The Perfect Psych Patient

Depending on whether the doctor is laid-back, seasoned, masculine presenting or rigid, young, sensitive, feminine presenting they get different answers:

“Not great.” I’ll ease the green ones in slowly before giving them the blow by blow account in a dead panned rote.

“Terrible.” I know the ones who have heard everything before will either take it as an exaggeration or recognize it as the understatement it is upon further questioning.

I know every kid had something rough go on—family, peers, education. For most of my life, I imagined everyone dealt with situations something like my own. It was only after I met with a few “Not great” receiving doctors that I realized most people don’t get apologies from virtual strangers for their experiences. They probably don’t get the talks about how my childhood shouldn’t have been the way it was. Most people don’t make doctors cry.

I’m much better at direct questions when talking about my childhood, but I will try to give a synopsis. I was three when my role of the family baby was usurped by my youngest brother with Down syndrome. Because I was the only daughter, I was expected to be a caregiver and was changing his diapers until I was nine years old. My entire time at home was tied to being sure I could be the caregiver. I changed schools to avoid it, but it caused a lot of drama that I would put my parents in a position to figure out how to get three kids from three schools to and from. I was first to be dropped off and last to be picked up. It was the best two years—for that. This is when the sexually assaults began at home. Which was just added to the physical beatings I would get for standing up for myself. Again, only daughter, only victim. Forever, I just lived with the knowledge I was the rebellious, bad kid (who was popular, academically bright, and artistically talented). It wasn’t until I was an adult and my mother began to pick a fight with me like she would when I was a child. She just wouldn’t let anything go and let her emotions snowball until she spilled over and began hitting me. Not when I was an adult. I left the house before she could hit me. But I realized if I, a fully formed adult with experiences and education, couldn’t get her to calm down how was a child supposed to? And it also made me very angry at everyone else in the family that enabled her. But that’s what therapy is for.

“Do you drink?”; “Do you smoke?”; “Use recreational drugs?”; “That includes marijuana.”

It’s easy to answer all the questions. I have a tendency to answer the pointed ones with clear and concise responses. We cover childhood traumas and adult devastations.

“Can you recall a time you felt happy?”

I can.

“I can’t,” I lie. I wonder if this is possible: To exist in a body that doesn’t recall joy. I think that the answer of not being able to remember is more important than the truth. For the most part, it’s true.

I’m 22. It was too many years ago to matter. On the floor of a house in Seattle I won’t return to again. I’m bundled in a sleeping bag, a pillow shoved under my head. Behind me, my lifelong best friend. In front of me, the person who I would throw everything away with a single word. I try my best not to open my eyes, to not stare back into what we cannot have. For the moments before I succumb to sleep, I am happy. We are two people, in love, falling asleep to each others’ breathing.

I cannot recall who woke up first the next day, or what we did. I know we could never be, but know that evidence that we did exists.