"What?"

"She believed me." Crystal shifted again, leaning her elbow on the beanbag and looking at Jenny. "No matter what I told her or how I said it, Laura believed me."

"You will find as you fill your life with healthy people there will be people you can trust. Friends who will believe anything you tell them and won't judge you. Those are the ones you need in your life. Not the toxic people."

"You mean my old friends."

"As you grow up your friends change. Growing up in not something that happens when you turn eighteen and become a legal adult. Throughout your life you will find what I call the special friends."

"Like Laura," Crystal said. "After that talk with her, I feel like I can tell her almost anything."

"It's a good feeling to build trust with another person, isn't it?" Jenny asked.

"It felt good to tell the truth about what happened." Crystal was only willing to give a little, feeling a speech about trust coming up. To her surprise, Jenny had a different idea.

"And every time you tell your story to another person, you take some of that load off your shoulders. You lessen the power it has over you." "It doesn't have any power over me. I'm in total control," Crystal protested.

"You are, are you?" The annoying smirk returned. "When was the last time you rode an elevator alone with a man and not had a panic attack? When was the last time you had a good night's sleep that wasn't drug or alcohol induced? We haven't even begun to look at any sexual dysfunction that might be going on." The words hit home and Crystal knew it showed on her face. She scowled and looked away but her therapist and friend continued to talk to her. "You haven't had control over anything except how to stuff your feelings away by whatever means possible. Whether you want to admit it or not, you act and react based on your experiences and until you let go of the past, you can't move forward. Crystal, I want to talk to you about joining a group that meets here on Tuesday evenings."

"A group?" What the hell are you talking about? Sitting up and turning to face Jenny, Crystal gave the therapist her full attention. "There are a group of women who meet here every week to talk to each other about their feelings and experiences. It's for survivors of rape and sexual abuse."

"You're kidding. Sit in a room with a whole bunch of strangers and tell them about what happened?" Crystal shook her head vehemently. "Not a chance."

"What about that scares you?" Jenny asked. "Every woman in there is a survivor just like you are."

"Not a snowball's chance in hell, Doc. No way, no how."

"You could just sit there and listen. You're not obligated to say anything. The only thing is that the same rule applies to group as it does to our sessions. No drugs, no alcohol beforehand. Many of these women are in recovery from substance abuse as well." Jenny stood up and walked over to the couch, picking up her clipboard before sitting down on the leather cushion. Crystal's eyes followed her progress, wondering what the therapist was up to. She got her answer. "Do you remember what you wrote in your journal" Jenny looked down at the composition book and checked the date. "Friday night?"

Crystal's eyes widened as she tried to remember what she had written. The journal had become her nighttime ritual done while having her last cigarette before bedtime. Very often she would forget that Jenny would be eventually reading it and just let her mind flow with thoughts and feelings transcribed to the paper by her hand. "I um

I try not to think about you reading it when I'm writing."

"I see that," Jenny said. "You say some very powerful things in here but what keeps striking me over and over again in your writing is the need you have to feel like you belong somewhere."

"Huh?" Without thought Crystal moved forward, taking up Jenny's old position on the blue beanbag next to the couch. "I never said that." "You didn't?" Jenny held her finger against the page. "Right here and I quote 'sometimes I feel like I'm looking in on the rest of the world' and back here

" The pages were flipped. "You wrote quite a bit this day. Let me find it

  yes, right here. You wrote 'I feel like I'm all broken and no one can help me get back together again. No one understands'." Crystal could only nod, the truth there in her own messy handwriting. "I want you to take the next step, Crystal," Jenny said softly.

"I'll think about it," Crystal said, resting her elbows on her knees. "I'm studying for the GED at night too so we'll see."

"You are? You didn't tell me about this. When did you start that?"

"Laura found a web site with all this information and stuff on it. She printed out all these tests and has been having me take them so we can see what I need to learn," Crystal said excitedly. "I've been doing better than she thought I would."

"Laura's helping you?"

"Yeah. She's playing teacher, grading my tests and all that." Crystal tried to figure out what the odd look on Jenny's face meant but before she could the therapist stood up and walked over to the vacant beanbag.

