As if being forced to explain and justify herself to some shrink that she wasn’t completely crazy, just stressed to a breaking point (there was a difference after all), wasn’t bad enough. Articulating fundamental truths about her inner most being was verging on some level of Hell, she was sure. Talk about the weather, talk about school, talk about work, or sports even… anything but about herself and about her life especially. It was no one’s business. Hopefully this guy would be smart enough to keep any Freudian theory speculation to himself.
Brenda sat looking out a window at the spots of sunlight that had fought their way through the trees to illuminate the dead fallen leaves on the ground below, and she appreciated the beauty of it. This fleeting moment was summarily ended with the approach of a tricked out SUV booming some racket masquerading as “music” at levels that caused the windows of the small office to shake. The driver of the offending vehicle lingered at the stop sign, just in case anyone on the street had missed him. That figures. She’s willing the noise to eventually vibrate the rolling irritant to pieces.
“Tell me a little about why you’re here Brenda”.
She resists the set up to ask Captain Obvious if he could have been bothered to read the chart before speaking. “I was told that my eligibility depended on it.”
“Fair enough, but specifically I’d like to hear why it is you feel that your being alive is a mistake.”
Brenda pauses to carefully consider where exactly to begin. After gathering her thoughts she says “Life’s positives haven’t outweighed the negatives for longer than I care to recall, which quite frankly isn’t anything new. I’ve contemplated my death since early childhood, somewhere around the ages of seven and nine, which is right about when the nightmares started.” The doctor leans forward, intrigued, and encourages Brenda, “go on.”
“In these dreams it was never clear how exactly it was that I died; the specific means by which that came to be were never defined. The only common thread between them was that whatever happened did so after I turned 18 but before I could graduate high school. I can only imagine that someone might easily assume that a kid would be terrified by such morbid thoughts… but not me. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I looked forward to it.”
He stares at Brenda momentarily in a state of stunned disbelief. “I see here that the nightmares eventually stopped. Tell me more about that.”