Therapy

We met in a different building that day.  It took me fifteen minutes to find a parking spot.  I parked in a lot first, squeezed too close between two soccer-mom minivans.  Walking away, I saw the sign threatening to ticket me.  So I moved.  Parked on the street.  I turned the key and the engine shuttered to a halt.  My hand shook as I applied a fresh layer of lip gloss to my chapped mouth.  I made eye contact with my reflection in the mirror and realized I forgot to pluck my eyebrows.

Walking up to the building, I looked around.  I had never been in that part of town before.  Were the people in the restaurant across the street looking at me?  Through the tempered glass of the pizza shop?  What about the middle-aged man in the pick-up truck at the stoplight?  He had on a camouflage baseball cap and, if he was anything like every other man in this county, a wad of chewing tobacco tucked between his bottom lip and teeth.  Did he see me?

“Please use side door,” the sign said.  So I did.  The side door lead to a skinny staircase covered in blue carpet.  The fake wood paneling glued to the walls was breaking apart at the corners.  The encased hallway smelled of must.

A brunette woman, looking about thirty, sat at a reception desk at the top of the stairs.  She smiled warmly when she looked up at me.  She looked like a mother. But nothing like my mother.

“Can I help you, honey?”

She saw me.

“I have an appointment with Ms. Huggins.”

I gave her my name and took a seat on one of the faded upholstered chairs.  Another girl sat on the last chair in my row.  She looked down at the floor, her shoulder-length hair covering her face.  I wondered what she was afraid for people to see.  I looked away.

My name was called and I looked up.  Ms. Huggins was my therapist.  “Councilor,” actually.  She was in her early forties but dressed a decade younger, nothing too flashy but still out of sync with the wrinkles around her eyes.  I hadn’t been to an appointment in a month or more.  I was working a lot.  My two part-time jobs kept me busy.  That was good.

The office at the Women’s Clinic was different than her tiny, unfurnished cubicle at the university.  The walls were painted a deep rose pink, the carpet that same grey-blue from the staircase.  Lots of color from framed paintings and photographs added strokes of excitement to the room. From the window dangled a glass wind chime that collected all the light the sun would spare and converted it to rainbows that danced on the ceiling.

“So how have you been?”

I hated that question.  If I were doing well I wouldn’t be there, sat in front of a complete stranger I confessed to like a priest.  My family wasn’t Catholic.

“Fine.”  I nodded.

“You’ve been working a lot?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve been going out? Letting off steam like we’ve talked about?”

I didn’t answer.

I heard my phone vibrate in the purse nestled by my feet.  I knew who it was without checking the screen.

“So what did you want to talk about today?” She was asking questions because I was quiet too long.

“Well…” I looked up from my bag, “there’s this girl.”

Ms. Huggins smiled.  With confirmation.  With acceptance.  With compassion.
                 That day, in the rose-colored confessional with dancing light, I let someone see me.  It didn’t hurt as much as I’d anticipated, but I cried anyway.