Reflections

The mug felt cold against Dr Kravolta’s skin as she held it loosely in her hand. It was a streaky sky blue colour littered with hand-painted daisies that had spots missed by whichever of her co-workers had created it in their pottery painting class following an excessive boozy-brunch. Too cheery. She picked up one of a charcoal-grey porcelain and inspected the ceramic. Too gloomy. She eventually settled on a clear glass inverted dome with a gold rim. Just boring enough.

The kettle boiled on the counter in front of her. Its intense rumbling increased with each second, the shiny black appliance shaking violently as if about to explode. She had been a little excessive when filling it, drops of water spitting aggressively from the spout of the kettle, raining down onto the marble counter. She didn’t bother wiping it.

The teabag swirled around the mug as she poured the water in, resembling a limp leaf caught in a whirlpool. She waited as the water browned, but impatiently removed the teabag earlier than necessary when the view of construction outside of the window was no longer entertaining her. The milk splashed as she poured it, joining the water droplets on the counter in an unsightly picture of ineptitude that induced nothing more than a deep sigh as she sprinkled sugar into the mug, the grains dissolving into what she hoped would be a calming remedy (so long as she ignored the stray grains on the counter - the art’s finishing touches).

She carried the mug over to the centre of the room, the liquid swishing back and forth with her movements and occasionally dribbling down the side of the glass. She placed the mug on the miniature white oak round table and sat down on the burgundy velvet armchair at the exact moment her client, Tanya, did the same.

She eyed the woman across from her. Her auburn hair was tied back into a sleek bun, the strands screaming for help as the hair tie held them hostage in a vice grip. She wore a navy blue pant suit with a black button-up underneath, her shiny black Steve Madden pumps just barely peeking out from underneath her trousers. On the surface, she appeared professional, put-together, confident. But upon closer inspection, the bags underneath her eyes seemed to weigh her down, and the dead skin on her lips was clinging on for dear life, desperate for hydration. Her tightly curated, trendy hairstyle was only there to hide the grease she could clearly see was forming. To put it bluntly - she looked a mess. Dr Kravolta tried her hardest not to wince as she digested the image before her.

She cleared her throat as she sat up straighter in her chair. “Tell me how you’ve been doing,” she instructed simply.

Tanya sniffed, seeming to struggle as she pondered over the question, her frail hands ceasing their fidgeting as she placed them on her knees, centring herself.

“I, uh, guess I’ve been having a hard time. Sort of.”

Dr Kravolta inhaled a breath as she considered her reply. “Could you expand on that for me?”

The question received a huff as her client began chewing the inside of her cheeks. “It’s a lot of things, really - family, work, life - nothing’s going well at all.”

“Alright. How about we begin with family? Talk me through what’s going on there.”

Dr Kravolta herself had always struggled to discuss personal matters, so she tailored her questions in the broadest manner possible.

Tanya shifted in her seat. “I suppose it’s pretty self explanatory. My daughter hasn’t spoken to me since my husb- ex-husband and I finalised our divorce. She thinks I’m at fault.”

“And why is that?” She spoke, with an almost clipped tone to her voice.

Tanya pursed her lips and released a sigh, her leg bouncing in a manner that told her she would rather be anywhere else right about now.

“I… had an affair,” she whispered, head down in shame.

Dr Kravolta looked up and narrowed her eyes. Before she could speak, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. She watched through the window on the door as David, the janitor, walked passed and glanced briefly into her room. As he did, his eyebrows furrowed as he did a double take, eyes shifting between her and her client confusedly. He scurried off after she caught his eye, embarrassed to have been caught.

Suddenly, Tanya finalised in a frustrated tone, “I don’t want to talk about family anymore.”

As if expecting this, Dr Kravolta just nodded, an almost relieved air about her.

“Alright. How about work?”

Her client seemed to relax a bit, in an area she was comfortable with now.

“I’ve always been somewhat of a workaholic,” she spoke more casually now. “Not in the negative sense of the word, though, I’m just someone who enjoys her job and puts a lot of time and energy into it.”

She tried desperately to be objective in her response. “How has that become a problem then?”

Tanya looked her in the eyes, almost as if she was staring into her soul, scrutinising and critiquing the deepest, darkest parts of her, and rolled her eyes petulantly.

