useless therapy

a short fiction

It’s the end of the world.

Actually, it’s Saturday,

“Here is a pen and scratchpad. Take time to write a few notes about how you feel and any new symptoms that have developed. “

“Well, there’s now a constant ache to prayer, and I’ve made a dessert I had once as a kid.”

“So it’s severe.”

“I guess you could say that.”

For the next hour or two, the dessert and what it represents are dissected.

“How did you eat it? With your hands or with a fork? Did it taste the same? Did it fix anything? Was the dessert masculine or feminine? What came to mind as the sugar crushed between your molars, what images, where was the ache, and can you describe it in under 30 seconds because we are running out of time.”

I leave with my purse filled with alcohol pads that I’ve been slowly collecting after each visit, on each is the printed image of a sunset, for reasons I don’t understand. I never associated those cold, wet squares with brilliant displays of light- and honestly, each time I use one I see the therapists growing uni brow in the corners of my mind, how it rests atop his glasses as if he were some comically constructed cartoon.

Sunsets make me think of the lake I grew up next to, which, in lieu of a constant companion, I often wrote and performed songs for. I’d find some unattended dock, check behind my shoulder, open my mouth, and sing for as long as the trance lasted. Earnestly, poorly, my big heart against the sky.

Large bodies of water listen incredibly well, and they don’t pester much—only spitting up bits of driftwood or people’s lives they tossed out.

I used to scour the beach for plastic bottles, cans, and other scraps. I grew especially fond of walking past groups of young men, picking up what was obviously their litter, and trying to make them feel bad about it as they asked me to join them. I don’t think I wanted to feel superior — I think I wanted a story- one to give or take, I’m unsure, but I’m now sure they didn’t talk about it longer than calling me a self-centered asshole before getting on with their volleyball game. ( which I was. What teen isn’t?)

I think I wanted to be called beautiful by them, but as I understood beautiful things to be fleeting, I understood that I had to walk away: in the interest of both beauty and myself.

While I certainly wasn’t polluting the environment with my songs or my weird ways of socializing, I was still littering. Trying to find ways to leave myself in other people’s heads, scrounging the sand to make my existence more than routine.

Speaking of routine— the alcohol pads. By now, I have approximately 150 of them, far more than I’ll ever use, taking up space that could be used for more important things. I think a part of me is trying to get my money’s worth. There’s this unease I carry with me, too. Which is why I’m here, pilfering the alcohol pads, waiting for my therapist to finally give me the big list of exactly what is wrong with me and precisely what I can do to fix it. So far, he’s given me nothing and just tells me to bill my insurance and see him the following week, which I do, and our conversations follow the drag path we’ve previously established.

Which leads me to my conclusion: either their is nothing wrong with me at all, I’m merely mildly histrionic with hypochondriac tendencies ( a modern person ) and I’m being used as a steady stream of income or, and this one is unlikely, there’s something deeply disturbed with me and he’s taking his time to crack it open as to not shatter me.

I mean, I’ve done research myself, if you can even call it that, Research. Letting ill-informed opinions fill my stomach while I try to piece together some mental image of what I look like from the outside. So far, each time I wrestle with the idea of myself, I’m wrestling with a shifting blur. She wants to, she becomes. She tastes, touches. She follows shiny things, gets distracted by the veins beneath her skin. I like her, I think. She’s floaty.

Now, as I’m sitting here, thumbing apart the wet leaves of the alcohol pad, what it is I’m trying to cure is the issue of having a body. Or rather, the lack of the issue, the state of going through life and having things stick with you longer than you want, because you are a learning creature. That is your habit, your adaptation. You learn, you carry weight— and as I’ve never been hunted, I’ve made my own beasts out of boys and dessert cakes, filling my purse with unwanted sunsets.