I am laying down on thin carpet. It is hard beneath me, and my lower back burns slightly with the rocking. I tilt my chin up and back. I stare through the blinds. I am looking through the leaves of trees, noticing the patterns of sky between branches, between the falling, dying leaves. Tinnitus helps me focus on the sky, a white noise lulling me to sleep. Not sleep, rather, dissociation. These are two words I don’t actually know yet: tinnitus and dissociation. As I’ll come to learn years later, I don’t know many words that describe what I am experiencing. Tinnitus I simply refer to as: “the ringing.” Dissociation: “sleeping with my eyes open.”

Almost 20 years later, I learn “sex trafficking.” Specifically, that it can apply to the process of producing CSAM. I learn this as I sit across from a pedophile, who further teaches me how accessible certain handbooks are on the dark web. I am asking him many personal questions, like how he learned about sex, what age range he prefers, what kind of videos he’s into. He answers readily, with vigor. In the same manner as most pedophiles do: excited to share their hidden parts with an interested listener, and relieved to confess that these hidden parts are uncontrollable, growing, and beloved.

I glance again at his charges. Several counts of possession and production of CSAM. And, there, additional counts of sex trafficking. I had to google whether simply developing, filming and disseminating CSAM was included in the definition of “sex trafficking.” It is.

Now I am looking through the trees. At the patterns of sky. Both moments, here & there, happening at the same time. A word from the DSM-5 I learned 18 years later: re-experiencing.

I try to let the trees fade away. I feel my feet on the cell floor. I notice my back pressed into the metal chair, not, in fact, rocking along the carpet. The trees dim from my vision. The ringing dulls.