Page 267 of Tempting Venom
“Thank you, Dad. It feels good to know he suffered.”
“Anytime, son.”
“And, Dad?”
“Yes?”
I gulp past the feelings clogging my throat. “Do you think I’ll ever get better?”
“You already are, Preston.” He rests his hand on my head, his fingers sliding gently through my hair. “Youalready are.”
37
PRESTON
All those emotions drained me.
Yikes.
Someone come numb my brain.
But also, not really. The hours I spent talking to Dad about everything and nothing, jumping from one topic to another like a hyper monkey, were everything I didn’t know I needed.
The entire time I yapped, Dad just listened. Yes, there were a couple of huffs andBe serious, Prestons, but, mostly, helistened.
And I’ve never felt so close to my dad as I did at that moment.
We had a talk with my nemesis, Dr. Fenwick, and agreed to meet more regularly once I’m physically better.
Just kidding, he’s not my nemesis. Dr. Fenwick can be all right, I guess. I modeled Dr. Duret after him and Mom in my mind, a half-professional, half-mother figure.
He said it was my hallucinations acting up again, and they’ll probably continue to do so. It’s how my brain is wired, after all. What we can do is make sure I’m more self-aware of the signs, so I don’t let my imagination blur reality.
Dr. Fenwick mentioned that the next time I see Dr. Duretor Lenin, I should scream bloody murder. He didn’t say those exact words, but he said I should talk to him immediately or tell Dad.
We ended up talking about trauma—my favorite bedtime story, apparently.
And by “talking,” I mean Dr. Fenwick said a bunch of things that made uncomfortable sense while I pretended not to have an existential crisis. He told me something I never really let myself consider.
“Listen, Preston. When you get hurt young, before your brain has fully developed, the damage doesn’t just sit there like a bruise. It builds foundations. It sneaks into the wiring. It molds itself around the abuse because that’s the only blueprint it has. It shapes who you become because you don’t get the opportunity of growing without it.”
So basically, I didn’t grow into whoever Preston Armstrong was supposed to be.
I grew into whatever my trauma sculpted with its filthy little hands.
I didn’t get normal developmental stages; I got survival instincts in funhouse-mirror shapes. My personality became a patchwork of coping mechanisms no one warned me were optional. And the worst part? I’ll never know who the untraumatized version of me was supposed to look like. Maybe he would’ve been softer. Maybe he would’ve been boring. Maybe he would’ve been a nerd, who knows? But that boy is gone, and I can’t resurrect him.
And that’s the miserable, liberating truth.
I can’t go back in time and pull my younger self out of that house, or out of that room, or away from those cigarette-coated hands. I can’t edit the past the way I rewrite my own lies. All I can do—and this is the part Dr. Fenwick insists ispossible—is learn how to live with the version of me that survived. Stop letting fifteen-year-old wounds sit in the driver’s seat while I pretend it’s all just static and bad vibes.
The trauma isn’t going to vanish into thin air. It’s not going to wake up one day and decide to stop haunting me because I’ve “grown” or whatever self-help nonsense people write on Pinterest boards.
But it also doesn’t have to run the whole damn show anymore.
Maybe, for the first time in my life, I get to decide who I am.
Not the past.
