12

LINDA Α.: WOUNDED PASSION

UNDER ARREST

LATER SHE WOULD remember that Jennifer Lopez’s “If You Had My Love” was playing on her car radio on that cold, clear winter night when she went to pick up Julie, her seven-year-old daughter, at a friend’s house. The brilliantly sunny day after a heavy snow had left the narrow, hilly road slick with ice and the side of the road piled high with snowy embankments starting to freeze over.

Linda noticed that a state trooper had been following her fairly closely in his cruiser for a mile or so, but his flashing lights weren’t on, so she thought nothing of it. Her eyes were fixed on a slippery patch of glare ice glinting ahead of her. She tried to navigate it carefully, but the wheels of her red Saturn spun around and made her veer to the right into an embankment. Now the trooper was parked right behind her, and his flashing lights were on, casting rotating red and blue shadows on her dashboard. Through her rear-view mirror, she watched him get out of his cruiser and walk over to her car.

“Evening, ma’am, where’re you headed?” the officer asked.

He seemed pleasant enough, although Linda sensed a certain cockiness about him. Even with his wide-brimmed hat partially obscuring his face, he looked young, no more than twenty-five, she guessed.

“I’m going to pick up my daughter about five minutes from here,” Linda said.

“Have you had any alcohol tonight?”

The question caught Linda off guard. She’d never been drunk in her life. “Yes, I had a glass of wine with dinner,” she replied. “That was about an hour ago.”

“Let me see your license and registration.”

“Sure.” Linda was beginning to feel worried. Had she done anything wrong? She fished through her handbag for her wallet, pulled out her license and registration, and handed them to him.

The trooper shone a flashlight on her license photo card and saw the name Linda Alvarez under the picture of the pretty thirty-three-year-old woman with the big, luminous brown eyes; creamy olive skin; blondish brown hair; and full, sensuous lips.

“I didn’t know that there were any spies living around here,” the trooper snickered as he read Linda’s name.

Linda bristled, but she kept her composure. In her work as a teacher of emotionally disturbed children she was used to kids’ calling each other names, but she didn’t expect that kind of racial epithet from a police officer. Still, she thought it best to ignore the slur rather than stir up trouble.

“Step out of the car,” the officer said brusquely. The veneer of politeness was gone.

Even before she was out of the car, the trooper asked Linda to recite the alphabet, starting with the letter G. It occurred to her that starting with G instead of A was supposed to rattle someone who was already disoriented from having too much to drink.

She recited the alphabet and got out of the car.

“Take your coat off,” the officer said.

Linda hesitated. She thought that was a strange request. Did he think she was carrying a concealed gun? Was he going to frisk her?

“Take it off,” the officer said testily.

She was wearing a heavy ankle-length suede coat with a sheepskin lining-warm and protective. Linda was loath to take off the coat in such cold weather, but she complied.

“Okay, now I want you to do a heel-to-toe,” the officer said.

“What’s that?”

The officer did a few steps, demonstrating how he wanted her to walk, alternating between the heel and toe of each foot.

“I’m cold,” Linda complained, shivering. “Could you please give me my coat back first?”

“Uh-uh,” the officer said, shaking his head. “Do the heel-to-toe.”

Linda took a few steps, but she realized that they would be going down a steep, slippery hill. “Could we do it up the hill?” she asked.

“Okay, turn around and do it.”

He watched while Linda took a couple of tentative, rocky heel-to-toe steps, struggling to keep her balance on the icy road.

Unexpectedly the trooper reached out and grabbed Linda by the arm.

“What are you doing?” Linda exclaimed shrilly. It terrified her to be alone with a strange man on a deserted road at night even if he was a police officer. First he made her take her coat off. Now he was grabbing her arm. What next?

“You’re under arrest,” the trooper told her. He took out a pair of handcuffs and pulled her along to the front of the cruiser.

Linda came unglued. Unstoppably a flood tide of rage, fear, and indignation surged through her and deluged her with uncontrollable panic. “Get your hands off me!” she screamed. “Let me go! Under arrest? What for?” Like a trapped animal, she tried to wrest herself free of the trooper and began crying hysterically.

The officer said nothing. Poker-faced, he grabbed Linda by the neck and pushed her facedown onto the hood of the cruiser. She felt something stab her in the neck and saw blood dripping onto the front of her sweater. She knew the officer was about to handcuff her behind her back.

“No! Stop it!” Linda screamed wildly. “Leave me alone! You can’t do this to me!” She lifted herself off the car and fell backward against the trooper.

“You’re resisting arrest!” he told her sharply and radioed for a backup.

Within minutes another officer was there. “Looks like you have your hands full,” he said when he saw the frenzied state Linda was in.

“We gotta put her down,” the first officer told him. Together the two men pushed Linda down onto the icy snow of the embankment. “Please don’t handcuff me,” Linda pleaded. “Don’t handcuff me. Please! If you have to handcuff me, do it in the front where I can see you, not the back.”

They ignored her pleas. Linda heard a metallic click and felt the handcuffs pressing rudely into her spine with a rigid finality.

The first trooper opened the door to the back seat of the cruiser, made Linda get in, and slammed the door shut. Linda began kicking the window repeatedly, trying to get out.

The officer opened the door. “If you don’t stop it,” he warned her, “I’m gonna Mace you!” He went to get her coat lying on the ground beside her car, carried the coat back, and threw it on top of her. Then he shut the door and got in the front seat to drive Linda to the police barracks with the second officer following them in his car.

Linda lay down on her side. She couldn’t stop screaming and crying. The utter helplessness of riding in this car alone with this man with her hands handcuffed behind her back reduced her to feeling like a terrified child. She began praying in Spanish as she used to when she was a little girl and her mother took her to a Latino church on Sundays in Philadelphia, where she grew up. She thought she had forgotten those prayers, but they came to her lips automatically.

When they got to the state police barracks, the trooper took her inside and took her to a room with a long table and some chairs.

“Can I make a phone call?” Linda asked. “I need to call Ted, my fiancé, and tell him where I am. My seven-year-old daughter is waiting for me at her friend’s house. She’ll be frightened if nobody comes for her.”

“You’re not going to get a call,” the officer told her. “We’re not going to let you get cute with anybody.”

“But I need to call my fiancé. Let him at least know I’m here,” Linda begged. “I’m entitled to a phone call.”

“Forget it,” the officer said stolidly.

Linda’s coat pockets had been emptied of their contents, and there were a few ballpoint pens lying on the table. The officer unlocked Linda’s handcuffs, picked up one of the pens, and told her to sign some papers.

The powerlessness she felt enraged Linda again. “I’m not going to do it!” she yelled. She grabbed one of the pens and began banging the table with it, hammering the table with the pen over and over again, like a four-year-old having a screaming temper tantrum, all the while yelling, “I’m not gonna do it; I’m not gonna do it! I’m not gonna do it until my fiancé knows where I am!”

Without another word the officer dragged Linda over to an iron ring bolted into the wall and attached her to it by one of her handcuffs, hanging her from it like a side of beef in a butcher shop. Then he sprayed Mace in her face.

The Mace stung her eyes viciously, and she could feel mucus dripping down the back of her throat. She crumpled against the wall, blinded and dazed. “Could I have some water, please?” she asked.

“What for?” the officer asked snidely. “You want to drown somebody with it?”

Another officer appeared on the scene. She couldn’t see him, but Linda heard him asking her whether she wanted some wet napkins to soothe the irritation in her eyes. He sounded kind.

“Yes, please,” she told him, and he kept handing her the napkins for her eyes.

Finally, the trooper who had arrested her asked, “What’s your fiancé’s phone number?”

Linda gave it to him, and he called Ted.

In less than an hour Ted arrived at the police barracks with Linda’s daughter, Julie. He’d gone to her friend’s house first and had to wake her up to take her with him. Ted asked for Linda and was told that she wasn’t there yet; that they were still in the process of transporting her.

When Linda heard Ted’s voice and realized that they weren’t allowing him to see her, she started screaming hysterically again. The trooper who had arrested her closed the door to the room.

“Let me go to her,” Ted said. “I know her. Once I’m there, she’ll be okay.”

“Let her calm down,” the trooper said.

When Ted was finally allowed into the room, he found Linda lying on the floor in a fetal position. “My God, what have they done to you?” he asked as he got down beside her and helped her to her feet. He confronted the trooper, eyes blazing, silently demanding an explanation.

The trooper regarded Ted closely, taking the measure of this man with the trim body of a marathon runner and Irish good looks-clean features, wavy auburn hair. He could tell that this was an intelligent guy, a nice guy maybe, but one who knew the score. “It’s a good thing we wear these,” the trooper said, pointing to his bulletproof vest. “She tried to stab me in the chest with that broken pen over there.”

Linda knew that wasn’t true. If she’d hurt the officer at all, it certainly hadn’t been intentional. But she wasn’t about to argue with him. All she wanted to do was to get out of that place as quickly as possible and leave this nightmare behind her.

“Why did you arrest her?” Ted asked.

“OUI-operating under the influence.”

“Did you do a Breathalyzer test?”

“No, she refused one,” the trooper said. “She was doing sixty-five miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone and swerving in and out until she plowed into an embankment. I was going westbound, and she was coming eastbound, and I clocked her with my radar gun. She resisted arrest and cursed me and used obscene language. She said plenty more in Spanish that I didn’t understand. And after we got her here, like I said, she assaulted me with the sharp edge of a broken pen.”

