Made With Broken Crayons

The therapist looks over her turtle shell rims and tells me to name my feeling. I shrug.

“Bob,” I say. She tilts her head to the side. She is not amused.

“I mean, what is the emotion you are having.”

“Well I think it’s pretty obvious. The broken chair would suggest it’s anger.”

“Good.” She scribbles that down, because otherwise she won’t remember. She sits across from me, a glass coffee table creating a distinct line between her and me. Doctor and patient. In my mind, we are on two islands separated by a vast ocean. I’m not allowed on her island and she has no desire to come to mine. She enjoys sitting back and observing through her diagnostic telescope, nodding every once in a while so I know she’s still alive.

She looks up and pushes up on the nose piece of her glasses. She produces a clip board and a piece of paper and a box of crayons that have seen better days. She tells me to draw it. Draw the feeling. As an animal.

I don’t want to, but she’s looking at me with the “this is what we’re doing now” look and honestly I don’t feel like arguing at this moment. I’m still pretty exhausted from yesterday. I pick up a black stub and draw an outline of a shape. When I was a kid I always had to do the black outline first and then color it in. Once, in kindergarten art class, there were no black crayons to be found and I refused to draw my family portrait and when the teacher told me I had to do it or I would lose recess I screamed and kicked my chair and threw the entire box of crayons across the room. It hit an easel and it fell and made a loud crash and it made some kids cry and other kids laugh. Needless to say, I lost recess for a lot longer than just that day.

Today feel similar, in some ways. Still losing my free time. Still feeling shamed for just being who I am.

I color hard. I color fast. The page rips here and there. Tears right in the middle where I lost track of how many times I moved my hand back and forth.

I picture my parents, sitting in the waiting room, my mom nervously tapping her hands on her purse, my dad incessantly shaking his left leg. They are quiet. They are worried. They are hoping this therapist will be the one to help me. Do thew know I am in here coloring?

“Done.” I put the last crayon- the tan one- down on the table in front of me, while keeping the picture turned towards me.

“Great. Let’s see it.” I lean towards her and pass the clipboard across the vast ocean. She takes the broken drawing made with broken crayons. “A bull. Yes. Classic symbol for anger.” She writes something down.

“Yeah, but, did you see the detail? I really put part of myself into that, Dr. Schmidt, and I don’t appreciate you not appreciating it’s originality.” I half-smile. I’ve always loved to fall back on sarcasm. It gives other people who think they are better or smarter or more out-together than me a reason to second-guess their own selves. It’s nice.

“We’re going to do an exercise.” She takes off her glasses and hold them in her right hand. I wonder why people do that. It’s so stupid. Does she all of a sudden have perfect vision? Does she not even need to wear the glasses to begin with? I feel myself getting irritated. I push it down. “I want you become this drawing. Act out your animal. Act out your emotion.” I laugh. I can’t help it. I also can’t help telling her that it’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

“It helps to really embody the emotion. To let go in a safe space,” she says.

“Isn’t that what I did last night when I broke the dining room chair against the kitchen counter in my own home?” I think about my parents again. Standing, staring, helpless, in horror, as their only child destroys the world around them. The world they build on hard work and saving. The world they build for the very offspring who was breaking it.

“That was spontaneous. A chaotic outburst in response to unfavorable results. This is controlled. Calculated. Planned. Rational.” She smiles.

“Wait a minute. You don’t think that getting home after working all weekend only to find that the food you spent your hard earned minimum wage paycheck on was not the food that you had ordered from the drive through that was twenty-five minutes away lends itself rationally to a few broken household objects?”

She stares at me while I talk. An empty stare. A stare that says, “I’m just going to do random math in my head to keep me occupied until you’re done.” She sighs and her head tilts to the left.

“I think it was an over-reaction to something that was, in the grand scheme, a small disappointment.” She’s hit a nerve but I don’t let her know. I smile. I nod. The thing is, I think, in that moment, to me, it was not small. It was a giant fucking tragedy. That’s how it felt to me. Last night. It felt that way and that should be ok. My action, maybe not so much. But the feeling was real. And that should be what we should be talking about.

But instead, I have to pretend to be a bull.

I stand up and make my hands into horns and snort and jerk my body around and now I am the one doing math in my head to keep me occupied until she says I am done. But instead she says “use the whole room. Embrace the emotion.”

I look across the ocean and I see her, sitting there. Smug. Indifferent. Reading her script and going through the motions, surrounded by her bookshelves and plants and that small white ceramic Buddha statue.

I am getting more and more frustrated. She sits on her island, watching, scribbling.

Ok. You want me to embrace it.

I snort. I charge. I swim across the ocean, thrashing against the waves.

I think about my parents. Do they know I in here pretending to be a bull? Do they know this is what they’re paying for? Do they know that I’m not going to walk out of this appointment and be all better?

I’m angry at them for their hope. Sometimes I just want to punch my parents for being so naive. For caring too much. I’m angry at this lady who won’t actually fucking talk to me. Im angry at everything for not being less fragile. For being in my way. For not listening. I’m angry at God or the universe or whatever it is that made me like this. I’m angry and it feels so good to let it out.

I hear her voice, but I can’t make out the words and I can’t stop. I am embracing it. Like you told me.

“You told me to do this! You asked for it! Do you think you are better than me?! Do you even need glasses?! Do you feel what I feel?!? CAN YOU TELL ME WHY I’M LIKE THIS?!”

She can’t and I know she can’t, just like the last seven therapists couldn’t tell me why I’m like this. Just like they tried their “guaranteed new approach” and couldn’t offer any answers.

I picture my parents five minutes in the future. They are silently crying. Their eyes are full of water as we drive home. Wondering why again. Wondering if there is any hope. Wondering if their baby will ever be ok.

But I already know. I can feel it in the way the doctors talk to me. In the way the teachers look at me. In the way my parents hug me. I am broken. Just like the chair, just the like kitchen cabinet, just like the little Buddha statue that is now on the floor by my feet along with pots and dirt and torn pages from books that clearly don’t address my particular set of problems. I am broken. And I’ve just always been broken.

I was made with broken crayons.