No. I don’t want to talk about that, and they don’t want to hear about it. They want to know about how she died.

Go on.

You can’t fix me.

Pardon?

Those were some of the first words Jessica Hamilton ever said to me, the words I still hear on a loop in my mind. I remember thinking she was wrong, I fixed people all the time; it was my job. What I didn’t realize then was that she never wanted to be fixed in the first place; that was never her intention. I didn’t know it yet, but she was there to fix me.