Lies, lies, lies, Linda thought angrily. He was building the case against her bigger than it was because he wanted to destroy her credibility if she ever reported that he’d called her a “spic.” But she had to admit that there were some parts of the incident that she couldn’t remember-she might have blanked out here and there.

“If you were going in one direction, and she was going in the other,” Ted began, “how were you able to make a turn, grab your radar gun, and-”

“Honey, let’s wait for my day in court,” Linda cut in, tugging at Ted’s sleeve. She’d had enough of tangling with this trooper for one night. “They towed my car, so I’m going home with you and Julie. Let’s leave, okay?”

When Linda walked out with Ted into the reception area, Julie was devastated by the way her mother looked-the swollen red eyes, the bloody neck, the hair matted from lying in the snow, the disheveled clothes.

“Did they hurt you, Mommy?” Julie asked, running to her mother.

Linda stooped down and hugged and kissed her. “No, it’s okay,” she said.

But it wasn’t.

“DON’T TOUCH ME”

“I felt so violated, so attacked, and so ashamed to have been arrested in that way,” Linda tells me when she comes in for her first visit, looking ultrafeminine and professional at the same time in a soft charcoal gray wool jersey dress and a leather belt with a decorative buckle accentuating her narrow waist. “For a week I was in shock,” she says. “I just limboed around, saying, ‘I can’t believe this happened.’ It felt like a really bad dream. And then it hit me that it did happen. And I am just so totally paranoid from this thing. All I do is think and think and think and think about that night and relive the moment. I live in fear of that officer coming after me and hurting me to keep me quiet. My panic attacks have gotten so bad that I think I might have to be hospitalized at some point. That’s why I’m here.”

“Have you ever had panic attacks like this before?” I ask.

“Oh, yes, I started having them when I was in my late teens,” Linda replies. “I became agoraphobic for a while after that and was afraid to leave the house. I’ve been in therapy on and off for the past five years.”

“Are you seeing anyone now?”

“No, it’s been about a year since I stopped therapy, but I’m still on medication for my anxiety.”

She shows me the pills she’s taking, and the dosage seems appropriate. “When you get these panic attacks,” I ask, “what exactly are you feeling?”

“I had one about four o’clock this morning that was so intense it woke me up from my sleep. It started with chest pains that went down my arm. My heart was beating fast. My hands were sweaty. My face was flushed, and I felt dizzy. I thought I was having a heart attack. My fiancé woke up and asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ We’ve been living together for six months, but we’ve known each other for two years and he’s very attuned to me. I almost felt like saying, ‘Ted, call an ambulance.’”

“But you didn’t?”

“No. I knew from experience that this would probably last only about twenty minutes. I asked Ted to use some guided imagery to put me back to sleep. We do a lot of sailing on his boat in the summer, so he started talking about sailing and being out in the calm ocean and the gentle rocking of the boat and feeling at peace. I closed my eyes, and eventually I felt a little better. But I’m afraid that’s not going to work anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I’m under too much stress. They suspended my driver’s license, and that means I have to drive without a license to go to work. I’m terrified of being stopped again. That officer charged me with assault and battery. I went to court the next day and got out on a twenty-five-dollar bail. They could throw me in jail if I get stopped this time. In retrospect I think, ‘Why did you have to overreact like that? Why couldn’t you have gone quietly, yada, yada, yada?’ But then I tell myself, ‘You can’t think about those things. It’s a done deal.’”

“When can you get your license back?”

“It’s been suspended for 120 days-they have a right to do that if you refuse a Breathalyzer test,” Linda tells me, “although I don’t remember refusing one. Ted took some pictures the night of the arrest, and the prosecutor was taken aback when my lawyer showed them to her. She agreed to meet with my lawyer in a couple of weeks to discuss the situation.”

“Ted sounds very supportive.”

“He is!” Linda says feelingly. “He’s one of the best men that I’ve had in my life. When I got cleaned up I realized that the cut on my neck came from one of the earrings Ted gave me for Valentine’s Day. I was wearing them that night, and this one was missing. It was a beautiful Florentine gold heart with a diamond in the middle. I felt it dig into my neck when the officer grabbed me and pushed me down on the hood of his cruiser. It must have fallen off some time after that. I started crying because that earring meant so much to me and I wanted it back.”

“I can understand why.”

“The next day we took my daughter with us and went to the embank-ment where they threw me down,” Linda continues. “Even though it was dark I knew the exact spot. My body print was still in the ice on top of the embankment. We kept looking for the earring, but we couldn’t find it. I gave up and said, ‘It’s not here. Maybe somebody walked by and found it.’ Ted said a little prayer for it to turn up. And as soon as he started praying, he found the earring. He said, ‘Oh, my God. Here it is!’ It was bent, but we got it fixed.”

“You were lucky.”

“Ted and I were supposed to get married this August when we’re both on vacation,” Linda says. She speaks glowingly of her fiancé. “Ted recently took a job as an administrator in the mental health system. He went from counseling to administration because he wants to provide a better lifestyle for me and Julie. He’s such a caring person. He cooks dinner and has it waiting for me on the nights when I come home late from work. And he keeps telling me how much he loves me and that I’m more beautiful now than when he first met me.” Linda bites her lip and seems on the verge of tears. “But I don’t know—I—I asked Ted to postpone the wedding for a year,” she stammers.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“I think that maybe we should take a little break from each other for a while. Ted gets very upset when I say that and starts to cry. It makes me feel awful.”

“Why do you think you need some time apart?”

“It’s hard for me to be intimate with him now,” Linda says in a low voice, looking away in embarrassment. “I just don’t want Ted to touch me,” she continues. “I get very angry when he touches me. He’s having a hard time because we’re not intimate, and I don’t know what to do.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“About a month,” Linda says tearfully. “It started right after the police incident. I guess I’m still raw around the edges. Ted can touch me, and I get angry. Or he can touch me, and I don’t feel it. I don’t know if I just shut down or what. I just don’t feel connected with him or to myself. I have a numb feeling inside of not desiring, not wanting to be close, not wanting to be touched.”

“Earlier in your relationship were there times when he touched you and you didn’t feel angry and you were responsive?”

“In the beginning it was fine,” Linda says. “But after the police incident, I started setting boundaries: ‘Please don’t touch my breasts in the middle of the night. Please don’t touch me in the morning when you wake up.’ I felt I had to control the situation. Now I think I’ve shut myself down completely. I don’t even give him a chance. I mean, Ted has his needs; and early in the morning the first thing he does is hug me, and I can feel his erection, and I-I just can’t stand it. Instead of feeling flattered I get very angry, filled with rage. I don’t say anything to him because I don’t want to hurt him.”

“So you detach yourself and don’t feel anything?”

“I try to work myself up and think of all the good things about this man, not connect him to anything else just because he has a penis. It doesn’t work.” Linda begins to cry softly, confused and torn apart by a deep contradiction within herself. “More and more I keep saying, ‘Oh, God, I have to move out and be on my own. But I’m fighting it. I don’t understand myself sometimes. I love Ted and want to make a life with him. It’s like—everything I’ve always dreamed of, but I just never imagined-I mean, I thought I could never get anybody like that. And I do have somebody like that. I have somebody who’s a good man and wants to be with me and doesn’t want anybody else and has a master’s degree and a wonderful job and wants to help me raise my child in a beautiful home and take me sailing and go to the finest restaurants and—and I’m pushing him away.”

I wonder whether this trouble with intimacy is a pattern with Linda or whether it’s peculiar to her relationship with Ted. “Have you ever had this trouble with men before?” I ask.

“I think I’ve always mistrusted men,” Linda says, “and at the same time I never expected much from them. My standards were very low. Before Ted, the men I became involved with were all needy people who depended on me to take care of them. I was drawn to men who were not very aggressive—not pushy with me, but not ambitious either. They all took advantage of me in one way or another and tore me down.”

“Was that what happened with your husband?”

“Rafael, my husband, was kind and gentle and patient with me, like Ted,” Linda answers, “but he used me. He was an artist who didn’t earn very much, and I had to support us on my salary. That would’ve been okay if he didn’t spend most of the money on drugs. He died in a motorcycle accident when Julie was only three.”

“How did you cope with that?”

“I just closed down and went into a shell,” Linda answers. “I don’t know what it is. It seems so surreal, this mechanism within me that clicks in and says, ‘You’ve had enough, and this is as far as you’re gonna go.’ It’s something that protects me.” Linda goes on in a tremulous voice, “Two years after my husband died I met Ted. And now I’m shutting down with him, and he hasn’t done anything to deserve it.” She looks at me searchingly. “Why? What’s wrong with me?”

It’s obvious to me that Linda’s protective mechanism of “shutting down” is a form of depersonalization related to posttraumatic stress. This dissociative symptom is the mechanism that “clicked in” when she couldn’t deal with her husbands death. Now she is experiencing it again in the wake of her unseemly arrest. The detachment from her fiancé and from herself when he touches her, the sense of emptiness inside, the surreal feeling of living inside a shell that she speaks of are all common descriptions of depersonalization.

Apparently the police officer’s treatment of Linda triggered emotional memories laden with rage and fear that, in turn, are being triggered irrationally by her fiancés loving advances. But what was it that caused her to react with such inordinate terror and rage when the trooper first grabbed her by the shoulder? Why did she become hysterical when he wanted to handcuff her behind her back? What made the ride in the cruiser alone with this man so terrifying that she regressed into reciting her childhood prayers? It seems to me that the arrest flipped her back into some malevolent, horrifying event in her youth. What was it?

“The police incident seems to be affecting your relationship with Ted,” I tell Linda, “and may have stirred up thoughts and feelings related to some past event.”

