As Told By... In the style of the Malcolm X Autobiography

Halfway through my first year at an all girls’ middle school, my parents put me in therapy. It was a sudden and largely unexplained decision that I couldn’t understand. In several years time, their reasoning would become clearer, but at the age of 13, I felt that I was being punished. Once a week my parents would pick me up from school and take me to the therapist’s office that was in a building complex not far away. On those afternoons, I remember needing to make up excuses to friends about where I was going and why I couldn’t hang out. Therapy wasn’t trendy in 7^th grade.

After dropping me off in front of the office, my mother or father would leave to go do errands. I’d walk into the building quickly, aware that cars could see me from a nearby congested road. The most memorable thing about the actual office was the wicker basket of toys in the corner. Plastic giraffes, lions, and zebras overflowed from their container in the far end of the room. I remember the sheer humiliation that stemmed from having a therapist that primarily worked with children. The toys made me question whether my parents still thought of me as a child, and if their choice in therapist reflected their true feelings. Sometimes the plastic toys would be scattered around the room, as if they had been played with right before my session.

I spent a total of six months in that office before my parents decided they didn’t like things my therapist was telling me. I remember very little about what she said, but I do recall hearing the fateful acronym O.C.D for the first time. I believed I was leaving the uncomfortable nature of therapy forever when I left the building complex for the final time and felt relieved of a giant weight. It would be many months and another therapist later until I would question the reasons for my initial visit to the toy strewn office.