"That's very good," Jenny said. "It's a step in the right direction. You should include writing about that in your nightly journals. You haven't mentioned it at all."

"I wrote about it in last night's entry but you haven't had a chance to read that one yet," Crystal said. "I was pissed off because I couldn't remember all these formulas Laura keeps trying to make me learn." She shook her head. "I don't know, Doc. Sometimes I think I can do it and other times I think I'm an idiot and I'll never learn it."

"It's very common to have self doubt, especially with something that seems such a high goal. I've had doubts myself when I was in school." "You did?"

"Of course. Everyone has doubts, Crystal. The goal is to face your doubts and continue on. If you fail once, that doesn't mean you'll always fail. Remember we talked about learning from your life experiences? Your mistakes as well as your successes?"

"Yeah, I remember," Crystal said grudgingly. "I feel like I'm going in twenty different directions and I'm not sure which one to take." "And when you feel like that, what do you do?"

"Besides heading for the nearest bar or my pipe?" Crystal said only half jokingly. "I dunno. I guess I talk to you or Laura." "I suggest you do more of the latter and less of the former."

"I thought you weren't going to nag me about my drinking?" Crystal asked, mentally preparing herself for a lecture on drinking. "I'm not yet," Jenny said. "I just made a suggestion, just like you going to that meeting on Tuesday."

"No. I don't need to be around a bunch of women all talking about the bad things that happened to them."

"I'm pretty sure just going won't kill you," Jenny said. "I promise you don't have to say anything if you don't want to but I strongly recommend you attend it, even if it's just one time. Just try it."

Crystal grumbled under her breath, not wanting to keep the topic going but not wanting to admit defeat either.

"Enough of that for now. You feel like talking about your journal?"

"Not really but I don't suppose that matters, does it?" Crystal said, sinking down into a comfortable position against the beanbag. "That's the spirit," Jenny said sarcastically. "So Thursday you went into great lengths about your tenth birthday. Why don't we start with that?"

When Crystal returned home, she found Laura in the kitchen, mouthwatering smells wafting through the air. "Hey there. It smells great," she said, hanging her keys on the appropriate hook lest they have another talk about the proper uses for a entry table. Hefting the bag in her hand, Crystal made her way into the kitchen.

"About five more minutes and everything will be ready," Laura replied, closing the oven door. "I thought garlic bread would be better than biscuits." "Fine with me." Setting the bag down on the counter, Crystal reached inside it and pulled out a bottle of beer. "Man, what a day. It took half the day to figure out where the chargers were for the cordless drills and then I had a hell of a session with Jenny a little while ago." "How did it go?" Laura held her hand out for the bottle cap then motioned at the kitchen table. "Let's sit while we're waiting." "It was brutal," Crystal sighed, sinking into the padded chair. "She wants me to join some group of women that sit around and talk about what's happened to them."

"Well if she feels it will help"

"How can that help me? Listening to them will only make me think of my own stuff and what good is that?" Shaking her head, Crystal brought the bottle to her lips. "I'm trying to forget about what happened to me, not relive it," she said before tipping the bottle and taking several long swallows. "That's not even the worst of it. She got me talking about some of the stuff I put in my journal." Looking up, Crystal saw Laura looking at her patiently. "I forget sometimes when I'm writing in there that she's gonna read it. I put in a bunch of stuff about how I felt when I was a kid and she wanted to talk about it."

"She wanted you to talk about it, you mean," Laura said. Crystal nodded, surprised to feel her roommate's hand cover her own on the table. "She's not kidding when she says talking about it will help make it feel better."

Crystal continued to look at the hand resting atop her own. "Maybe but it's not something I feel all that good about, you know?" She withdrew her hand, curling her fingers around the brown bottle. "She had me almost to tears at one point. I even picked up one of those spongy balls and threw it, can you believe that?" Shaking her head, Crystal took another drink. "Next thing you know she'll have me hitting a punching bag and visiting my 'inner child' or something stupid like that."