Linda nods understandingly.

“Can you see any connection between the rageful feelings you had toward the police officer and that you now have with Ted,” I ask her, “and something that happened to you earlier in your life?”

“Yes, I can,” Linda says quietly. “It happened when I was fourteen years old.”

AT KNIFE POINT

Linda’s mother was adamant. She was not going to allow her fourteen-year-old daughter to go visit her boyfriend, Miguel, at his house that night. “You just saw him last night,” Consuela said. “Why do you have to go see him again tonight?”

“I just wanna see him,” Linda said. Why couldn’t her mother trust her? This was just going to be a friendly visit. She was a good girl, a virgin, and she wasn’t going to do anything to get herself in trouble.

“Mama, it’s New Year’s Day,” Linda said, trying to be persuasive. “It’s a holiday. I know I was out with him last night, but I came home early, didn’t I? He’s not expecting me. I just want to surprise him and say, ‘Happy New Year.’”

“Talk to him on the phone,” Consuela said.

“Oh, Mama, it’s not the same thing,” Linda remonstrated. “It’s only seven o’clock. I’ll be home by nine.” She looked beseechingly at her mother. “Can’t I go?” she begged. “Please, Mama, please.”

But Consuela wouldn’t hear of it. She was a deeply religious woman who knew the trouble young girls Linda’s age could get into when they started going out with boys. No daughter of hers was going to get pregnant by some teenage boy and have to drop out of school in the ninth grade. Miguel was a decent boy, but he lived close to the projects. It was a dangerous neighborhood. She’d heard about the drug dealing going on there and the night shootings that rang out like the backfirings of cars.

“No, Linda, I don’t want you going to Miguel’s,” Consuela said firmly. “It’s not good to be in that neighborhood when it’s dark out. It’s not safe. I want you to stay home tonight.” She saw the crestfallen look on Linda’s face and relented. “Look, if you want to go out tonight, go see your friend Annina up the street. Just make sure you’re back by nine. Tomorrow is a school day.”

“Okay, I’ll go see Annina,” Linda said, grateful for the compromise. Anything to get out of the house. Ever since her parents got divorced when Linda was nine, religion had become her mother’s whole life. Linda missed her father so much. She was heartbroken when he remarried and moved away to teach music at a college in Miami. She’d be starting high school next year—at the school where he used to teach—and he wouldn’t be there. Linda’s mother was determined to raise her children right even without a father, but the home once overflowing with laughter and warmth and Latino music was now as solemn and cheerless as a rectory.

It was raw outside, bitter cold with the feel of oncoming snow. The wind whipped Linda’s face and sent discarded candy wrappers and cigarette butts scudding across the pavement. The red and green Christmas streamers strung between the light poles swayed in the wind, too. Linda started out toward Annina’s house, but midway up the street the thought occurred to her that no one would be the wiser if instead she went to Miguel’s, a couple of miles away As long as she was home in time, her mother would have no reason to call her at Annina’s. And just to be safe, as soon as she got to Miguel’s she would call Annina herself and tell her to cover for her in case her mother needed to reach her there.

Linda continued walking toward Annina’s house, but instead of going up the steps to her home she walked to the corner of the street and turned left toward the twelve-story projects looming up in the distance. She went down narrow streets crowded with row houses and entered a section that was beginning to show signs of deterioration. She passed an empty playground littered with rubble. On the corner there was an abandoned boarded-up factory.

Turning the corner, she passed an empty, run-down garage next to a small building with a cyclone fence around it. Then more blocks of row houses. The streets were deserted, and that was fine with Linda. She couldn’t wait to get to Miguel’s. Defying her mother gave her a tingly feeling of nervous excitement—it was something obedient, responsible Linda rarely did.

She rounded another corner and walked past the projects. Next came a lonely little stretch of ground, a vacant lot. Miguel’s house was only a few minutes away. Linda quickened her pace, her head down against the wind. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a lone car parked on the lot. It was a black car, and a man was standing next to it—a large African American man who looked to be in his forties. What was he doing there? Linda wondered. Was he waiting for someone? For her?

Linda could hear her heart begin to pound loudly against the wall of her chest. Don’t look at him, she told herself. Just keep going and you’ll be okay.

“Miss, do you have a match?” the man asked as she drew near him.

“No,” she said, and kept on walking.

Linda felt a sharp pain as the man’s fingers closed around her arm with an iron grip. She twisted around and froze when she saw the long, sharp knife in his other hand gleaming evilly at her.

“Unh-unh-” Linda tried to scream, but the sound died in her throat.

“Get in the car,” the man said, pushing her into the back seat. “I’m not gonna hurt you; I’m not gonna hurt you,” he kept telling her, trying to make her feel safe even as he brandished his knife. “All I want you to do is make a telephone call to my wife’s sister,” he said incredibly, “and all I’m doing is, I’m trying to find a telephone booth.”

But they never got to a telephone booth. The man drove and drove and drove. Linda lay down on her side in the back seat of the car, frozen with terror, her mind fixated on the knife that was never far from the man’s side.

Finally he drove down a street of row houses, and at the fourth house on the right-hand side—Linda was counting—he pulled into the drive- way and entered the garage. Standing behind her with the knife at her back, he led Linda up two flights of steps to the third floor of what she guessed was a duplex. They entered a small one-bedroom apartment, very clean, well-furnished, with homey accents showing a woman’s touch. The family photographs made it obvious that the man was married. His wife was probably out of town for the holidays, Linda surmised.

A telephone on a table in the living room caught Linda’s eye. She was trying to commit the number to memory, hoping she’d be able to report the man, but he told her to go into the bedroom and get undressed. He followed her into the bedroom, slammed the knife down on top of the dresser just to remind her, and left.

Linda was still dressed when the man returned. She was sitting on the bed, immobilized with fear. He walked over to her and pushed her down on the bed with his hand. Then he took her jeans off, pulled down her panties, and raped her. The pain was unbearable, unlike anything Linda had ever experienced in her young life, but she neither struggled nor cried out. She was in shock. This big, powerfully built man was relentlessly, ruthlessly thrusting himself inside her again and again like a promethean machine while she lay there, an automaton, numbly allowing it. All that was going through her mind was “God, please let me get out of this alive.”

When he was through, he left Linda alone to get dressed. Dazed, she washed herself off in the bathroom, put her clothes back on, and went out into the living room. The man told her he would drive her wherever she wanted to go.

In the car he tried to talk to her, but Linda pretended that she spoke only Spanish. If he knew she spoke English, she thought, he would have to kill her to prevent her from reporting him to the police. So many horrible things happened in the city that you heard about all the time, and she didn’t want to be one of those statistics.

“Just tell me where I can drive you to—at least a side street,” the man said.

Linda gave him the name of the street where Miguel lived and had him drop her off at the end of the block where no one would see her get out of the car.

“God bless you,” the man said as she left, and he handed her a ten-dollar bill.

You pig, how could you mention God’s name? Linda thought. She tore up the bill and threw the pieces into the gutter before she went to her boyfriend’s house to wish him a happy new year.

CONNECTIONS

“He stole my soul, but he let me live,” Linda says of her rapist when she has finished telling me her story, “and sometimes I wonder, ‘What’s worse?’”

“When you went to your boyfriend’s house, did you say anything about what happened?”

“Nothing,” Linda answers. “I stayed there a little while, and then he walked me home.”

“After you got home, did you tell your mother about it?”

“No. I felt that I deserved it, because I had defied my mother. I was supposed to be at a friend’s house, but I went to my boyfriend’s instead. My mom was very religious. She instilled in us that when you do bad things, bad things happen to you. The Devil gets you. I don’t believe in all that now, but that’s the way I was brought up. To this day I carry a sense of guilt—you know, if I’d gone to my friend’s house, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“So you didn’t tell anyone about the rape at all?”

“I would talk to people as though it happened to somebody else,” Linda says. “I’d say to my teenage friends, ‘You’re not gonna believe what happened to this girl I know.’ I’d make up a fictitious name, and then I’d tell them the whole story. And they’d gasp and say, ‘My God!’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah, she coulda got killed! He had a knife!’ I was too ashamed to admit that it happened to me,” Linda explains, “but talking about it in the third person helped a little. At least I got some vicarious sympathy.”

“When was the first time you spoke of it as something that happened to you?”

“About four years ago. I told my friend Nora because I just felt the need. Nora has a degree in psychology, and I felt safe talking about it with her. She was very supportive. She referred me to a women’s center where I did group therapy for about twelve weeks. It was a positive experience. After that I was able to talk to my mother about the rape, and she was understanding.”

“What about Ted? Have you talked to him about it?”

“I’ve been very open with Ted about it, more so than with anybody else. He’s been unbelievably supportive—very sensitive and very angry, too. He’s cried with me about it, and then he’ll say, ‘How could someone do that? How could the world be so ugly?’ Now I feel as if I’m kicking him in the butt. I share all this with him, and then I say, ‘Now keep away from me. Don’t touch me.’”

“How do you feel when you say, ‘Don’t touch me’?”

“Childish. Very childish. Not like a full-fledged woman.”

“What effect do you think the rape has had on you?”

“I think I’ve suffered depression ever since then, even though I couldn’t acknowledge it or voice it,” Linda answers. “I started having these black moods where everything seemed so dark and gray even though it was sunny outside. For the most part, though, I kept what happened under the rug and didn’t really think about it until I became an adult. Then I had a revelation like, ‘Wow! This was really a violation! This was a really awful thing that happened to you! You’ve never told anybody; you’ve never dealt with it; you’ve lived this lie!’ That’s when I told Nora.”

