Free Escaping the Darkness by Sarah Preston

know what trust actually was. But most of all I hated him for making me feel ashamed of who I was.
Sarah, used and abused.
Discarded,
Leftover,
Waste.
As the memories flooded uncontrollably back to the front of my mind, escaping out of the box I had tried to secure them in, the tears once more flowed copiously down my cheeks.
I couldn’t stop them. I cried for what seemed like hours, although it was in fact only ten minutes, and felt unable to prevent the overflow building like a river from within.Bess moved across the room, sitting on the floor in front of me, and held me tightly yet so softly, protecting me in her arms in the same way as a grandmother holds her first grandchild. Bess handed me a tissue, but one wasn’t enough. I needed three or four to mop up my tears.
And I felt so foolish, crying like an injured child that had fallen over and grazed her knees for the very first time in her life.
I knew deep down I was made of stronger stuff, but that day my strength had gone into hiding. It had deserted me just like the sun deserts a thunder-laden, stormy sky in the bleakest, coldest and deepest of winters. I tried hard to make logical sense of the words that had queued up regimentally in my head, each word waiting patiently in turn to be spoken. As I sat back, Bess moved back onto the settee, easing her arms quietly from around me, her comforting task completed for the moment.
‘I didn’t know what to do about what had happened,’ I told Bess. ‘Bill had told me not to tell anyone about the things he had done. He told me no one would believe me, and I believed him. Why wouldn’t I? He was an adult and I was a child. That’s why up until a few weeks ago, when I spoke to Dr Tranor, I had never spoken out about what I had been through.’
Bess spoke a few seconds later, making sense of what she had heard.
‘It’s normal behaviour, Sarah, for adults who abuse children to tell them not to tell. They still use their age and the fact that they are adults as a threat to children, knowingthat a child won’t speak out against an adult. I have seen this happen lots of times before. Sarah, the adult always uses this threat to silence the child and unfortunately it always works.’
I understood what Bess was telling me. Now that I was a grown up too, I realised that an adult would say these things and a child would have believed it, just as I had believed Bill all those years before. I was so frightened of telling anyone that I never spoke out. I was afraid that if I said anything, I would be taken away and locked up in a home where I wouldn’t be allowed to see my family.
Bess’s time with me had once more drawn to a close. It was over, for this week anyhow. I had six days rest before I had to dredge up the memories of my past life again. Suddenly six days weren’t long enough. I wanted more time.
I needed it.
Although I wanted help to put things into perspective, I still needed to take things at my pace. I wondered how slow I really wanted to go with all of this. I really had no idea, but strangely enough I remembered I just wanted the sessions to be over. At first I found myself thinking I wanted the memories to be recollections that belonged to someone else. That someone else could have been anyone, as long as it wasn’t me. I felt sick inside; the memories were in fact poisonous. I found myself wanting them to be the memories of someone who had never even existed – that was the only way they couldn’t hurt me.

Chapter Nine
I CANCELLED MY session with Bess the following week because it was half term, and I knew it would be hard trying to sort out the boys with a sitter so that Bess could call as usual. I knew that if I asked Maria she would willingly have said ‘yes’, but I didn’t want to have to explain what I was going to be doing. She would never have asked, but somehow I would have felt obliged to tell her the reason I wanted her to help me.
Cancelling Bess meant I would be able to spend this week with