“It was part of the reason my husband left. Truthfully, I don’t think he could handle the fact that I earned more than him.”

“Is that why you had an affair?” Her snappy response shocked her. She hadn’t intended to get so worked-up.

Tanya only stared, her breathing laboured as she struggled to find the words to respond.

She felt sympathy, then, for the woman across from her. Taking in every inch of her, she began noticing more and more flaws - the wrinkles in her pin-striped suit and her chipped red nail polish and the laugh lines unflatteringly framing her nose and mouth (surely a consequence of ageing; she couldn’t remember a time her client had smiled).

“I don’t know why I had an affair,” Tanya spoke dazedly, deep in thought as she stared ahead of her.

Dr Kravolta was becoming irritated now. Nothing was happening. She was making no progress. She and Tanya sat facing each other, their legs crossed and arms folded, inverted versions of one another. She wasn’t sure how to approach the next stage of the session. She was actually going to have to start offering some advice, or else they would get nowhere.

She tapped her red nails on the wooden arm of the chair arrhythmically, choosing her words carefully. She tried to think of how she would converse with any other client. “What, in your opinion, must change in your life in order for you to be content?”

Tanya was silent and unmoving. She was indolent in her manner and showed no signs of speaking up anytime soon.

Her mind was a whirlwind of thoughts. How was she supposed to council this woman? She’d been so desperate to find something, anything; hoped for some sort of epiphany to explode in her brain and make everything make sense. Tanya would be okay because she could make her okay. That’s what she’d been searching for. She was a therapist, and a damn good one at that. She’d given her life for this job, and for what? The woman in front of her couldn’t be fixed. She wouldn’t.

“Are you happy?”

The words escaped her mouth before she could even process their arrival in her brain. She froze as the words flew from her mouth to her ear as she actually absorbed what she had said. She didn’t know what it was, perhaps a last ditch effort to keep her sanity afloat, convince herself that all hope was not lost, that the woman before her was not gone.

Her breath began to quicken and her heart raced as if trying to keep up with her mind. Her palms grew clammy and she wiped them on her trousers, futile as it turned out - her sweat glands were faster.

Three things happened then. She narrowed her eyes angrily and clenched her jaw, she abruptly stood and stepped around the round table, and with a fierce determination, she reeled her hand back and drove her fist through the mirror.

As she pulled her hand back, the blood from her knuckles blending in with the chipped red of her nails, she stared into the glass and the cracks across her face made her lip quiver.

Heartbreakingly, she felt she had never looked more like herself.

She noticed her hair had come out of it’s tight bun and she couldn’t help but let out a bitter scoff. Her eyes shifted down to where her nametag sat on her chest; it was crooked from all her jostling and was inverted in the mirror, but of course, she knew what it said.

Dr Tanya Kravolta.

Her entire career, she has helped people in unimaginable ways. She’s had numerous clients send her letters and gifts, a token of their gratitude for the way she pulled them out of their darkest places and saved their lives. Even as she sunk deeper and deeper into despair while doing so.

Right now, in the mirror was Tanya - poor, broken Tanya.

Not even the esteemed Dr Kravolta could save her.

She knew then, as she stared at the truest version of herself, tears sporadically escaping her eyes and teeth gritting to prevent herself from letting out a gut-wrenching scream, that she would forever be stuck in that shattered prison that only promised misery and regret, trapped as she watched herself meretriciously stumble through life, a new tiny piece of her breaking each day, until she was nothing more than the particles that had to be swept from the floor because she cut someone’s feet.

She stared at her own face for a few moments longer as though she were looking at a stranger. Each broken glass fragment reflected a different piece of her that she kept supressed. She was surprised any of it was left intact. Every win, every client this mirror watched her help felt like she was one step further from her own freedom.

On the round table, the cup of tea sat, untouched, a thick spiralled film of milk formed at the top after being left for so long. She gazed down at the liquid, the milk looking almost congealed, and fell to her knees, hitting the floor with a painful-sounding thump. She grabbed the mug which had long gone cold by now in a vice grip, as if pleading with it to reveal the answers that she was desperately seeking yet knew weren’t coming. They never would.

She was the one who needed saving, but there was no one left to help.