“And did your panic attacks and anxiety start after the rape?”

“Yes, in high school,” Linda replies. “I always felt that there wasn’t a hole big enough for me to crawl into. Sometimes I would go into the closet and hide, because the world seemed so big. It was really scary to me. I decided that I had to get out of Philadelphia and go to college somewhere else. I chose the Massachusetts area, because my uncle was getting his doctorate at Boston University and invited me to stay with him and his family while I went to school.”

Linda recalls how her fear of being attacked made college a nightmare for her: “It was horrible with all those other students all over the place. I’d be walking through the campus and see students—strangers—everywhere and think, ‘Oh, my God, how am I gonna do this? I can’t do this. I’ve gotta get home.’ And I just stuck it out, stuck it out, stuck it out. I wanted my degree, and I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to let this thing get the best of me.”

“When you got married, did the anxiety and panic attacks persist?”

“They got worse,” Linda says. “I would go grocery shopping and leave the grocery cart in the middle of a long aisle and have to go back later because I thought everybody was staring at me. I’d be in line at the bank, and my heart would start beating so hard that I thought it would just come out. If I was driving the car and got stuck in the middle of traffic, I had to close my eyes and listen to soothing music and start saying affirmations to keep myself from going berserk. It was just this awful feeling. Unbelievable. I thought that I was going crazy—losing my mind.”

Linda shakes her head at a recollection that would be comical if it weren’t so painful. “I remember one day when Julie was a few months old, and she was sleeping with her arm tucked under her. I could only see one arm, and in my mind, she didn’t have an arm. And I freaked out. I thought that her arm came off or something. I didn’t dare look, just felt to see whether her arm was still there. Things like that would start an incredible panic attack, and that went on for several years. It got so bad that I was afraid to go out of the house.”

“How did your husband react to that?”

“My mother told him that I had these attaques de nervos—her expression for panic attacks—and he accepted it,” Linda says. “When we were first married and we’d go to Philadelphia to see my mother, Rafael would be driving, and I’d be in the back seat, lying down. I was always afraid that something inside me was going to tell me to jump out of the car.”

“So even though it was your husband who was driving you back to Philadelphia and you were safe,” I comment, “you felt in danger. What did you think might happen?”

“I guess I was afraid of being abducted again, because I was going back to where it happened. I felt as if I had been abducted. I felt trapped.”

“Do you have any thoughts of how your encounter with the state trooper might be connected to that feeling of being trapped that you had before?”

“When I was describing how I was abducted to you—being grabbed by the arm,” Linda answers, “I thought about the state trooper grabbing my arm to handcuff me. I could see the connection and why the arrest was so traumatic for me. My lawyer told me last week that the other officer said that he had never seen an arrest like that before in history. That I was totally, just totally—out of control. I know now that I can be very volatile in situations where I feel cornered, and that’s scary.”

“What do you remember happening in terms of your resisting?”

“I remember not wanting to be touched, not wanting to be handcuffed. I remember being put in the back seat of the car and kicking the door and desperately wanting to get out. And I kept telling him, begging him to let me out, let me out, let me go, let me go. And afterward, I thought about it, and I’m like, ‘Why didn’t I just go? Why didn’t I just follow along and go?’”

“And what did you conclude?”

“I was out of my mind,” Linda answers simply. “I had the same trapped feeling that I did when I was a fourteen-year-old girl being abducted at knife point. If I’d been in my right mind, I wouldn’t have kicked the door. I wouldn’t have begged him to let me go. There was no way for him to let me go. If he had to make an arrest, he had to make it.”

“It sounds as if some of those feelings of being trapped when you were fourteen were trying to come out when you felt trapped again at thirty-three.”

“I know,” Linda says. “I remember praying in Spanish, but the police report says that I was also talking to the officer in Spanish when I was in the car. I thought that was really strange because I knew that he didn’t speak Spanish. Then I realized that I’d spoken Spanish with the rapist, too. So it was as if I had traveled back in time.”

“What other connections do you see between the rape and the arrest?”

“There are a lot of similarities,” Linda says. She ticks them off: “An isolated area with nobody around. Alone with a strange man. Being taken by the arm. Being forced to turn around with him standing behind me. Being told to take off my coat. The darkness, the coldness of a winter night. Being restrained—the officer used handcuffs, the rapist, a knife. Being forced into the back seat of the car. Lying down on my side behind the passenger’s seat. Being scared to death. Feeling violated.”

“The similarities between the two incidents triggered a lot of emotions that came out inappropriately,” I tell Linda, “because you’ve kept them inside your shell for a long time. You need to identify some of those feelings and express them in an appropriate way. Then you can learn how to handle them so they don’t turn into a panic attack or make you chase Ted away when he wants to be loving and close.”

Linda utters a deep sigh. “God, I would really like that,” she says longingly. “It would almost be like a rebirth. I feel that I live in this nonexistent world. I’m here, and I’m not here, and I pinch myself really hard sometimes, and it doesn’t hurt. I wonder, do I have a heart? Is it beating? Am I really alive? I don’t feel that I’m out of body, but sometimes that I’m smoke inside—whoosh—the shallowness and emptiness of that. People think I’m strong, because I’ve been able to go through some very difficult times in my life without showing any emotion. They don’t know that I’m eating myself up inside. There’s nothing left but this blankness. I feel I’ve missed out on so much, and my life is whizzing right by and through me.”

Linda recalls her first visit to a psychiatrist. “After my husband died, I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to let my panic attacks keep me cooped up in the house and make me dependent on anybody,” she says. “I went to see a psychiatrist, and he frightened me, and I never went back. He told me, ‘You have a locked Pandora’s Box inside you, and when that Pandora’s Box opens—watch out! You’re going to get worse before you get better.’ And I said, ‘No way! I’m not ready to go through this,’ because to me to get worse meant to actually lose my sanity. I think I’m still afraid of that.”

“Therapy will teach you how to comfort yourself when those feelings come out so they won’t be so frightening,” I reassure Linda. “What I’d like you to do is to write a letter to the man who raped you. It doesn’t have to be mailed. It’s just something to help get your feelings out. You can bring the letter in, and we could discuss it.”

“It won’t be very pretty,” Linda says, chuckling.

“I don’t expect it to be pretty,” I tell her, letting her know that I won’t be offended. “And then I’d like you to write a letter to the fourteen-year-old girl inside you who is still traumatized and very frightened, because she hasn’t been comforted enough. It’s that child who’s rejecting Ted.”

“But it’s an assertive child who can say, ‘I don’t want to be touched,’” Linda counters. “A child sometimes has a hard time realizing that she can establish her boundaries.”

“But does the child who’s setting those boundaries know that nineteen years have passed since she was abducted and raped, and that she can feel safe now because you’re able to protect her?”

“I don’t know; this is all so totally new to me,” Linda says wonderingly, “having to rediscover this child and write to her. What good do you think it will do?”

“Once that childish part of you is comforted sufficiently, I think you’ll be able to be close to Ted,” I tell Linda. “Right now this child part feels that it has to be present as a kind of alert watchdog when Ted touches you. If you can get her to relax and allow the adult part of you to be in control of your sexuality, you won’t feel angry and you can let yourself get close and enjoy sexual intimacy fully.”

“DEAR RAPIST”

It takes several sessions for Linda to grasp the concept of communicating with the traumatized little girl within. One of her biggest problems, she says, is Ted.

“I need my space to sit alone and write, and Ted doesn’t give it to me,” she complains. “When I start writing, he’ll come over and say, ‘I’ll support you in any way you need.’ What I want him to do is to please leave me alone. He starts asking me questions, wanting to help; and I get annoyed with him, very angry, the same as I do when he touches me. I feel that he violates me. I want my writing to be personal.”

“Maybe you need to schedule some private time for yourself to do your writing,” I suggest.

“I did,” Linda says. “Saturday I took a walk with my Rolf, my Great

Dane, for protection. I sat down in a woodsy area alongside a tree and wrote in my journal.”

She shows me her letter to the fourteen-year-old within her:

Dearest Linda,

You have been silent too long, half-asleep, and stuck inside a shell. I’m writing to you because I want to help you break your silence and get out. I know what a heavy burden you’ve been carrying on your back of fear, guilt, and shame. It’s time for you to let go of your pain, embrace yourself and be good to you.

I want you to know that you don’t have to live in fear for your life anymore. You can stop reliving the moment over and over again. It happened, and it’s done. It won’t happen again because I will keep you safe, my darling.

Please understand that this was not a punishment from God. What kind of God would have been so cruel to you for lying to your mother about where you were going? This was a random act by a sick man that could have happened to anyone. Your only crime was being young and fearless. That awful man robbed you of your tender soul, and I will get it back for you.

I wish I could turn back the clock to when you were a carefree, happy child and change those terrible moments into a positive experience to cherish for the rest of your life. The truth is that I can’t. For this I am truly sorry. But I can help you cherish all the positive experiences you have had and can have now. Please do your part to help me help you get strong.

You are a good little girl. You must never forget how much joy you brought to people. You’re special, you’re beautiful, you’re kind. And no one can take this away from you. I love you unconditionally. Please, for God’s sake, let’s live, love, and be one.

“That’s a very comforting letter,” I tell Linda. “How did it make you feel when you were writing it?”

“I had a mixed bag of feelings. I felt like a mother, very loving; and at times, I would feel helpless and hopeless and start crying; and then I’d feel powerful, depending on what I wrote and what I was thinking. That’s so typical of my moods. I can be fine one minute and crying the next. I used to think I was bipolar, but that didn’t seem to be the case.”

