Well this is the part of my story I've been avoiding. I haven't really talked about it besides the one therapist who I pissed off so badly he threw me out of his office. I suppose its time. I don't want to think my extremely balanced, calm demeanor appeared overnight. Ya, right, I'm still just a human. I just have less PTSD. It took the bulk of August for me to find a therapist I could work with. We tried twelve different ones. I finally found one that I felt comfortable with after one session. She was younger than Emma, just recently out of the military and no arrogance to speak of. She seemed compassionate but firm and handled my particular brand of rebellion very well. She was a specialist in PTSD. Emma knew her from the military. She didn't tell me quite how they met. Things got real at our fifth session.

I was wearing a skirt and a t-shirt. I had been wearing my skirts to get used to them, so I wasn't so freaked out about the school uniform. Dr. Yakovich suggested it, and it had been working. It was partially why I agreed to let mom make a second appointment. We were on our fifth now and she seemed great, but a bit hesitant about me. She peeked her head out of her door and motioned me in. I left my bag with my mom and went inside the office and sat down on one of her chairs. She sat in another across from me. Unlike a lot of the therapists we had tried she didn't have a desk between us. Her office wasn't pristine. It was chaotic, another reason I liked her. It made her seem like she wasn't caught up in looking like a therapist.

"Hello Amber."

"Hello Dr. Yakovich."

"Let's go with slightly less formal, call me Kim."

"Okay, Kim."

"So, how has the skirt wearing been going?"

"They are comfortable, but I still think I look like an anorexic albino. With knobby knees."

She smiled.

"You'll grow into your body. Just give it time Amber. Overall, how do you feel about your body?"
"It feels like it doesn't belong to me. I look in the mirror and I see a stranger."

"In your history, you mentioned a coma and memory loss. You think that could have something to do with it? Could we discuss that?"

I shrugged and nodded. She frowned.

"Amber, I'm not here to waste your time or mine. You've been dancing around the subject of your coma and Amnesia for five sessions now. Either you start being honest with me, or I can't help you."

I felt the urge to run but I stayed.

"I am scared to talk about it."

"Amber do you feel like this is a safe space between us?"

"I guess."

"Then why can't you open up about it?"

"Because I'm not sure I'd still be able to stay with Emma and Henry."

"You're already divorcing yourself from them in this conversation, last week you called them Mom and Dad."

I nodded.

"This is secret right; You can't tell anyone else what is said in here?"

"Not unless I think you are a danger to yourself and others. I think you will become a danger to yourself if you don't start making progress, now that is not a threat, or tell me or your doomed threat. I'm just saying I know PTSD when I hear about it and see it, and you have PTSD. You have some very traumatic memories, and you cannot deal with them until you're honest about them. I know its painful. If you can't trust me to tell me what really going on by now, I'm not sure you ever will."

I put my face in my hands and took several deep breaths.

"I lied about having amnesia. I remember everything that happened to me, who I was, who my parents were, who my family was, who my best friend was. I have a photographic memory I remember every scream, every prayer, every death gasp."

She had this brief instance of shock.

"Let's start with your real name."

"Kristen Laurence. She keeps haunting me like this ghost. Every time I feel like I am weak, or can't breathe. I'm back there in that body."

"You say, back there in that body, and are referring to your old self as a ghost. You're dissociating yourself from your past."

"Yes, how else can I cope with it, if she killed them then, me, Amber Morris, didn't, couldn't have done it. I just want Kristen to go away, be forgotten and dead."

"But she won't go away will she? She's there always at your back of your mind. Reminding you of what happened. You still look like Kristen, Amber, you are her. You can change that."

I had tears on my cheeks by now and was shaking my head.

"No, I don't. You don't understand. And I have no idea how I can make you believe me."

"Try."

I closed my eyes and took several more deep breaths. The thought of doing what I was about to do made me fill like throwing up.

"Do you mind if I pull out my phone?"

"Please do."

I dry heaved a few times while I my shaking hands turned on my phone and searched for my picture, my real picture on the memorial page for the explosion. It was me in a park with my guide dog in a wheelchair I couldn't even look at it. I gave her the phone and tried not to throw up. I was just so disturbed by the divide between what I see in the mirror and what I used to be my brain couldn't process it and was making my body act strange. Like my family had just died all over again. I was gasping for breath and hyper-ventilating. She closed the app for me and put my phone on her desk behind her. She waited for me to be able to get everything under control before continuing.

