I had a good therapy session this week.

My therapist has just gotten her EMDR certification a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago now.

And she’s using me as a guinea pig – which I love.

We worked on something this week that’s really been bothering me for a long time.

I’ve talked about it briefly before here, a couple of times.

I’m terrified that Bruce will be caught in a fire in the apartment.

The fire alarm (which he is petrified of) blaring, the fire engulfing him as he burns alive, scared shitless.

Brutal and descriptive, I know.

But it runs through my mind over and over, and over, and over, and over again, every fucking time I leave him by himself at home or anywhere.

I can’t stop it.

My anxiety creeps up my neck and I can’t swallow properly, I can’t breathe right, when I leave him alone.

It drives me up the wall.

I can’t enjoy myself when I leave him by himself.

Ever.

It’s literally torture for me to leave him home alone.

It’s fucking brutal.

It basically feels like a constant, dulled panic attack.

And I haven’t been able to stop it for years now.

Years.

It’s crippling at times.

I have been places, and turned around, and come back home, crying because I’m paranoid about poor little Brucie.

I know it’s not that rational.

But the images of Bruce burning up and shaking profusely and barking at the door for me, doesn’t leave my mind until I get back home and see that he’s fine and the apartment isn’t on fire.

I know it’s not okay.

I know I’m throwing myself into fits.

I know this.

And I can’t stop it.

I’m terrified of fires.

I’m terrified that this time, I won’t be home to do anything about it.

See, the thing is that my brother and I started a fire when we were younger.

He’s four years older than me and I wasn’t older than 7 or 8 years old at the time.

We started a forest fire.

We put it out in time.

Before it got too big and engulfed the house, the street, and the entire country neighborhood.

But we were out walking in the woods.

My Mom was out somewhere, running errands or visiting with friends.

My Dad was taking a nap.

And my brother and I were literally playing with matches.

He was showing me how to light them, and had thrown the discarded ones on the ground.

One at the beginning of the trail.

One at the very peak of the trail, at the edge of the woods – where it meets up with the neighbor’s small, enclosed horse pasture.

Once we saw the fire at the beginning of the trail, I made my brother run to the far back of the trail – where he had thrown down the other match, to make sure there weren’t two fires that we were dealing with.

There was just the one, thank goodness?

I wish there hadn’t been even one that we had to deal with.

Because teamwork, and a literal firefighter mentality went into effect inside both of us.

We grabbed the hose and hooked it up to the well head at the edge of the driveway.

It didn’t reach.

It wasn’t long enough.

We remembered that we had a second hose in the shed, and grabbed it.

It barely reached.

We were about four feet short of really having a good angle.

So my brother grabbed a five gallon bucket.

I had control of the hose.

He had control of the bucket.

I had my thumb over the nozzle to spray, like you would for distance and fun in the summer time.

Except this wasn’t for fun.

This was desperation.

This was, we need to save the house.

We need to not get our asses handed to us.

I would pause the spraying to fill up my brother’s bucket so he could go to the outskirts of the fire and wet down the dry pine needles.

So the fuel wouldn’t be available for the flames to keep spreading.

Luckily it wasn’t a windy day.

And luckily we were in southwest Michigan where the 90% humidity days reined, and the forest was fairly, consistently, damp enough that the fire couldn’t take hold of any one thing.

Even the dry pine needles laid on a bed of damp ones underneath.

I don’t know how long it took to put out.

I just know when we were done there was a capital “D” shaped figure about 15-20 feet in diameter that was charred black, and smoldering, but no longer burning.

We had succeeded in hiding our burning secret.

For the time being.

Days went by.

Weeks went by.

About a month later or so, my Mom’s friend came over with her two kids.

They wanted to go for a walk in the woods.

My brother and her son took off five to ten minutes or so ahead of us.

My brother left me to deal with the repercussions, with the charred remains.

A burning theme throughout life.

I, at the age of 7 or 8, started to cry.

Hard.

I remember sitting on top of the toilet, with the lid down.

My mother gently nudging me, trying to get out what was wrong.

And me, just fucking losing it.

You know when kids are crying and the words get lost in the breaths.

The convulsions of that borderline hysterical cry-talking that kids get when they’re really upset.

The memories of trying to put it out were coming back.

The fear.

The anxiety.

That fucking fear.

And keeping that fucking secret.

I hate secrets.

So I told her.

You’re gonna see a huge black, burned area, Mom.

It’s right there, right to the right, when you first walk down the trail.

I remember the confusion on her face trying to piece together what I was trying to say through the tears.

She was accepting, nurturing, and caring.

She was grateful she didn’t just stumble upon it.

She was grateful that I had told her.

And that gave me a sense of relief, even through the fear.

I can vividly recall, even after we worked with the EMDR gestures, sitting on that toilet, with my Mom crouched down to my level, coaxing the information out of me slowly.

I can remember the sense of relief.

After the intense EMDR work though, the memories are spotty at best.

I’m sure there were more before.

A sentence my brother said.

Something I blurted out.

Something that was specifically done by one of us.

But I can’t recall now.

At all.

And I’m kinda grateful for that.

I’m not grateful for my paranoia.

But I’m hopeful it can start to fade now.

Because Thursday afternoon, just hours after my EMDR session, was the first time I was away from Bruce without obsessive, constant thoughts about him perishing in a fire.

The very first time.

I thought about it on the way home.

But I thought about how I hadn’t thought about it yet, and I was listening to a podcast, and it left my mind again, and I enjoyed the podcast the rest of the way home.

I didn’t anxiously obsess over Bruce, and the fire alarm going off on him.

It finally gave me a sense of relief.

Similar to what I felt while my Mom was coaxing the information out of me all of those years ago.

Maybe I can’t be there to put out all of the fires that start.

But maybe some fires won’t take off like expected.

And I know I feel like I can’t count on anyone else, but maybe that’s putting too much pressure on myself.

I know a lot of those feelings stem from shituations like this.

From me sitting alone, dealing with something by myself that my brother had more of a hand in than I.

But I took the responsibility.

And I told the truth, even though it was scary.

And I’m so grateful for EMDR right now.

I kept feeling rushes of cool water sweep over me while in session.

I found it quite healing.

I do think I need another session or two on this topic.

I don’t think one is quite enough.

But I know it’s a huge start.

It’s a leaping off point from where I was on Thursday at 10am, an hour before my appointment.

I’m so grateful that I’m with a therapist that I trust with everything right now.

It’s wonderful to be able to work with someone whom I know is there for me 110%. 

And my fear of fires may not be completely gone right now, but I do think that our EMDR work will have a positive impact on it.

And that hopefully, at some point in the near future, I’ll be able to leave Bruce, or whatever dog I may have at the time, home alone, without this impending doom feeling.

– Keren