Therapy

Therapy
by R. Murdoch

“So, R. why are you here today?” she said as she rested her chin in her hand, picked up her pen and looked at me. And I knew perfectly well I was there but I shifted in my seat and lied,

“I don’t know. They made me come here,” and she asked me,

“Okay, why did they make you come here?” and I started to cry. Putting down the pen and the clipboard she asked me what was wrong. I remember thinking that she didn’t look like a therapist. She looked like a normal person, not like the ones on T.V. shows and in movies. I tried looking everywhere except for at her, and I took a few breaths chocking back my tears, and mumbled,

“I really don’t think I need to be here right now. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m sure she got that all of the time, but at the moment it was no concern of mine.

“R., no one said that anything is wrong with you. But I’m getting paid for this hour either way. How we chose to use our time is completely up to you. You can act like a child, or you can act like an adult. Even if you’re only here this one time, I would like you to get something out of it.”

“What is it? Are you worried that I’m going to pull something dark and scary out of you? Is it a secret you’ve never told anyone?” something in the way she said that made me more scared than I had ever been in my entire life. I looked down,

“No,” I replied. It was a lie though; I was terrified and thought she was going to do just that. Even worse, I was worried that she knew it, the secret about me that no one else knew. I felt like she knew everything about me.

“Good, then we shouldn’t have a problem here, should we?”

We spent the remainder of the hour talking about the basics, school, family, friends, interests, I cried a lot but talking wasn’t so bad, I actually kind of liked her. When the hour was up she looked at me and asked,

“Will we be seeing each other again?” I was nervous all over again, and I gulped down the lump in my throat,

“Yeah, I think I’ll come back.” And she took out a business card and wrote down a time for an appointment next week. She walked me out of her office and touched my arm as she told me goodbye and that we would see each other soon.

I left her office feeling happier than I had in a long time. However, I was worried about the dark scary secret that she mentioned earlier. But I was arrogant; I thought I was smarter than her. I was convinced that she would never hear those words from me. And that’s the day that my life really started. I saw her for over a year, and she didn’t even have to pull it out of me, I gave it up willingly. And in doing so she became the only person I ever became freely close and stayed close to. She was the only person I had ever been honest with.