"That was obviously very traumatic for you. So why do you think you and this girl are the same? Does she talk to you?"

I blinked and my feelings of trauma were replaced by anger, I had just gone through all that and she didn't believe me. I yelled, I know I shouldn't have but my brain was not working properly at that point.

"I told you wouldn't believe me!"

I heard the door open and Kim stood up.

"Emma you should not be in here, leave please."

My mother stammered.

"But I heard her scream."

"You need to leave Emma, this is a private session and for it to be a safe space you need to keep it that way, if you can't please leave my office and come back in forty minutes."

Emma backed away looking like she'd been slapped. The door closed and Kim walked past me and locked the door then took her seat again.

"Sorry about that I try not to keep the door locked because I don't want you to feel trapped in here. I also apologize. I misunderstood."

I could hear in her voice she was patronizing me.

"That was me, twisted hands, legs that didn't work, I was mentally retarded, blind. I was a crippled little blight on my parent's lives. They would have been better off if I had never been born. Obviously, it was me who killed them. They spent twelve years trying to keep me alive, staying broke, losing sleep. Pretending it was a good thing I made through another year. They were good people, loving people and I"

I pounded my chest with my fist.

"Me, I killed them for all their trouble. And I survived. And now I look like this. Perfect face, perfect eyes, perfectly developing breasts, perfect hair. A mind so expansive I know most people around me can't keep up. I'm stronger, faster, smarter, I am just better then everyone. I don't deserve this body; I should have died with them. I should have died instead of them. That…abomination of a human being that twisted diseased genetic aberration, that is what I should look like, that is my true face."

I pointed at the phone.

She listened to me very carefully, but I could still tell. I shook my head and stood up. I walked to her desk where she had a chunk of granite as a book end and I crushed into dust in my hand. She fell out of her chair.

"Sorry, but you were being slow."

I sat back down.

"You're a metahuman."

"No, I'm not I'm a clone of Superman. Someone left a virus bomb and it was given to Kristen for her birthday and she turned into me and that process caused the explosion that burned my family alive around me my entire family every living relative was at my thirteenth birthday party celebrating that I was still alive. Every living being in that building was incinerated and I cause it, I did by touching that crystal. I can never forget their screams. How it felt to be burned by a fire hotter than the surface of the sun from the inside out."

She had gotten back into her seat and was staring at me. I couldn't blame her. She took several minutes to recover. She finally stood up.

"Excuse me for a few minutes Amber."

She went to her desk and clicked a few times, then walked out the office door and sat down across from me. She looked calmer now.

"I've told your mother I'm going to extend the session by an hour. Let's continue where we left off."
"Seriously? Just lets go?"

"Amber, yes I am shocked by all of this, but you have proven your point. I can help you come to terms with your new body. It is not the same, but it is not completely different then people who go through with gender reassignment surgery and have trouble coming to terms with their new body. Or children going through puberty, or people are in accidents where they are disfigured. You are not alone, you just have a different set of circumstances. The kind of trauma you have suffered it leaves a mark. With medication and cognitive behavior therapy we can make progress."

"I appreciate your belief, but the medication won't work on me."

"What do you mean?"

"They don't work on me. I tried to kill myself by overdosing on fentanyl I took enough to kill ten people, and I fell asleep for an hour. And woke up like It was nothing."

"Amber, are you still suicidal?"

"I am not, I mean I think the world would better off if I was dead, but I've tried several times and the only thing that came close was a void blast from a Metahuman and even that was taking forever. I am not going to list all my attempts off, but it is pointless to try again, because I will fail."

"Where you really trying? Did you genuinely mean to end your life? Or were you just doing things you knew you wouldn't get hurt by?"

"I didn't know what could or couldn't kill me. I was trying hard. But how am I going to succeed with a body like this?"

I reached into my purse and pulled out my work knife that I used on the farm. Kim's eyes went wide as I pulled it out my sheath.

"Amber, you don't have to do this."

