Prompt: "I've broken five therapists so far - and this last one broke before I got to any of the really disturbing bits! I hadn't even mentioned the hostage situation or the armed standoffs from when my parents got divorced!"(AKA another graduate from the Christopher Titus school of my-life-is-so-fucked-up humour)
Therapy. It was supposed to help. Precisely, it was supposed to help Sara behave more like the average human on the streets and, in mother’s mind, make her look like one, too.
She’d so far been diagnosed with -amongst other things- an eating disorder she didn’t have, caused by the appointment being before lunch, but going through lunchtime. The therapist for that session ate a sandwich in front of her and didn’t allow food in his office. Other therapists suggested Asperger’s Syndrome(which caused her mother to beg for Ritalin), schizophrenia (They’re going to lock you up if you don’t behave), and bilaterally imbalanced chacras (Mother was going through a phase).
And this one… just wasn’t listening.
Sara was halfway through her plot for They Came From Zanzibar before he asked a salient question. “And how long have you thought you were a boy?”
Wait. No. That wasn’t a salient question at all. It had nothing to do with anything she’d said in all their time together. So she made something up. “Oh, since my twin brother died during the second trimester. It was really interesting. For a while, there, I had eight limbs and two brains. The other one wasn’t working, though. I do remember being very disappointed when the last of the boy parts went away.”
Utter nonsense, but her therapist got very interested. “Second… trimester… You remember having a twin?”
"He was always weak," said Sara. "He got a majority of the alcohol mother ingested. I always wonder if he wasn’t trying to save me, somehow. Chivalry in utero."
Scribble scribble scribble. “And you want those ‘boy parts’ back, yes?”
"Not really. Girls get prettier clothes."
Sara peeked. He wasn’t paying attention, again. But this time, he wasn’t paying attention in a very specific direction.
He was editing a thousand-page work on her case study.
"You’d be better off selling it as a fantasy," said Sara. "That’s all made up."
Glare. “What.”
"You weren’t listening to me, so I started telling you the story lines of the movies I was making. And then you added your own little twist to things and I ran with it." Sara smiled. "You really should pay more attention to your clients, you know."
"This is all—?"
"Fantasy. Mostly on your part. All I had to do was play to the audience. That’s you, dear."
The look on his face was priceless.
"I thought it best to tell you now, before your career got ruined by publishing that load of dross."
He was only the first therapist she put in an asylum. Mother would simply not let go about it.