Therapy Session

I stared at the screen and wondered what time it was. My mind slowly drifted away from the screen and to the clock on the wall. Exhaling a sigh, I tried not to express the frustration of wasting my time—one hour, once a week—to be here. With a shaking leg, I realized that only fifteen minutes passed.

I felt her stare through the screen as I continued to think. Think of what? I don’t know. What did she even ask me again? Oh yeah, right.

What do you want to do with your emotions?

There was a moment where I wanted to give her the right answer but as always, I dejected it and said something completely abnormal and useless.

“What I want to do is flush my emotions down the toilet.” I replied with a devastating chuckle because it wasn’t funny. It was concerning in her dark brown eyes.

The connection was poor but it managed to hold her stare before she blinked and smiled. I saw a bit of teeth and it brought me relief that I made her smile somewhat in a way I do with others. I was never good at expressing emotions.

“I’m kidding. I mean…yeah sure I wish I didn’t have to feel anything but…” I was suddenly itchy and scratched my neck. I glanced away from the screen and stared at my phone. Another instagram notification popped up and how much I wanted to look at it instead of talk to her.

With restraint, I returned to her patience, “I want to make peace with them. I don’t want to feel the way I am feeling now.”

She glanced around and thought of what she wanted to say, “That’s funny that you say that because as a therapist, that is what we say all the time. We are here to help you make peace with your emotions. And you saying you want to make peace is because you are a writer. Writers tend to…”

I was completely washed out. I didn’t remember what else she said after because of course I knew. I was a writer. I was a writer who created characters, who gave them a life either I experienced or didn’t. These characters were who I wanted and wished to be because in reality, I was no one.

It should’ve been a compliment. What she said. As she bantered on and on about making peace with my emotions and the life I did have growing up. The adjustment of adulthood and how in reality, you can’t run away from the likeliness of pain and endurance suffered in your childhood. It will be latched on your back like a shadow for the rest of your life.

Although I did like the compliment, I also turned a head away from it. I pondered and feel into a constant reminder of why I am here. Why I am speaking to her when she’s right…I could make peace with my emotions by writing behind a screen. But what is that saying again?

Writers die young.

We are engulfed in our emotions, impostering as somebody else on a piece of paper that we forget who we truly are. I was a heroine who came from a broken home that needs to overcome her past and fight for freedom. I was the villain who was misunderstood and ended up being killed for what they believed in. I was the sidekick who was constantly pushed aside because they didn’t have much of a voice and was shy to speak up. I was the child—-

I was the child with the face of a twenty-five year old. I was the twenty-five year old that carried the child from within. I was a body that held the same soul but bounded between childhood and adulthood.

“You there?” She asked and I shook out of it. My leg stopped shaking and I went silent. Silence was nice but with her here, I felt pressured.

”Sorry, what did you say?” I said shamefully.

Her shoulders dropped and once again, I felt like a disappointment.

“Do you think you feel this way as an adult because you had unmet childhood needs?”

I shrugged, “I mean…yeah I guess. There’s times where I believe I could overcome them but then they immediately return.”

She nodded, “And do you think this is because of the relationship between you and your dad?” I nodded, a small noise coming out of my throat and she continued, “You know these unmet childhood needs are—sorry if you disagree with me—but they end up becoming insecurities. So now what you are feeling are because of what you weren’t given as a child. Your dad wasn’t there to give them to you when you were growing up and unfortunately, as a child of divorce, it is more common for you to feel this way.”

”Right, right.” I said, unable to think because whenever I thought of any childhood needs, I drew a blank. Maybe my new character can have an unmet childhood needs she needed to overcome as an adult. Right because I can’t seem to do it. My insecurities are tucked away into my stories to tell myself that I am okay.

“And from a narrative perspective, you need to reflect and make peace—not with your dad but with yourself.”

”Mhm,” I replied and she waited for me to add on but said nothing.

“Are you ready to do that?” I nodded but truthfully, I wasn’t. I wanted to hang up on her, stop having these sessions and focus on something else I can do on a Friday evening instead of this.

I didn’t want to hear something new from another therapist after leaving my other three years ago. I was too exhausted to constantly talk about myself and how I was feeling just to return back to one thing. One person. Dad.

It still amazed me how one person in my life, one of my creator’s, did so much damage. Maybe I should thank him for making me the writer and thinker I was. He was so terrible at being a parent that now because I was a writer, I will die young. Or maybe that’s why my characters die young.

It took a few seconds to realize I was utterly and completely lost.

My eyes swelled with tears and I forced the bile in my throat down. I haven’t cried yet and no way was I going to cry in front of her. I was so tired of crying. I returned my gaze to hers and she patiently waited for me to answer.

“Are you ready to make peace with your emotions?” Why was she asking me again? I nodded! But I knew she wanted me to give her a vocal answer.

With a straight back and confident stare, I said “Yes, I am.”

Yet, I wasn’t ready because I was going to spiral back down and end up either creating more characters who mocked me in my head about what I could’ve done or could’ve been instead of sitting behind a blank computer screen. All of this was going to end and I was going to be strong enough to suppress my emotions until that thought in the back of my head reminded me of how brittle I was.

I was never going to recover and the way I was battling in my mind was never going to heal. The peace I wanted wasn’t ever going to come because like she said, I was a writer.

Writers were never civil. Writers were never quiet.

Writers were passionate, powerful, courageous and creative. Writers weren’t meant to exploit their words with their tongue but express it with words that gravitated to those who needed to read them the most. Writers were made to help those who struggled. Writers weren’t here to heal their own mind. Writers were lost and couldn’t find their way unless they revealed their minds to their own characters. They were too crazy to smother their thoughts.

My characters would be laughing at me right now. Seeing how vulnerable I am meanwhile she had a knife embedded in her shoulder after escaping a supernatural prison.

Maybe I should thank my dad for my creativity and loneliness.

”So what I want you to do for our next session is to make a list of all the unmet childhood needs that you didn't receive.”

This is going to be a long 12 weeks.