three fifty seven

cog: I want to ask you about your sucking your thumb.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: My what?

cog: Your thumb-sucking.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: Why?

cog: I’m quite concerned about you.

laughs

ache¹ before she became ache¹: I’m not going to do it in front of you or your friends anything.

cog (swallowing): Mm-mm that’s not... It’s just, I’m wondering... if it’s just em, like, the reaction to something horrible that happened to you in your childhood.

laughs

ache¹ before she became ache¹: Well I...

cog: I suppose you don’t want to, reveal that to me in the middle of this place at uh, five forty three pm.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: You’re so self-conscious it’s unbelievable.

cog: Ha! Okay I’ll stop, I’ll try and stop, and just...

Pause.

cog: If you did have any traumatic experiences when you were a kid, would you find it difficult to talk about it?

ache¹ before she became ache¹: I don’t know eh...

cog: What?

ache¹ before she became ache¹: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t remember having.... but I started sucking my thumb when I was born, so, they’d’ve had to’ve been really quick

cog: Eh?

ache¹ before she became ache¹: They’d’ve had to’ve been quick to give me a traumatic experience

cog: I know but if you keep sucking your thumb after a certain age... See I read it in the Catholic shop 
laughs
cog: that we went to today.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: You’re kidding.

cog: It’s a sign, of abuse.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: No it’s not.

cog (laughs): It is, I promise you. It’s a book that, it says “look after your child”, it says

ache¹ before she became ache¹: And it says that thumb-sucking’s a sign of abuse?

cog: Thumb-sucking after a certain age.

Pause.

cog: Maybe you need to be hypnotised to see if there’s a memory in there, that you’ve erased.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: I don’t want to find out, what would I say to my mum and dad? If I found out they’d done something to me when I was a little girl.

cog: Well it doesn’t necessarily have to be them.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: Well... I suppose...

cog: But like, my mum getting hypnotised about her being burnt when she was two

ache¹ before she became ache¹: When she was what?

cog: Didn’t I tell you when she was two she burnt herself very severely and one of her legs is all covered in burns still

ache¹ before she became ache¹: Really?

cog: like from when she was two and em, she had herself hypnotised so that she could remember the experience... and she said it was really helpful because she, she had felt really resentful before towards, well her parents and everything for letting her burn herself but in fact, the way she remembered it through hypnosis was that she was actually playing with the fire and seeing what would happen.

ache¹ before she became ache¹: Uh-huh.

cog: So maybe...

laughs

Pause.

cog: I’m sure there’s all sorts of things in people’s pasts that they were too young to remember, but have affected them mentally and really seriously for the rest of their life.