16 Arrogant, rude & vulnerable

"What really happened yesterday?" She asked.

Apparently I was not to escape the subject called Mr. Boardmann this morning. He was the shroud of my thoughts like mist. I was getting confused about myself thinking about him.

"He didn't want to sleep with me. He wanted to talk again." I said.

"You did not call Pablo, so I would assume he was not violent?" Penelope asked.

I shook my head but my arms tingled when I recalled how he dug his hands into mine like a leech. I guess that was not considered violent enough for protection.

"What was it exactly that he said?" She asked.

I looked at Penelope, confused myself.

"I don't know." I said.

"Perhaps it was not what he said, but rather how he said it? Did he treat you badly?" She asked.

"No. I mean he was arrogant, rude but he could be very vulnerable too." I said.

"I've not seen you affected so much by a client before. You got to get a grip on yourself." Penelope said.

"It was not anything particular which he said. Everything he said sort of meshed together. I started questioning my own sanity." I said.

There it was. I said it out. How uncanny it was that when you are lost in your own thoughts you avoid them, but when you talk to someone, your greatest fear comes flooding out like rain. I did not realise it prior to this, even during my conscious fifteen minute thinking session about him. I knew that I did not want him to know about me and that I had started to feel insecure. Yet never had I questioned my own sanity. This can never be good.

"Oh, Lila. You are perfectly fine. I've not met a more down to earth person than you." Penelope said, with strength, comforting me.

"You don't know all of me, Penelope." I said.

"I know you are stronger than you look." She said, but she did not pry by asking me personal questions.

I appreciated that and her kind words eased me into glimpsing back into my past and trying to get a grip on it. I knew that there were many aspects which did not seem quite right, but it pained me explore the multitude of layers. It was as though a boulder had come falling in on me from the sky, my head was excruciatingly in pain and my heartbeats were drastically quickening. Yet I wanted to get it out; it was heavy. Something was not quite me. I was not who I believed myself to be. It felt that way.

"I can understand Mr. Boardmann. I'm troubled just like him. There are things that I do not remember about my past, not since my drug infused days. My mind's muddled." I said.

Penelope gave me a hug, and asked, "Would you like to tell me what you mean by that?"

"I don't know what's real and what's fantasy anymore." I said, in a voice which did not sound like my own.

"What do you think is real?" She asked me, in a very maternal voice.

I wished now that she were my mother. Something was also not quite right about my mother.

"The past three years were real." I answered.

"Before that?" Penelope asked, looking at me without the discrimination of judging me.

"It is hazy. I was hooked on drugs; I couldn't hold my job anymore. The withdrawal was even worse. I lost part of my memory." I said.

"Do you want to remember, Lila?" She asked me, gently.

"I never wanted to remember until I met him..." I said, softly, ashamed that one client could change the whole way I viewed my solitary, so-called peaceful life.

"Him?" Penelope asked, now holding my shoulders upright and looking at my face.

"He made me remember. I don't know how he did it. He is a nobody, inconsequential just like the others." I said.

"And that is what he should remain. A client and nothing else." Penelope said, in a firm voice.

I looked at her dumbly, although I did agree with her.