Unscripted love

33. In My Skin

Can

I listen carefully as Demet opens up to me. When I asked her straight in the eyes to tell me about herself, about this wound that prevents her from moving forward, I wanted to know what could have made her so distrustful, an old trauma? I was far from imagining her confession...

At first completely surprised, she finally took my hand and led me into her room.

Sitting together on her bed, she didn't stop talking to me.

The somewhat forced marriage of her parents when her mother got pregnant, the birth of her brother and her sister, the family life that was not to her father's liking and the change when her mother got pregnant with her, the accident.

I see her hot tears rolling down her cheeks as she tells me about her happy childhood but riddled with the fear of that threatening father.

I squeeze her hand tighter and caress her palm. She continues, telling me what her brother and sister told her...that he didn't want a third child, that he started staying out all night, that he squandered all the household money when he started drinking.

One day, on the eve of her sixth birthday, he started yelling at her that it was her fault that everything was going wrong and he raised his hand at her. Her mother got scared and at the first opportunity she ran away with her three children, filed for divorce and moved to Istanbul.

Their followed years of hardship, odd jobs, squalid flats but an iron will. She tells me how they were united as they still are and how their mother, a fighter, gave them a taste for work and perseverance.

Demet finally tells me that she had completely repressed a part of this story, traumatized by her father, and that it was thanks to therapy and hypnosis that she was able to free herself from her nightmares and face her past in order to accept it.

When she finally finishes, I can feel that she is exhausted, drained.

"You know I've never told anyone outside my family about this..."

I can see the fear in her eyes behind her confession.

"I'm glad you told me, Dem..."

"I thought I was done with it but obviously I'm not..."

I caress her cheek, her hair. I offer her to sleep and leave her for a moment to bring her a glass of water. When I return, she has washed her face and is wearing a long night-shirt. She drinks her drink and looks at me, worried.

"Stay close to me Can, please..."

"Don't worry, I won't move."

At that moment, I notice her wounds on the palms of her hands and her knees covered with dried blood.

"We'll clean it up...are you in pain?"

She shakes her head negatively.

"Do you have a pharmacy?"

"In the cupboard in the hallway, but you don't need to worry about that..."

"Stop acting like a child, don't move, I'll be back..."

A few minutes later, my task done, we fall back into silence. Not a heavy silence, no, the silence of exhaustion, the silence when everything has been said but it has to be digested to move on...

Sitting against the headboard, I continue to gently stroke her hair, watching her calm down and slowly slip into sleep. Her face relaxes, her mouth remains slightly ajar and her breathing becomes regular. I can't count the number of times I've stayed and watched her fall asleep. I'm happy to be there and yet completely disturbed by her confession.