Dr. Whats-his-name

My mother took me out of school early today to go see a crisis counselor in some foreign area of town where it looks like everyone lives in constant fear of either being mugged, or molested, or both.

I walked into the counselors office and immediately felt like Alice must have when she fell down the rabbit hole; completely disoriented and completely idiotic.

“We have an appointment at 1:00″, my mother smiled kindly at the lady working at the reception desk.

The lady didn’t smile back, she just took down my information and told us that we could take a seat in the three chairs pushed up against a far wall.

I took that oppurtunity while we were sitting there waiting for one psychiatrist to come out of their office and take me back into the room which I’m sure smelled of pinesol (all the counselors and psychiatrists offices I’ve ever been in do), to take in my surroundings.

It was the smallest office I had ever seen, from outside it looked like the house I imagined Hansel and Gretel lived in, quaint and dainty with Christmas written all over the outside design.

The inside was even more sickening. The walls were a bleach white like they had been painted that color just to give someone a headache for staring at them too long.

“You have to at least try and put on a happy face, just a little one”, my mother shrugged, smiling meakly at me.

I rolled my eyes. My mother could be so stupid sometimes, she didn’t get that I was not happy, so I was not going to just out on a happy face so she could feel like I was improving. Besides, if I smiled it felt like I was giving myself a false hope that I was getting better, and I knew I wasn’t yet.

“Violet?” the counselor came out to get me, putting in a gleeful smile.

Great, I thought, someone else to tell me how happy I should be because my life is so much better then most peoples.

I didn’t look back at my mother who had her hand on my shoulder, but went into the room withmy head held high, just so the counselor-guy couldn’t see how indignant I was to even be here.

“Hello Violet, I’m…”

I stopped paying attention right then and there. When I came into the office the first thing I noticed was a giant glass door that led out to a grassy plain and a lake nearby, with elegant geese running across the grass.

I went straight over to the window and looked out at the geese who were flapping their wings and running around like manaics, just happy to be wild and free.

I put my hand on the glass, feeling utterly lonely. I wanted to be a goose, to be carefree and happy was all I had ever wanted. I wanted the mother goose with all her little ducklings to take me in as one of her own, even if I had to be the ugly duckling, I didn’t care.

“Violet?” a felt a warm hand on my shoulder.

I flinched away.

The psychiatrist stepped back, “Well, I can see I’m going to have my work cut out for me here”, he said as if I were some experimental invention he was planning on fixing and entering in a science fair.

I kept my eyes narrowed to the floor, my arms wrapped tightly around my chest. Couldn’t he see that I didn’t want him to work with me, I didn’t want him to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, I just wanted someone to listen to me, to treat me like I really mattered and that I wasn’t just asking for dumb attention, because that’s not what all this was.

Maybe I would talk more now with the psychiatrist, if only I could remember his name.