“What were you crying about when you wrote this letter?”

“I felt sad, because I wished I could be what I once was—the happy- go-lucky person that everyone liked and seemed to admire, the one who was full of life and happy to wake up in the morning. I haven’t felt that way in such a long time.”

“I think the child part of you has a lot of sadness to deal with, so the more you can reach out to her, communicate with her, and provide her with comfort and support, the sooner she’ll feel happy again.”

“I want to go on writing to her; there’s so much more to say,” Linda asserts. “It’s like I’ve been running away from myself for years, and now I want to give the part of me closed off inside a shell a chance to catch up. I feel like I paved a road.”

I ask whether she was able to do any writing to the man who raped her, too.

She shakes her head no. “Every time I tried to write to him, I tore it up,” she tells me. “I couldn’t bear the anger. I hate him, and I don’t even know who I’m hating; and I don’t like hating anyone.” Linda’s face contorts with emotion, and tears spring to her eyes. “He’s like a ghost, this-this”—she takes a deep breath and clenches her teeth—“this thing that’s part of me and just doesn’t go away. It doesn’t leave me alone. And I think that’s the emptiness I feel inside, because he’s not supposed to be there—he should never have been there. At first, I felt repulsed whenever I saw an African American man on the street. And then I started realizing how unfair that was. His color had nothing to do with it. He was an evil man. And sometimes I wonder, ‘Am I turned off by men?’ Maybe I cringe when Ted touches me, because I don’t want to deal with any man. I don’t want to see a penis ever in my life again.”

“What you’re saying is that because this particular man was evil, you’re not allowed to enjoy sex with a decent man. Can’t you be with someone who’s good?

“Ted is that,” Linda agrees.

“Then you need to get your anger out at the person who deserves it,” I tell her, “and exorcise the ghost.”

Several sessions later Linda comes in with her handwritten letter to the man who abducted and raped her when she was fourteen.

“I started to write ‘Dear Rapist,’” she tells me, giggling, “and then I realized how ridiculous it was for me to be polite. So this is what I wrote.”

Dear Rapist,

Why did you do it? How could you have kidnapped a fourteen-year-old girl in Philadelphia, stuck a knife in her

back, and forced her to have sex with you? You’re disgusting-a demented, narcissistic asshole. You lied to that poor girl and terrified her and violated her and stole her virginity, you animal! I don’t know how you can live with yourself.

You talked about God. Do you think He will forgive you for raping an innocent child? Do you know how much devastation you have caused in her life? You made her grow up wishing site didn’t have sex organs and feeling dirty and ashamed of her own body. People like you make me sick!

If only you could cross my path now! I am the person you did this to. I have suffered unbearable pain and mental anguish because of you. I wish I could meet you, so I could tell you how I felt, how I feel, what I have gone through. You continue to haunt me. You’re like a snake, poisoning my insides with your venom. I wish you were a visible snake that I could chop to pieces with a knife like the one you had. I hate you, mister, I hate you!!

By the time she finishes reading me her letter, Linda is sobbing bitterly. After a moment she says, “I’m so angry to think that he might still be walking around.”

“What would you do if you saw him again?”

“I used to fantasize about that all the time,” she admits. “I even took a friend of mine to look for his house years later, but the neighborhood was different. I have no idea where he lives. My first thought was to take this man hostage and torture him and let him know that I’m that fourteen-year-old girl and I’m back. And as time went by, I stopped thinking about revenge. Now I just want to ask him why. I want him to see my face and hear how much he hurt me. And I want him to apologize, show some remorse, take some responsibility, feel some of the pain that I’ve felt throughout the years.”

“You want this man to know that you’re a real person who has feelings and a soul and suffered because of him; but since he can’t apologize and ask to be forgiven, Linda, I think you have to forgive yourself,” I tell her. “And you know, as much as you want to be seen for who you are, so does Ted. When he touches you, who do you think he is?”

“I know he’s Ted.”

“You know that intellectually, but emotionally do you react to him as though it’s Ted? Or do you react as though it’s someone else that you once were afraid of?”

“I just know that I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to be talked to. I want him to leave me alone.”

“Has Ted ever done anything when he’s touched you or talked to you that has been hurtful or destructive to your relationship?”

“No.”

“So is there any logical reason why you would be so upset when he touches you or wants to talk to you?”

“No.”

“So if it’s not logical for you to repel Ted’s advances, what situation comes into your mind from the past that makes you do that?”

“I guess on a subconscious level I’m relating to Ted as though he were the rapist,” Linda concedes, “but it’s so hard to back out of that reaction. Once I’m caught up in it, I hate what’s going on. I can’t stand it. Even if he takes my hand in a gentle way to hold me, I snap at him and get furious.” She starts to cry again, this time in anguished sorrow. “Ted’s pain is so bad that it makes my pain that much worse. I keep thinking he could be happy with someone else who doesn’t have these problems. But then the thought of losing him frightens me, and I think, ‘How long will he put up with this before he leaves?’”

TROUBLED WATERS

They were both excited about the weekend. It was perfect sailing weather—clear skies, generous sun, a balmy springtime breeze. Ted needed to get away even more than Linda did. He couldn’t contain his feelings as she could. He felt frazzled and distracted at work because his concerns about the way things were going at home were always on his mind. For her, it was the opposite. Work was her safe haven. Her job was where she went to escape. She could immerse herself in the problems of her young clients and forget about her own—lock them away as if they didn’t exist.

At one point Ted had been so discouraged that he wasn’t going to put the boat into the water this summer at all. “This isn’t gonna work out,” he told her when she flared up at him the week before. But he got over it and was as loving as ever. She knew he’d be lost without sailing—he’d done it for so many years—so she told him she wanted to go.

Now here they were in Old Lyme, where Ted’s boat, Tranquility, was docked in the marina. They were having dinner Saturday night at the Bee and Thistle Inn, a charming old mansion in the historic district. Nestled on a wide expanse of lawn spreading down to the Connecticut River, the inn provided an old-time sense of space and graciousness along with skillfully prepared dishes like rack of lamb and lobster pot pie. That night they’d sleep on Tranquility. Linda was looking forward to the soothing feeling it gave her to stand on the boat and gaze at the moon glimmering on the rippling waves—a sight that made even the most reluctant lover vulnerable to the mystical allure of romance.

They were sipping their cocktails, and Ted was gazing at Linda with frank desire. He wants me, she thought, and that made her feel nervous, but she told herself to stop worrying and enjoy the moment.

She smiled affectionately at him, and he took her hand and held it. “You know, Linda, you’re the world to me,” he said. “I love how warm and outgoing and passionate you are about things. You have a wonderful personality.”

“That’s so sweet,” Linda said, thinking to herself, What personality? I don’t have one. What are you talking about, Ted? Maybe I should have been up front and told you I don’t have a personality before.

He leaned toward her. “All I want is to take care of you and protect you as much as I can.”

Yes, and that’s the last thing I want, she thought. I don’t need you to take care of me and protect me. I can do that myself. But all she said was, “I know you do, Ted.”

She wished he would leave it there, but he went on, “You know how I feel about what happened to you, and I want you to tell me what I can do to help you heal.”

Jesus, God, I don’t want your sympathy! I shared it with you just so you would know. Can’t you get that? She said nothing.

“I’m trying to understand what you’re going through,” Ted continued earnestly. “Maybe it would help if you let me read what you’re writing in your journal.”

Linda felt her spine stiffen. Did he think she was writing something about him? “It doesn’t have anything to do with you, Ted,” she said, trying not to sound huffy. “It’s just that I have these thoughts in my mind and I want to write them down. I’m not sure if it would help you understand.”

“But I feel that you’re leaving me out of the loop,” he persisted. “Do you mind if I read it?”

“I do mind,” she said. Now she was getting angry. “Look, what I write in that journal is part of my therapy. I don’t feel comfortable sharing it, and I don’t want to feel that I have to hide it. I want to be able to put it somewhere at home where it’s safe and it’s not read. Is that clear?”

“Okay, okay, I won’t read it; you have my promise,” Ted said, pulling his hand away He looked around uncomfortably, afraid that they were making a scene. “There’s no need for you to raise your voice about it. I’m not deaf, you know.”

“But you act as if you’re deaf,” she said. Her voice rose in spite of him. “That’s why I have to scream. I keep hoping that maybe you’ll hear.”

“That’s not true. I do everything in my power to be sensitive to you, and all you do is push me away.” The frustration and hurt on Ted’s face were like an accusation. “I wish you’d stop acting so childish and talk to me like one adult to another.”

“I can’t talk to you; you invade me!” Linda snapped. She saw the tears forming in Ted’s eyes. He was making her feel guilty and angrier at the same time. She wished he wouldn’t be so mushy. She thought, Why do I haue to deal with your hurt? Am I sinking you down with me? I can’t stand this! I have to get away

The other people in the room were staring at them now Linda saw the waiter walking toward their table, and she stood up abruptly.

“I’m sorry, Ted, I have to leave,” she said. Feeling everyone’s eyes boring into her back, Linda rushed blindly out of the dining room and left the inn.

Outside she realized that she had only a vague notion of how to get back to the boat. If she wasn’t careful, she could fall into the river and drown. She knew enough to walk toward the intersection, three houses down from the Bee and Thistle.

When she got to the intersection, she was at Hall’s Road. If she turned left, that would take her farther into the historic section, away from the marina; so she turned right, passing a shopping center and an A&P and a gas station, and headed toward the bridge. To get to the marina she had to walk the entire length of Hall’s Road, but she was so overwrought that the half-hour it took flew by.

