I generally have a low opinion of psychiatrists.

They are common sense at two hundred dollars an hour. But, since everyone needs one, people like me are only allotted thirty minutes to make way for businessmen and housewives. I’m not bitter. I could do without a shrink. My insurance company agrees with me; it’s too bad society doesn’t.

In laymen terms, I am, as they say, subject to change. Means, really, that I’m slightly unstable in the head, but, holy hell, I can be fixed.

I don’t have anything against the lady sitting across from me, as a person. She’s maybe forty, and aging well. I could easily see her as a power mom jogging five miles, uphill both ways, to pick her kids up from school. The working woman on steroids. If she ever decides to retire while her kids still like her, she would be the prim president of the Home Owner’s Association. I doubt it though; she just has too much fun shifting around the layers of people like me. Peeling us like a love-struck catholic schoolgirl peels a daisy. God loves you, God loves you not.

There are people who lack a certain sensitivity to personal space; my psychiatrist is one of them. I have a no fly zone, you’ll have to realize, in which any unauthorized citizens will be met with extreme prejudice and open hostility. At two feet, I can see the whites of your eyes; at one, you’re going down.

Seriously though, what’s between you and me, is between you, me, and her.

Somehow, she’d managed to bypass all my security clearances. With the support of the general public, the lady in front of me has access to all my top secret, password protected files while I stand grudgingly on the sidelines. It is in my best interest to cooperate, they tell me, riffling through my padded records, and I must agree. She’s pregnant at the moment, and nothing scares me as much as the emotionally complex.

Today’s exercise was announced on the billboard just outside the door, just like the way they announce Sunday school topics and group therapy sessions at church. “Unpacking Our Lives,” it says. Elaboration on her part yields some unsavory information. Pick three objects from my bag and tell her about them. Anything, everything. Rant, rage, reminisce. I’m silent and she leans forward to prompt me. I feel her invade my air space, and I start talking, picking harmless things so that she can analyze me and conclude that yes, my God, this kid is screwed.

I admit now that I am possibly the only girl you will ever meet who carries around a men’s wallet in her back pocket. It is far larger than any I should ever need and hardly fits. My wallet holds everything but money. It holds my identity, in convenient card form, and my memory, written out on notes. It holds coupons I will never use and beaten pieces of paper, receipts gone through the wash. My family, my friends are in my wallet, folded into 2.5” x 3”. Phone numbers, addresses, names.

It’s a leather wallet. Beaten, black or blue, I can’t tell which, it shows just how little I care about bovine life. I also don’t care about chickens, pigs, or pugs. Or men for that matter.

When I did have money, I would divide it into three different places. The majority would go into some unseen pocket, an emergency fund. A significantly lesser amount would be put aside for unforeseen, but casual, expenses. The third, usually about twenty dollars, was what I was willing to give up on any given day. I’d always fancied that if I was ever mugged, only a portion of my money would be taken. Now that I’m broke, my fear of muggers has thoroughly expired.

Enough with that, I decided. There is only so much I can say, so I move on.
My laptop is a ten pound cell phone, if nothing else. I type rather than talk, and it seems to work out well enough. I’m rather mute, by virtue of choice and a soft voice. No one can hear me, so why bother to talk? Anyway, my laptop is beyond what I need; like my wallet, it’s unconventionally large, a mark of how spoiled I truly am, a testament to my mother’s financial genius. My sister, age three, used to practice shooting spit wads at the screen.
I have up-to-date software, obtained in questionable ways from unidentifiable sources, truly indicative of my day and age. It is an era in which pirates say “lol” over IM rather than “avast, ye scurvy cur” over ale.
I try to keep my computers in good condition, albeit a little obsessively. Scratches and smudges on my screen are absolutely intolerable, and food in the keyboard drives me mad. I am grateful my bag has a padded cell for my laptop.

A sketchbook resides beyond the pads, bearing the marks of semi-grueling use. It holds my progress over two years; I’ve barely gotten past the halfway point. My drawings are supplemented with contributions from other people: my sister’s first attempt at “A,” her scribbles, circles, and what she said was a whale. My cousin’s alphabet and her impression of some Disney princess. My best friend’s page, marked boldly with her name, her drawing erased over and over again, and still unfinished.

It was she who gave me the best advice I’d ever received for college.

“Knock yourself out, not up.” She’d said, knowing well that I wasn’t going to get the lectures the university sends to its incoming class. My mom had intercepted the mail, laughed, and gave the packets to my brother instead. She was trusting in a way that was both permitting and effective. She had, more or less, taken the appeal out of every rebellious act in the book.
With that I stop. Access denied.

She is not entirely happy with this. She leans in again and I spout out an excuse along the lines of “file not found.” She sighs, and lets me go. I’ll have to come back next week. I’m not cured yet, and, with her tactics, I don’t expect to be.

I’m still subject to change.