chapter nine.

he took me to his place. i rarely go there. i tell him, it's your place, your den, your privacy, and you should keep that from me. i tell him a toothbrush and a sweater is all he can leave behind, and all i will leave behind. he says i'm commitment phobic. i say yeah well you haven't met my parents. or i say i've got a whole lot of phobias you don't even know about (and it's true). and he hugs me. often i nag and say hugging is his reaction to everything, but then i just hug him back every time. it took me a while to get used to it. i've never had issues with sexuality, but friendly comforting touching feels very odd to me. it's more personal somehow that an anonymous banging in the bar owner's office, no matter how many items of clothing you leave behind.

he went to work and left me here. well he offered to drop me off at my place first, but i asked to stay here. he didn't answer, he just hugged me again. all i know is, if i go back home my sister will have left ten dozen messages, going from amused to worried to angry, and when i show up safe and sound she'll be furious. and since she might suspect i won't take her messages, she's likely to show up. well i can't deal with that today. i can't deal with people freaking out for me. allow me my own freak outs, and allow me to choose what makes me panic and what just passes me by. i can't deal with over-protectiveness, especially when it's selfish.

i don't think we can trace back everything to our parents. any one of us. i think it's just too easy. i think at some point, and perhaps that point differs for every individual, you have to take charge and decide that you are responsible for what will happen to you. it can't always be the parents, the childhood. i know all about damaging, and still i'd argue that at some point when shit started to happen to me, it wasn't because my dad is what he is or because my mother was what she was, and i knew that i was responsible. why didn't i stop then? because i didn't care. sure - my childhood and everthing leading up to where i am now has shaped me, sure. but so what? how does blaming it or explaining it make it better? it doesn't.

you can imagine the problems i've had every time somebody in a white blouse conjured up the thought that i should see some kind of mental health professional. from elementary school on. the first shrink the school made me see didn't come back for my second session. it was going well enough, and i was answering her questions. but in between hers, i asked her some of my own. if she had children (no). if she'd had abortions (she didn't answer but she looked concerned so i guessed yes). if she would take a bath with leeches (no, why would she). if she would take off her clothes and dance for me (that one puzzled her most, but she declined). if i could please jump out the window now, rather than go back to class (that was a no).

i've never really cared what people thought of me. if i was into shrinkology i'd probably say that's because my parents did not make a secret of what they thought of me, and i "suffered" from an early separation of the ego and superego or some crap like that, or that i was estranged from a healthy image of self. or that i build a shell around me as protection, and that shell is thick enough to make people believe that i don't care what they think, but really i do. whatever. but not caring - genuinely not caring about what people think, does not make you a good psychology patient. or perhaps you need a better psychologist than those i have met. in any case, in any school setting, it was rather clear to me that the "mental health professionals" expected me to behave just because i was at school and regular people would care what is being said among the staff, let alone the students. i was sent to a shrink twice in high school. once at each school. somehow they never tried a second time.

i almost feel bad for the first one. i must have been elevenish, but she was just out of university, a fresh young thing with naive hopes and great wide open green eyes. i'd been sent to her because i didn't always show up, and didn't quite do what was expected of me when i did. have i mentioned that i don't follow instructions? well asking me to sit down and be quiet, pick up this book, do those exercises, give an answer, go home and resolve these problems... right. all i knew was that the law forced me to attend school until i turned sixteen. so i did. but the law could simply not force me to care. so i didn't. little shrinky chick wanted to know why, but instead of replying i started talking about erotic fantasies including gang bangs and blood and knives and preschool aged children. anything i could think of (and i could think of a lot just from what i'd seen and heard before that point - and i could make the rest up) that would sound fucked up and might make her leave me alone. it worked. she was freaked out, and the director, later, gave me a look and said something about attempting to traumatize the shrink with my made up stories. so much for the doctor patient privilege. they'd say i've had a trust issue with the profession ever since. they'd be right.

it's always weird to me when people try to understand me. what the fuck? are you so simple that you've gone around yourself enough times to want to do it to someone else? and how about asking for my permission first? i can see why the boyfriend tries - his life is complicated enough with me in it, he wants to know where things stand, and that's fine - especially since he knows not to push, and he has intuitively understood that with me, it is always easier to read between the lines. but why would shrinks want to understand me? worse, why would they insist on knowing that i know myself? leave me the fuck alone. court order my ass, freak. the harder you try to make me talk, the louder i will scream, the more things i will throw on the far wall to see how well they break, and whether i can make some shrapnel rebound on to your face, bastard. and you can lock me away and you can turn me into a vegetable, but that doesn't mean you can know me. you can cut my skull open and look inside and put electrodes and whatever else, and make me smell burnt toast (thank you doctor penfield), but that doesn't mean i will be revealed to you. fuck you. open me up, make sliced salami out of my grey matter, do what you must or want, but my mouth will stay shut - or screaming, whichever seems to upset you more, you taker in charge of wards of the state. well the wards want to bleed out to the sewer trap and drip drip drip away - not just to escape, but to negate, to not be here or there, to not have to answer or to sit or stand - to not have to be. and you drove them there, or you gave them a ride there, and you deserve in turn to be taken for a ride. a long windowless drive. meet mister screwdriver.