Page 62 of Sorry, Not Sorry
As late afternoon turned to dusk, the room grew darker, illuminated only by the glow from the electric fire. During a lull in their conversation, Arne stood up to close the blinds and turn on his floor and table lamps, bathing the room in a soft light. Without asking, he brewed a fresh pot of coffee and brought a full mug over to where Delilah sat. The warmth from the fire had long since dried her wet clothes, and with the comforting weight of Sigmund curled up on her lap, she lounged comfortably in the spacious armchair.
Arne sat down and took a sip of his coffee, and then peered at her solemnly over the rim of his glasses.
‘You have been through a great deal, Delilah. I am very glad you were able to share this with me.’
Reaching for her coffee, Delilah held it away from the dozing cat while she took a couple of sips. It had been draining to go back in time and revisit the most traumatic day of her life, although, oddly, it hadn’t been as scary as she had feared. Knowing Arne was there had made her feel safe, and she knew she’d done the right thing by finally confiding in him.
Arne put his mug down on the side. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
Delilah considered the question while she mentally checked in with her body. Other than a slight cramp in her legs from trying not to disturb Sigmund, she felt at ease – and light, as if a weight had shifted.
He nodded when she told him and stared down at his folded hands in contemplation. ‘I imagine surviving this experience together has cemented the close bond you have with your sister. I am struck by your differing responses to the events of your childhood and the divergence in the directions your lives have taken.’
‘For ages, Salome acted like it never happened,’ Delilah said with a tinge of bitterness. ‘Even later, talking about it with me was taboo because I refused to see a therapist and she couldn’t handle me freaking out on her. She says going to therapy has helped her come to terms with everything, but then she still acts like if she can make everything around her perfect, it will stop bad things happening.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know… maybe because she has a family to take care of, it’s easier for her to focus on Farhan and the kids.’
‘Trauma is very much an individual experience, Delilah,’ Arne pointed out. ‘We all see and process things differently and sometimes the gap between experiences is not easy to bridge. Some people can move through trauma, while others get stuck and need something different to heal from the same trauma.’
Sigmund stirred and stretched, jumping off her lap as unexpectedly as he had arrived. As she stretched her cramped legs out in front of her, Delilah’s gaze fell onto the black and white photo Arne had taken of the trees in his native forest.
‘It’s a bit like that photo up there, isn’t it? The same trees look very different, depending on the direction you’re looking from.’
‘I would say so. You mentioned your sister had left home for university, whereas you, as the younger child, were at home witnessing the deterioration in your parents’ relationship firsthand.’ He paused as if contemplating his next words. ‘It must have been frustrating to see your mother seemingly accept your father’s behaviour.’
‘I hated the way she let him get away with it!’ Delilah said, a deep flush creeping up from her neck and into her cheeks. It felt disloyal to say it, but she knew Arne wouldn’t judge her.
‘Mum let herself be bullied and manipulated. She could have insisted he get medical attention, but instead she’d just make excuses for him. She wasn’t scared of him, exactly, but maybe she was scared of what he might do to himself if he got stressed. All we ever heard was “Girls, keep the noise down, your dad is tired and needs to rest” or “Girls, give Dad some space. He doesn’t feel up to talking.” Somehow, how Sal and I felt when our father stayed in bed for days without speaking or walked past us in our own home as if we didn’t exist didn’t seem as important.’
‘Do you think you can try to forgive?—?’
‘Him?’ Delilah cut in with a bitter laugh. ‘No! Never.’
‘I meant to say, do you think you can try to forgive your mother?’ Arne asked gently.