I slammed it down on my thigh and she screamed. The blade shattered leaving me holding the handle. I threw the handle in her garbage pail and dusted the debris from my skirt and legs into my hand and let it fall into the garbage pail. Kim was pale and breathing heavily. Like she was having a panic attack, but she seemed to come to her senses.

"This is what I live with. I don't break, the stuff that hits me breaks. If I get hit by a car, the car and the people inside they get hurt, I don't. If I'm hugging my sister and I don't have absolute control over my body I could kill her."

Kim nodded and looked much less freaked out.

"I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that, I frightened you and made a mess."

"No, no, you are fine. You are trusting me with some very sensitive information about yourself. I am not familiar with any of what you are experiencing physically. If you had told me that you were immune to knives, I wouldn't have believed you."

"Bullets barely leave bruises."

"So, you did try to kill yourself, but you're no longer having those thoughts?"

"No."

"So the things your mother listed off where she thought you didn't care about living or not, when you moved between her and the bullets, it had nothing to do with wanting to die, you just knew they wouldn't hurt you?"

"At that point I was pretty sure they wouldn' hurt me. I was shot eight times and once in the a short time before. I assumed it would hurt and I would wake up a few minutes later with the popping out of me like they did before. But that time they bounced off. My durability seems to be increasing exponentially."

"So, you didn't think you would die protecting them, or when you walked into those power lines."

"I honestly wasn't sure about the powerlines I didn't try electrocution, but apparently it didn't do anything to me. I was pretty sure I would be fine, but I wasn't really thinking, this could kill me yay when I walked into them. I was just thinking I need to get them out of there."

"Okay, I understand. I'm confident you aren't going to hurt yourself or anyone else. Let's go back to the mirror. Come with me."

Kim walked towards a door when she opened it there was a full-length mirror on it. Look in the mirror Amber. I stepped in front of it. I saw a bruise where the knife had hit me. I flicked more metal fragments off my skirt.

"Who do you see?"

I shrugged.

"Who am I supposed to see?"

"Look in the mirror, and say, I am Amber Morris and this is my reflection."

I rolled my eyes.

"I am Amber Morris, and this is my reflection."

"Good. Now say it like you believe yourself."

"I am Amber Morris, and this is my reflection."

"Better. Is there anything of Kristen in your reflection, look closely."

"I don't know I was blind; I couldn't see more then blurs."

"You have a photographic memory, think back to the picture you showed me."

"I don't want to."

"You need to, to get past your aversion."

"I'm feeling sick."

"Take a deep breath. And once you're ready try again."

I took a few deep breaths and pushed the feeling of nausea that was threatening to overwhelm me.

"Is there anything left of Kristen in your reflection?"

I shook my head.

"No."

"Then perhaps the way you are dealing with this body dysmorphia is what is best for you, hmm? Kristen is dead, Amber Morris is alive and looking at herself in this mirror."

"Look in the mirror again, look at every part of the reflection. Move your hand wiggle your fingers and say out loud, I see my left hand. I see my face. I see my chest. I see my knee. Do it every time you have privacy and are looking in a mirror. And when you don't think it to yourself. Every time you see a picture of yourself, or your reflection. That is me, Amber Morris in that picture, that is me Amber Morris in that mirror. When you hear your voice on a recording, think to yourself that is me talking, that is Amber Morris. You need to train yourself to see you in the mirror. You are Amber Morris, and that beautiful face is your face. That beautiful hair is your hair. Whatever your mind thinks it should see, it is wrong."

She closed the door and motioned to the seats we were using before.

"Amber, this is going to take a long time. We can't fix this overnight and with your inability to take medication it is going to take longer, but we can get you through this, we just need patience. You are going to have to put in most of the work. There are also some other things we need to address besides the PTSD and Body Dysmorphia. You have ADHD. You also have ASD. You don't grow out of those. You learn to live with them, and you can't be medicated for the ADHD. We have a long road ahead of us, but if you're willing to put in the work you can overcome all of this."

"I'm a human brain stuck in an alien body. You honestly think I'll be okay?"

"I do."

"You're very optimistic."

"I am."

"Okay, I think that is enough for today. We have broken down the barriers between us. That is the hardest part, now we just have to break down the barriers in yourself."

"Thank you, Kim."

"Thank you for trusting me."