At the end of the road Linda turned right and walked toward the marina at the base of the Connecticut River. As she approached the marina, she began to panic. In the darkness it was hard to pick out Tranquility from all the other boats that were docked there. She was terrified of losing her footing and ending up in the water. Her heart began hammering its familiar drumbeat of alarm.

Hurrying along the dock, Linda peered at the names on the boats-an alphabet soup of idiosyncratic vanity plates bobbing in the water. Despite the cool breeze, she felt flushed and clammy. Perspiration broke out on her forehead. Her head began to spin, and she felt that she was on a carousel.

Tranquility! Linda had to look twice to make sure it was really there and not an illusion. Relief surged through her as she clambered aboard. She stumbled over some tools Ted had left spread out on a dropcloth and almost fell into the open bilge hatch before she made her way into the Β berth and sank down on the bed.

About an hour later Ted walked in, looking distraught. “Oh, thank God, you’re here,” he said. “I thought you’d be waiting outside, and I spent a half-hour searching for you in the gardens around the inn before I came back here. Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” Linda mumbled.

He looked at her reproachfully. “You scared the life out of me. Please don’t ever run away like that again,” he said, sitting down on the bed beside her. “Do you want to talk?”

“No!” Linda shouted. She pulled the blanket over her head.

Ted tried to take the blanket away.

“No, please don’t take it off!” Even muffled by the blanket, there was no mistaking the fear in Linda’s voice. She began crying hysterically. She didn’t want to see Ted or talk to him. She just wanted to be underneath the blanket, safe and secure.

Ted stood up. “My God, Linda, what did I do to you?”

“Please, Ted, leave me alone,” Linda sobbed. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Ted slept somewhere else on the boat that night.

Linda awoke in the morning filled with remorse. When she looked in the mirror and saw her drawn face and red, puffy eyes, she asked herself, “Who is this person?” She tried to stare herself out of it, but it was too scary. She put the mirror away, washed and dressed quickly, and went to find Ted.

“I’m so sorry for the way I acted last night,” she said contritely. “None of this has anything to do with you. It’s all related to my past.”

Again Linda suggested that they take a break from each other while she worked out her problems in therapy. “I’m not going to walk out on you,” she told Ted. “I just think it might be easier for both of us if we could be apart for a little while.”

“No, no, I don’t want that,” Ted said firmly. “I still love you, and I’m going to hang in for as long as it takes.”

He spent the day working on the boat while she sat on the top deck, writing in her journal. It was a pleasant, peaceful Sunday free of disturbance, but the romance implicit in the weekend had been tossed overboard and swept out to sea.

FROZEN

“Why do I have to be suffering when I know I don’t have to be suffering?” Linda asks me disconsolately after she tells me about her weekend on Tranquility.

“You say you did some writing on the boat. What did you write?”

“I wrote another letter to the fourteen-year-old part of me. I tried to think what I would say as a teacher speaking to one of my teenage students who was upset, but it didn’t come out that way.”

Linda’s letter says:

I need to let you come out of your shell, but it seems that it’s too hard a shell to crack. Am I not trying hard enough? Am I holding back? What is it that I need to do to get you out? Am I too weak or too blind? Do I need to sacrifice myself? I’ve done that already.

I have, as you can see, a lot of questions. I just can’t find the answers. But I do know that you want to be free; I realize this. I am so good at solving problems for others, and I can’t do it for you. You are the most important person to me; you are my life. So what is wrong? How difficult can this be?

Linda, you must help me. This has to be a team effort here. You and me, kid, you and me. I’m sick and tired of being a stranger to myself and having my life pass me by. I want to start feeling the air, smelling the grass, feeling the love. But no. Sometimes I feel stone-cold. It’s like the lines from that song by Madonna: “You’re frozen when your heart’s not open.… You waste your time with hate and regret.… If I lose you, my heart will be broken.… Love is a bird, she needs to fly.… Let all the hurt inside of you die.”

I know and understand the problem. Why can’t I solve it? Why?

“It’s so frustrating being frozen in time, frozen in feelings,” Linda says angrily, making fists of her hands. “Sometimes I want to take this part of me in the shell physically and shake it and say, ‘Get out!’”

“Is that a respectful way to try to connect with that part?” I ask her. “You know that there are a lot of reasons why that part has been driven into the shell and is afraid to come out. And it’s not going to come out unless it’s made to feel safe.”

“How can I make that part feel safe when I don’t feel safe?” Linda asks. It’s the same question I hear from all my patients who don’t know how to comfort themselves, because they’ve either been systematically abused or, as in Linda’s case, subjected to a severe trauma that has kept them frozen in time, reliving the event.

“But your adult part is able to overcome those feelings and perform well on the job, working with other children,” I counter. “You were on the right track when you tried to assume your professional role as a counselor with your own child frozen inside the shell, but you let your impatience get in the way. You need to put your frustration aside and focus on respecting that part’s feelings and being empathetic toward them and welcoming them into your life.”

“I’d better do something or the situation with Ted will keep on getting worse and worse,” Linda says morosely. “This is the same thing that happened with Ted’s ex-wife. She stopped having sex with him six months after they were married. Maybe she had a history of sexual abuse, too.”

“Could be.”

Linda makes a disgusted face. “Pulling the blanket over my head—my God, that was so childish.”

“But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You feel more like a child whenever he wants intimacy.”

“Yes, and being caught in that feeling of immaturity and having this man try to make love to you when you’re like that is very—it’s—” Linda struggles for the word and finally says, “At that moment I think it’s sick, like, ‘For God’s sake, what’s he doing?’”

“I think you should be comforting the part of you that has the feelings of a child on a regular basis,” I suggest. “Don’t wait until you’re already in a potentially sexual situation, and your fears and anger are overwhelming.” I recommend a paperback called The Woman’s Comfort Book by Jennfier Louden. “Obviously, it’s not appropriate for a child to be involved sexually,” I continue, “so you need to let that part know that the adult part of you will be there and in control and won’t be abandoning the child then. You need to communicate that to the child so that the child can—”

“Go to sleep,” Linda finishes for me.

SEALED OFF BUT NOT SEPARATE

After a review of Linda’s SCID-D, the diagnosis I come up with is DDNOS, or dissociative disorder, not otherwise specified. This is a category for people who have dissociative symptoms that don’t meet the criteria for the other dissociative disorders. Survivors of extreme trauma, hostages, members of cults, and victims of torture or terrorism are all people who may develop dissociative symptoms of this nature. As a survivor of a single highly traumatic event, Linda has developed a milder form of DID that falls within the DDNOS category. In some people DDNOS is actually an early stage of DID For the most part, the symptoms are similar but less severe, and some are absent, for example, amnesia for important personal information or the presence of two or more distinct personalities.

Linda does not have amnesia for her child part, which is not sufficiently distinct to qualify as a full personality. The traumatized fourteen—year-old girl within Linda is not a completely separate personality with her own name, memories, traits, manner of speaking, handwriting, and other characteristics. Although some of Lindas feelings are sealed off in this child part of herself, Linda doesn’t have a sharply defined visual image of that part or have internal interactive dialogues with it. In circumstances that evoke the traumatic event that befell her when she was fourteen-being taken hostage and raped—her indistinct child personality state takes over her consciousness and behavior and causes her to act in an immature and emotionally overwrought manner. Her volatile mood swings, panic attacks, and sexual dysfunction with her fiancé all stem from this dissociative basis.

The dissociative symptom that Linda experiences most severely is depersonalization, particularly feeling disconnected from her emotions. She speaks of this in all the familiar ways—her feelings are frozen or locked inside a shell; she has an emptiness or blankness inside; she feels like a stranger to herself; she doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror at times; she feels that she is going through the motions of living while life is passing her by. Although this symptom has negatively affected her relationship with her fiancé, it has not impaired her ability to function on the job. Ironically Linda claims that compartmentalizing her feelings has helped her job performance because it allows her to immerse herself fully in work and not have to think about her disconnection from herself and fear of intimacy. But she is in therapy, because she knows that running away from her problems has only made them worse.

Besides depersonalization, Linda experiences a moderate amount of the other dissociative symptoms. During her panic attacks she may occasionally “space out” and have some memory loss. Her derealization or distorted perception of her surroundings occurs when she reacts to Ted as though he were her rapist although she doesn’t actually see her rapist’s face when she looks at him. She also has identity confusion vis-à-vis her attitude toward men. On the one hand, she wants a loving relationship with her fiancé, and on the other, she wishes he would go away and leave her alone. Part of her feels unwomanly when she refuses to have sex, and another part thinks she never wants to see a penis again.

When I tell Linda that she has DDNOS, she accepts the diagnosis with grace. “I know this is going to be hard work,” she says with a deep sigh, “but I feel I’m headed in the right direction. This therapy is different. For the first time, I’m able to do more than just talk and leave. I’m crying a lot more, and it feels good to cry.” She chuckles at the incongruity. “Digging deep is painful and scary,” she explains, “but connecting to all those buried feelings and accepting them are very helpful. I don’t want to be crying forever, though,” Linda adds. “I’d like to be crying because I’m happy.”