‘Oh…!’ Delilah said blankly. She was so used to placing the blame for her mother’s death where it rightfully belonged that she hadn’t acknowledged the anger she had deflected away from her and how much it hurt that she and Salome hadn’t been worth protecting. Her mother had risked her children’s lives as well as her own, but how could you be angry with someone who loved you and had died? And yet…
‘Why did she make us mistrust our own instincts about him? He was so unpredictable that Sal and I never felt safe, but it’s like Mum conditioned us to doubt or ignore our feelings. When someone’s being treated poorly and yet they’re also telling you it’s okay, you learn to numb your feelings, so it doesn’t seem so bad. But the honest truth was that it felt terrible when he got like that. I knew it wasn’t right, but Mum insisted everything was under control. My God, if you can’t trust your own mother, who can you trust?’
‘Unfortunately, when those we rely on to care for us as vulnerable children become the ones who cause us pain, it breaks the trust we have for our parents,’ Arne observed. ‘Once that sacred trust is breached, it’s understandable how any subsequent relationships can appear risky.’
‘I’m starting to see why I’m always overthinking and second-guessing myself. For years, I couldn’t trust myself to pick the right job, never mind the right man,’ she said bleakly.
‘I imagine it was tough for your mother to balance the demands of a mentally ill spouse with the needs of her children.’
‘He was a grown man, and we were children. She should have put us first!’ Delilah burst out, immediately feeling ashamed for blaming the victim. But then, she wondered sadly, weren’t they all victims? Yes, Mum was the one who died, but she and Sal – and even Farhan and his parents – had all been forced to live with the consequences of one man’s actions.
Arne tilted his head as he weighed the merits of her words. ‘Your feelings are valid, Delilah. You and your sister were also victims,’ he said softly, his words echoing Delilah’s thoughts. ‘You were not complicit in what your father did, and yet his actions left you humiliated and too traumatised to fully live your life. You are not responsible for what happened, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed about a past you had no choice in. The person you loved breached your trust, which has caused you anxiety when it comes to closeness and intimacy. Our stored memories can create fear, and our bodies will respond to this. However irrational, such fear can provoke an overwhelming physical urge to flee – such as the crisis you experienced today with Noah.’
He unfolded his hands and sat forward in his chair. ‘When we are reluctant to trust, we build walls to keep any potential hurt at bay – you know this, Delilah, because you’ve challenged yourself to look at the patterns in your previous relationships. Unfortunately, walls don’t only keep people out, they also trap us inside as we find reasons to avoid getting close to others, and thus isolate ourselves from the relationships we need to pursue a full life.’
Even if Delilah hadn’t been too exhausted to push back, her disastrous track record with men made it impossible to argue. Polly had been right all along, she acknowledged gravely. The years of seeing her mother emotionally manipulated by a man who claimed to worship her had fed so many unconscious biases Delilah had about relationships. Her assumption that, when given the chance, men would control, manipulate and coerce women had coloured her interactions with clients. Instead of facilitating honest communication between the couples in her care, she had weighed in, projecting her own prejudices and making things worse.
But it wasn’t only her clients who had suffered the backlash of Delilah’s childhood trauma. She thought wretchedly of the hurt in Desmond’s eyes, of Kwame’s fury that she had been able to bury the memory of how she’d abandoned him, and Carl, still too crushed to ever want to see her again. And then there was poor, sweet Remi who, despite everything, had actually hoped for a second chance. As her mind drifted back over the years since her mother’s death, she could see the pattern. A past littered with the debris of men with whom she had jumped into relationships and given them every reason to love her, only to escape just as quickly when they got too close or showed even a trace of the obsessive love she had witnessed as a child. And yet, not all men were like the one she had grown up with. One, in particular, would never be the kind of man her father had become.
Delilah’s reflections steered her back to the reason she had run to Arne in the middle of a raging thunderstorm, and she stood up and paced across the room. The image imprinted on her mind of Noah’s devastated expression before she turned and ran out on him a second time made her stomach churn. After everything it had taken for them to find each other and for him to trust her again – even jeopardising his relationship with his mother in the process – the idea of letting him down again was gut wrenching. She had apologised for her first betrayal, but this time simply saying sorry would not be enough.
She turned to Arne in despair. ‘So, what do I do about Noah?’
‘That’s not for me to say.’
