My Therapist Says
My Therapist Says You Have to Ask Sadness to Leave
My sadness looks like a blue Kool-Aid mascot. When he comes, I open the door and ask him to go away.
There’s something knocking at my door. It’s not exactly a person, but more like a slim, blue version of the Kool-Aid mascot with thick-rimmed glasses and a top hat. When my sadness comes to visit me, this is what it looks like.
Like many before me, heartbreak at the hands of a Chicago improv actor landed me on the cracked leather couch of a therapist. I was 19 and away at college, and for the first time, I was taking care of myself.
It was my first experience in a therapist’s office, and although I was the one who sought the consultation, I spent most of our session trying to convince my therapist I didn’t need to be there. I kept that act up for weeks. I told her I was acing my classes, making it to my extracurriculars, spending time with friends, thriving at my internship with a Chicago theatre company. I’d go to hot yoga six times a week or enroll in a new club to keep busy or drink Fireball until I couldn’t remember my own name among the Tarantino posters of some film student’s place in Wrigleyville. I was fun, not sad!