A CLOSE CALL

Oh, my God, not again! Linda thought. She was driving to work in the morning when a police cruiser passed by her. There was no other car going in the same direction as he was. When she looked in her rear-view mirror, she saw him behind her with the flashing lights going. He’d turned around! He’d recognized her! The state laws for driving without a license, she’d found out on the Internet, were very stiff. She could be thrown into jail for that—especially since she was already out on bail for drunken driving, resisting arrest, and assault and battery on a police officer. Could she handle another arrest? Panic was rising in her like a fever. One question pounded in her head: What am I going to do? She thought of the plan she’d rehearsed over and over in her mind. She’d go quietly and not make a fuss. If it was the same guy, she’d lock the doors and ask to wait for another officer, a female, to come.

The road curved, and a turn came up on her left. Escape! As she drove onto a side road, she could see that the officer actually had turned around as if to follow her. Would he follow her now, too? No, thank God, he kept on going straight ahead on the main road. Maybe he couldn’t see that she’d gone onto a side road, because it went up a hill. Or maybe she wasn’t the one he was after. He could’ve turned around because he got a call, and started flashing his lights so she’d move over and let him pass. But that was close, too close.

Linda was due at work at nine o’clock. Her nerves were so frayed that she sat in the car, crying, for close to an hour before she took off. And then she got lost. The roads were unfamiliar to her, full of head-swimming twists and turns. It took her another hour of wandering around until she finally found her way back to the turnpike. She showed up for work two hours late.

The next morning Ted couldn’t get her out of bed. “Linda, c’mon, you have to get up and get ready to go to work,” he said, gently shaking her.

“Leave me alone,” she muttered, her face turned into the pillow. “I’m not going in today.”

Linda couldn’t face one more day of driving an hour to work and an hour back, terrified that she’d be stopped and arrested. The turnpike was under construction, and state troopers were buzzing around it like bees around a honeycomb. How could one of them not recognize her? She was sure her picture was in every state police barracks. And that scene she’d made in the barracks could not have been unnoticed by the other troopers around. They were bound to remember her when they saw her again on the road. As ridiculous as it seemed, she felt like a criminal—a marked woman.

“Mommy, get up,” Julie said when she saw Linda still lying in bed. “You have to drive me to school. It’s almost eight o’clock.”

Linda grunted disgustedly.

“What’s wrong, Mommy? Are you okay?”

Linda saw the worried look on Julie’s face as she sat up in bed. “Yeah, baby, I’m okay; I just overslept, that’s all,” she said. She felt a stab of remorse. It wasn’t fair to Julie to make her late for school. The last thing Linda wanted was another black mark on her conscience. She dragged herself out of bed and dressed.

Once she’d dropped off Julie at school, Linda decided that she might as well go to work. Okay, I’ll take the risk one more time, she told herself, but I can’t go on like this. She tried to think of other options. She could take the bus, but it left an hour too late in the morning to get her to work on time. Ted couldn’t drive her because he had to be at work at seven-thirty. The hearing to get her license back was a month away. She could quit her job, but she loved her job and would rather go to jail than sit home and go crazy-at least in jail she’d have someone to talk to. Her only choice, she concluded, was to gut it out for another month until the hearing.

Heather, her lawyer, said that if the judge found Linda guilty at the hearing, her license could be suspended for another forty-five days and she’d have to take some very expensive classes for drunk drivers. She could even get jail time for the assault and battery charges. Heather didn’t want to go to court at all. She suggested a plea bargain: a ninety-day suspended sentence and a year on probation. Linda balked. She didn’t want a stain on her record—what would happen to her career as a teacher if that ever came out? And besides, she didn’t think she was guilty. Her lawyer didn’t know that Linda was a rape survivor who was being treated by a psychiatrist for a posttraumatic dissociative disorder. Linda kept quiet about about her illness, because she was afraid of being labeled or stigmatized. People knew about panic attacks, but they were still in the dark about dissociation.

It was Ted who told Heather. She called him to ask him some questions, and he filled her in. Linda wasn’t angry when she found out; she was relieved. It turned out that Heather had worked at the Disability Law Center before and knew about posttraumatic disorders. Many of her previous clients had been victims of sexual abuse. Heather agreed that they should go to court. She was confident that no reasonable judge would find Linda criminally responsible for the charges against her once her medical condition became known. She would be vindicated. It was only a matter of time.

THE FIRE

“I think it’s done,” Linda said, sticking a fork into a sizzling piece of chicken Ted was barbequing on the grill.

They were home, having a family cookout on their deck Saturday night, because Ted had to work that weekend. It was a simple summertime meal—barbequed chicken, corn on the cob, and a tossed salad. Later they went inside and watched the video of Mulan with Julie.

After Julie was in bed, Linda noticed that Ted was unusually quiet. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No, not really.”

“Yes there is. What is it?”

Ted reluctantly confided that he was starting to feel guilty, because he wasn’t as productive on the job as he thought he should be.

“Then maybe you should go back to counseling if you’re not happy,” Linda said. She wanted him to know that, he was more important to her than the job. “Really, Ted, it’s a great position, but I don’t like what it’s doing to you. It’s not worth the extra money if it’s driving you crazy.”

“It is worth it,” Ted said. “It’s $25,000 more a year, and I like the job; I just don’t like the half-assed way I’m doing it.”

The forlorn look on his face made Linda feel a surge of compassion for him. “Ted, I see you walking around, lost in space, not enjoying your job as much as you should, and I feel responsible for it,” she told him.

“Don’t be silly, Linda. Why should you feel responsible?”

“Because I’m the reason your work is suffering. You think it’s your fault that I don’t want to make love, and you go into work feeling guilty about it. Then you can’t do your job right, and you feel guilty about that. Your whole life right now is guilt, guilt, guilt—and I’m to blame.”

“Oh, Linda, you’re not to blame for anything,” Ted said. “Nothing is your fault. Don’t you know that?”

He gave her a hug, and Linda resisted the urge to push him away. He’s not going to hurt you, she told herself, calming the part of herself that felt a stab of alarm. He just wants to be comforted the way you do. She allowed herself to feel safe in his arms, and they cuddled together affectionately for a while before they grew sleepy and went to bed.

In the middle of the night Ted got up to go to the bathroom and saw that the deck was all lit up. He thought he must have forgotten to turn off the outside lights, but when he flicked the switch, the light outside didn’t go off. He couldn’t understand why until he looked out the window and saw that the deck was in flames. One of the charcoal briquettes must have fallen from the grill and started a fire. Quickly Ted filled a bucket with water, rushed outside, and doused the flames. When he got back into bed, Linda was still sound asleep.

“Good God, Ted, what happened to the deck?” Linda asked when she got up in the morning and saw the huge hole the fire had made the night before.

“You slept through the whole thing. The deck caught on fire from some embers that fell from the grill.”

Linda looked shocked, then mystified. “That’s strange,” she said. “I had this dream last night about a burnt hockey puck and kept wondering how it got that way. I probably dreamed it right before the fire broke out.”

“That really is strange,” Ted said.

They chalked it up to synchronicity.

THE CHARRED MAN

Several days after the fire Linda comes in for her therapy session and recounts a dream she had last night—this one about a charred man. How much the metaphor was inspired by the fire on the deck I don’t know, but the dream itself is very significant for what it says about Linda’s fear of intimacy.

“There was this man who was all charred from being burnt and had scorched skin that was like a black crust,” Linda says. “He asked me to go into this house that was almost burning. And I was very hesitant. I said, ‘I don’t want to go in there.’ But he was very persuasive, and he convinced me to go into the house. It was a big house, and there were spits of fire here and there, and I kept saying, ‘I want to get out of here; I want to go back.’ And he said, ‘Trust me; nothing’s going to happen to you. Come with me. It’ll be okay.’ Then he grabbed me and had me kiss him, and he was all yecchy, really gross. But I felt I was stuck and had to do it to be safe. It was very dark and dungeony in the house. We kept walking and walking, and then as we started going into a path, it seemed brighter and more pleasant. Whatever it was that was on him was slowly peeling off and coming loose. When it all fell away, I could see that he was just a regular man. And I was so thankful that I did go with him because I felt love—ultimate love. And I told him how foolish I was to be so scared to go with him, and he said, ‘I was testing you to see if you would come, and you did.’”

“Can you relate that dream to anything?” I ask her.

“I think it’s related to Ted, and the way he’s trying to help me through the process of differentiating him from the rapist, and I’m so resistant,” Linda answers. “I just don’t let go—don’t let him feel good about what he’s trying to do for me and let myself feel good. I was crying throughout the dream, but when I woke up I was happy, because it didn’t turn out to be what I had expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I was terrified because he was so ugly, and everything else I saw was distorted and ugly; and that’s how my life had always seemed,” Linda answers. “I think the dream is about being able to trust. It’s about knowing that on the other side there can be beauty and a wonderful man. I felt very happy and safe when all of that charred stuff peeled off him, but when I woke up, I was disappointed.” Linda breaks out laughing. “I wanted to go back to sleep again, so I could pick up where I left off.”

“In the dream you felt happy and safe with Ted, but not in real life. Why?”

“There’s a part of me that won’t allow me to receive Ted and accept and appreciate all his kindness and affection. I keep thinking, ‘What can I bring to him? Nothing but pain and misery.’”

“I’m sure Ted doesn’t think that.”

“No, he keeps telling me how happy he is with me, and I say, ‘How can you be?’” Linda replies. “Why is it that I can feel anger and fear and sadness so easily,” she asks, her voice cracking, “but I can’t feel joy?”

“Why do you think? Is it safe for you to feel joy?”

