'And what does she think she’s going to achieve? Does she
think I’m going to speak with her like she’s my bff? If I’ve ever had one… She
knows nothing about me, my life and most of my problems, and yet she still
thinks she’s able to fix me? Right! FIX me? Is this even possible? Am I ever
going to be normal? What’s normal, by the way? Smiling insincerely to everyone?
Saying ‘I’m fine, thanks’ even if I feel like I’m going to burst out either of
anger or sadness? I’m not even sure if I want to be ‘normal’. Everyone’s
putting so much pressure on me. They think that something’s wrong me. ‘Look at
your sister’, they say, ‘she’s happily engaged, soon to be married, she’s just
graduated from university and is going to have an amazing life, and you?’. ‘I’m
not her’ that’s my regular response. I know I’m different and difficult to deal
with. I hate people who talk all the time. My problems are my problems; I don’t
want anyone else to know about them.
So I’m lying here on this really comfy couch, the only good
thing from my Monday’s visits in this land of lavender hell. God! I cannot
possibly imagine why did she think this colour and this horrid smell are going
to calm down and relax the patients. I hate the smell the most. It makes me
feel nauseous and dizzy. I can hear some mumbling but it’s so unclear and I
feel amazing being so high in the air, almost like I was a bird. Free.
Careless. Not bound to any conventions. I feel the sun shining on my face and
water splashing on my cheeks while I approach the water surface. It feels so
real. Wait, the water is too real. Suddenly the magic disappears. I flied away
once again and now I’m back in this ugly lavender room with my therapist
standing over me, checking if I’m conscious. I’m back. But does it make any
difference? I’m sitting silently. Unwilling to say anything else except from
‘I’m fine’, ‘No, you don’t have to call the doctor’, ‘Yes’… I like that she’s
not pushing me to talk like everyone else does. She knows that I’m able to
speak and I do when I feel like it. It just doesn’t happen very often, but she
got used to it, unlike my previous doctors. They wish they could have read my
thoughts. I got used to yelling, shock therapy. Nothing’s helped. It just left
me number that I was before. She’s nothing like them, but still I hate these
Monday’s visits. My parents expect some sort of miracle every time I leave her
office. They don’t understand that I just don’t want to talk, don’t want to be
like my sister.
I used to have a boyfriend once when I was about 16, but as
soon as he realised that I’m not all cheerful and talkative, he left me. I
wasn’t surprised and didn’t cry like all the girls in my class would’ve done. I
just didn’t care enough to be bothered. I remember the feeling when I first
went to school, surrounded by all those children and their parents. So many of
them cried and wouldn’t like to let go of their mothers’ hands. I found it
pathetic. I was 7 but I felt older and wanted to be left alone being able to
live in my own world. No one understood it back then, and no one understands it
now. It was my mum who dragged me to the therapy for the first time. I was 14.
I didn’t talk and didn’t seem to care about anything. My grades were fine but I
only did what I had to do. I think that my mum just wanted me to be like my
sister. Normal. She thought that therapy would change me into another version
of Sarah. I could have seen the look of disappointment every time she looked at
me. As for my dad, he wouldn’t even look at me. I was the ‘freak’ in the
family, a bloody freak in this lovely, normal and wealthy family. They wanted
to change me so much that they even made some sort of project out of it. They
wanted to cure their little Katie. They wanted to make her normal, like
everyone else. But I wasn’t a project. I wasn’t ill. I was just different. They
couldn’t understand so they sent me away. They thought it would help. It
didn’t. I was still the same, fucked up Katie.'
