Prompt: Clothes
Steve watches as Jessica says those words, her voice filled with sadness. It's almost like she's resigning herself to the fact that it's bound to happen again at some point in the future. He doesn't want think about what would have happened if Danny hadn't had gone into Jessica's room that day to in order to get her clothes so he could do the laundry. He hates seeing her seeing her like this, hates knowing that there's nothing he can do to protect her from her own demons. What he wants to do is to go beat Jessica's biological father bloody, wants to put him in the ground for what he did to her. Steve knows he can't know though, knows can't take the law into his own hands no matter how much he'd like to. Instead he scoots closer to Jessica. He can't protect her from the past, but he can keep her safe in the future. Reaching out, he puts his hand over hers, stilling her motions as she continued to pluck at the string on the pillow.
"Then we deal with it ok?" Steve assures her. "Look Jessica whatever happens in the future, Danny and I will be here to support you and help you. We're not going anywhere. I promise. No lies."
"I know that," Jessica tells him, wrapping her fingers around his. Steve can hear the sincerity in her voice, see it in her eyes. "I know that no matter what happens I'll always have you. You and Danny…you've both been so amazing," she says, looking over at him. "I just…I feel like I'm always going to have to deal with this you know? Like no matter what, I'll always be damaged goods. And I just…sometimes I feel like I'm crazy. That defense attorney, he was right. I wasn't hearing voices before, when I was living with him." She refers to her biological father in the 3rd person as she often does when she's upset and Steve squeezes her hand, supporting her silently. "He was beating me and shooting me up with heroin and…"she pauses, biting out the next word. "raping me, but I was still going to school, I was getting good grades, I was fine. But now, I mean it's been almost a year and I'm having panic attacks and flashbacks, I have nightmares, I hear voices, and I feel like I'm losing my mind. Maybe I am crazy."
"I promise you, I promise you, you are not crazy and you are not damaged," Danny insists. "Do you hear me? You are not damaged." His voice has the strained, ever so slightly pressured tone to it, the one that Steve associates with Danny being stressed and desperate. He knows how much Danny takes this heart, how much he wants Jessica to understand what he's saying and more than that to believe it. It hurts Danny to see Jessica like this. It hurts Steve too but Steve thinks it hurts Danny more. Danny's been a father before, knows how carefree and innocent Grace was at her age and while he's never said it, Steve knows that Danny counts his lucky stars every night that Grace never had to go through what Jessica did. Danny's sitting next to him and Steve places his other hand on Danny's lower back and Danny leans into the touch.
Steve's at a loss for what to say, how to help either of them right now, but Jarrod speaks up then, coming to rescue. "Danny and Steve are right Jessica. You're not damaged or crazy. You're a survivor. And it's important for you to see yourself that way. Look you've spent the last 4 years of your life in survival mode and I'm not convinced that some form of abuse didn't start much earlier than that. Your brain was trying to protect you. You couldn't process what has happening because you were still inside of it. And the getting out of it only added on more trauma. And once you did get out, your body had to detox from heroin addiction." Jarrod leans forward again as he continues to talk."
"When you go through a traumatic experience, that trauma literally changes the brain chemistry. And you didn't just have one, you had years of trauma. First, your body needed a chance to heal. Now your brain has to heal. But your brain doesn't work on a switch. It's not like you got out and suddenly it knew you were safe. Your brain is still in survival mode. Over this past year, it's slowly realizing that it doesn't need to do that anymore. That Danny and Steve have given you a space that's not only physically safe but emotionally safe for you as well. And now that your body and your brain are finally starting to feel safe again, you can start to process everything that's happened to you. All the symptoms that you're having, it's all your body and your brain trying to process and integrate what happened to you."