Linda thinks for a moment. “No, I guess not,” she answers slowly. “I’m afraid that if I do feel any joy, it’s going to be taken away from me. That’s why I keep my defenses up. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“That’s learned behavior that you will have to relearn,” I tell her. “Joy doesn’t have to be taken away and joy doesn’t have to be associated with pain. You adopted that defensive behavior as a teenager in order to survive. But you’re not fighting for your survival now, and that behavior isn’t adaptive anymore. In your present situation you’re with someone who is loving and safe and isn’t going to hurt you, and that’s very different from the past. The part of you that was able to get to know Ted and be close with him has to teach the part that’s still scared and angry that this is a different moment in time and this man is safe.”

“It’s funny, but when I met Ted, I was like a kid, all happy and excited to be with such a great guy,” Linda recalls. “But when he began catering to me and buying me jewelry and sending me these wonderful e-mails and showering me with compliments all the time, I felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to it, and I didn’t feel I deserved all that nurturing. Could it be that I’m trying to sabotage the relationship, because I’m used to being a giver and not a receiver, and it’s too hard for me to embrace being loved?”

“Are you saying that you don’t feel entitled to have a good life; that you have to continue the way your life has been in the past?”

“I don’t know what it is,” Nancy says with tears of frustration in her eyes. “I was strong enough to conquer my agoraphobia, but when it comes to having real intimacy with a caring, responsible, competent man who is really there for me—the first one who ever was—I don’t know if I can do it.”

“You can do it,” I assure her. “What would you tell one of your troubled adolescent students who was raped the way you were and believed that it was her fault? Would you tell her that she was to blame and that she’ll have to protect herself for the rest of her life by locking up her feelings and throwing away the key? Would you tell her that any man who tries to get close to her is invading her space and trapping her and that she has to push him away?”

“No, I’d tell her that she had no control over what happened, no way to protect herself then, but now she does,” Linda answers like the supportive surrogate parent that she is to many of her students. “She can use good judgment. Don’t take foolish risks, but don’t push away someone who really does love her and is good to her.”

“Exactly. You see, that ugly charred second skin on the man in your dream is made up of your own cognitive distortions of reality. By continuing to communicate and connect with and comfort the frightened child within your woman’s body, you’ll be able to lay those distortions to rest. You’re the one who has to peel that second skin away, so that Ted isn’t frightening to you anymore and you can embrace him and experience the love you had in your dream in your waking life.”

A SHOOTING STAR

As their week of vacation drew closer, Linda became more and more apprehensive. How will I get through this, she wondered, being together with Ted on the boat in close quarters for so many hours? In preparation she began talking quietly to herself, assuring her child part that there was nothing to fear. The day before they were to leave, she busied herself packing and cooking. She made pasta and rice dishes to accompany the fish or meat they’d grill on the hibachi when Tranquility was out on the ocean, all the while repeating her little mantra, “We’re gonna go, and we’re gonna have a good time.”

The first night in Old Lyme they had lobsters for dinner at The Hideaway Pub near the marina and went dancing. Ted wasn’t a good dancer, but he was funny about it. Linda knew he was enjoying himself, and she felt good dancing with him.

They held hands walking back to the boat. When they got to the dock, neither of them noticed that a board was missing.

“Watch your step,” Ted said. “It’s dark out.”

His warning came too late. Linda’s foot went through the hole in the dock and—plunk!—she was in the water.

“I really have to take care of you, don’t I?” Ted said, laughing affectionately, as he pulled her back onto the dock.

Linda had to laugh, too, in spite of her minor scratches and bruises. She felt silly and grown-up at the same time, able to have fun and freely give and receive affection, while keeping her frightened child out of a relationship that only an adult should be involved in.

The next day Ted took Tranquility out into the ocean. Linda reveled in the fresh, salty smell of the air and the beauty of the gently waving jade green water all around them. Just before they were ready to turn back, they threw the carnations and roses they’d taken with them into the sea in memory of John F. Kennedy, Jr.

That night in the dark passageway between the master stateroom and the Β berth, Linda took Ted’s hand and said, “I feel like I want to be close to you.” She was happy that she’d gotten herself ready to be able to say that.

When they made love on the bed in the master stateroom, Linda knew that this man was different from the others before him. He was not a stranger who only wanted to gratify his animal lust with her or a man who would break her heart in the end. He was a good man. It was safe to love him. He was never going to hurt her.

Both Linda and Ted wished that the vacation would never end. Not once did Linda issue angry “Leave me alone” or “Don’t touch me” directives. She realized how unfair she’d been to Ted when she was trying to protect her space from what she perceived as an invasion. Now she could see that Ted’s attempts to get close to her because of love and affection were different from the events when her space really was invaded in the past.

Her need to go to such protective extremes had also lessened, because Ted was learning how to give her the space she needed. He used to be so overprotective that he wanted to be there all the time like some little angel on her shoulder everywhere she went. He found a support group on the Internet for women survivors of sexual abuse and logged onto it, hoping to get a better understanding of Linda’s illness. And the women kept sending him letters of encouragement: “Linda is feeling some real pain; she needs space; give her space,” and “She really does love you; she’s still with you; give her time.”

Whenever Linda felt an urge to sabotage the intimacy she was experiencing with Ted on the boat, she took out her journal and wrote notes to herself to alleviate her fears. “This closeness is the ideal thing that should happen between a man and a woman,” she wrote one day. “You thought you weren’t cut out to have it after the rape, and so you’ve always protected your hurt feelings. Either you didn’t expect to be nurtured by a man or you pushed warm love away, afraid that hurt would follow. But love doesn’t mean you get hurt. The love you have now is beautiful and sweet. Stay strong and let yourself grow into it.”

Sometimes Ted would tease her when they were acting playful with each other and say, “Is this you or the kid in you?”

Instead of getting defensive and retorting, “That is not something to joke about,” Linda started laughing along with him. She knew that he wasn’t making fun of her in a disrespectful way; he was just trying to give some humor to the situation. He had to lighten up, and Linda did, too. There were times when they’d gone for days without laughing, because they’d been so sucked into the pain. Now Linda’s wounds were not so fresh that she couldn’t let laughter help.

“Hey, Linda, look, a shooting star!” Ted exclaimed one night when they were sitting together on the upper deck of Tranquility.

“Make a wish,” she said.

She closed her eyes and made her own wish silently, and Ted made his. Without asking, Linda knew that Ted’s wish was the same as hers: “Please, God, let us continue to be this happy together.” And she knew that they had it in them to make their wish come true.

HER DAY IN COURT

“I have this feeling of impending doom,” Linda tells me, speaking of her day in court tomorrow. “The scariest thing for me is that I have to see that trooper again. I’m afraid that seeing him and being badgered by the prosecutor will give me a panic attack, and I won’t be able to talk. I know I need to think and act like an adult and not come across as this scared little person, but I’m not sure I’ve gotten a grip yet.”

“But you did get a grip, Linda, on your vacation with Ted,” I remind her, “when you were able to have the child part of you feel safe, and the adult part of you stay in control. Now you need to be aware of whatever you did then and utilize those same strategies and skills over and over again with Ted and in other situations that might be triggers of your past trauma, like the trial tomorrow.”

“But to see that trooper in his uniform with a gun strapped on him—it’s a form of intimidation,” Linda insists. “It’s the same as if I would ever see my rapist again in a way, the same inner feelings.”

“Yes, but the feelings you had when you were raped shouldn’t be put onto this trial any more than they should’ve been projected onto Ted,” I point out, “because the situations are not the same. You need to comfort those emotions by telling yourself that this is not the same as if you saw your rapist again and felt alone with a predator and helpless. Today you’re a capable adult, and you’ve created a support system around you, and you’re safe there. You have a lawyer whose job it is to try to protect you. I will be there giving my opinion on your behalf. You will be able to speak for yourself, too. And Ted will be there so that you’re not alone.”

“I have to tell myself that this trial is an adult’s business; it’s not a fourteen-year-old’s business to have to take care of,” Linda says. “If I can get myself in that mode, I know I can do fine. I have to sit there and feel confident and remind myself that I have the ability to do that.”

Linda gets a resolute look on her face. “I have to do this, not just for me, but for Ted,” she says. “He had a dream the other night that he was picked up by a couple of police officers who told him he was being questioned for raping a little boy the night before. And he said, ‘How could that be? I was with my wife, and she can testify to that.’ And they said, ‘Don’t even try it. We know your wife is gonna cover for you.’ Then he woke up, and he was sick over it. He said, ‘Can you believe in my dream S was being charged with raping a child?’ It was so sad. All of this is really getting to him—my rape, the police incident, my going to court, his going to court. This has to end.”

I show Linda some stones with affirmative words like trust, forgiveness, truth, and hope written on them. “Do any words on these stones capture some meaning that you think you should focus on today and tomorrow?” I ask.

“Trust,” Linda says. “I have to trust the people who will be there to support me and trust myself that I’ll be all right.”

She picks up the stone with hope written on it and turns it over slowly in her hand. “I have to remember never to give up hope for a better future,” she says softly. “I hope that tomorrow is going to be the last awful thing in my life.” Then she asks, “Is it okay if I keep this one with me? I’ll give it back to you after the trial.”

“Of course.”

The next day I sit in the courtroom, anxiously awaiting the judge’s decision after providing expert testimony about Linda’s posttraumatic dissociative symptoms and how they influenced her behavior on the night of her arrest. I am proud of the way Linda has spoken up for herself, maintaining her composure and dignity under difficult circumstances.

Finally the judge renders his opinion. He acquits Linda of the charges against her, reinstates her license, and mandates continuing psychotherapy.

Linda hugs her lawyer and rushes over to Ted to embrace him. She turns around and gives me a broad smile, raising her arm in a kind of victory salute with the stone that says hope held tightly between her fingers.