With her pen poised above the paper, Jaz frowned, asking herself for the umpteenth time why she was wasting her time doing this. She sat up rigid in her chair, heavily tapping the surface of the small round desk with her royal-blue fingernails. She eyed her therapist in annoyance and then grabbing her pen, she scribbled aggressively, Blah blah blah, who gives a CRAP?
“Is this stuff really necessary?” she huffed aloud, swatting the pen onto the desk.
Her therapist -also her mother’s sister- didn’t even glance up from the patient’s file she had been so engrossed in as she replied, “Of course it is, Jasmine.”
Jaz bit down on her lip at hearing her full name. Aunt Ruth knew she didn't like it. Jaz frowned at her just to emphasize how unhappy she was, though her aunt wasn’t looking. “Why exactly do I have to write all this stuff about me? I don't even know what to write anymore, I'm just babbling about random crap. You already know most of this anyway.”
Aunt Ruth slipped off her reading glasses from the edge of her long nose and placed them onto her polished mahogany desk. She then closed the file of her schizophrenic patient and rested her hands on top, clasping them together. “It helps me to understand exactly where your problems have stemmed from.”
“It’s a little obvious where they stemmed from.” Jaz made speech marks with her fingers on the word she found too cold and clinical for her liking. She folded her arms and stared fixedly at her aunt.
Aunt Ruth's mouth pinched as if she was sucking on a sour boiled sweet. “Jasmine, I-”
“Jaz,” her niece corrected icily.
Aunt Ruth raised her eyebrows. Informal was not her strong suit. “Jaz,” she said, as if it hurt to move her mouth muscles. “I do this with all my patients. You are no different and no exception. It helps me to get a better understanding of your personality; to see if your problems may have stemmed from your past.”
Is her vocabulary that limited? Jaz thought. Using dispassionate words like ‘stemmed’ to explain the situation she had gone through really annoyed her. She felt like she was a disease. She was a patient. That patient. She may as well have been a number. This wasn’t working.
“I don’t think this is for me,” Jaz said.
Aunt Ruth gave Jaz a disapproving look. She then brushed a French-manicured hand through her short, light-brown bob; her green eyes never leaving Jaz's face.
Jaz stared back in challenge.
She was stubborn but her aunt was very persevering.
“You’ve only just started,” Aunt Ruth said.
“I know. But I already wrote about what happened and you told me to start over. I don’t plan on being here until I’m thirty.”
Her aunt’s facial muscles tightened in annoyance.
How can she be my mum's sister? Jaz thought with disbelief. Right then, Jaz would have done anything to get out of there. She wondered if maybe if she was rude enough, her aunt would kick her out and save her the trouble.
Aunt Ruth gazed levelly at Jaz as she replied, “You can still put that page in. It will be a good comparison to your later entries and you can look back at it to see how far you’ve come. That page was for you, these pages, where you write how you see yourself, are more for my benefit. Your previous pages where you wrote down your feelings will help with your recovery. You can continue to write out all your… grief.”
The way her aunt hesitated on the word made Jaz feel like she was being mocked.
The dream had felt so real; like she really had lost that child. The grief she felt was real too. Just thinking about it now made the claw of sorrow cling to her heart muscle. It may have been a year ago but she still couldn't sleep well at night. She was afraid she'd have to go through it all over again.
Her aunt didn’t understand that and clearly didn’t want to. Plus she thought Jaz was a liar. Even her parents did.
Jaz couldn't help but gaze at the woman with hard eyes. What will it take to get out of this?
Fuelled by her frustration, Jaz rejoined in a low harsh voice, “If you’re expecting to find some evidence in my journal that I was lying about not being up the duff, prepare to be very disappointed, Doctor Hypocritical.”
Aunt Ruth’s smile dropped from her middle-aged, overly make-upped face and she stared at the child uneasily.
Jaz looked down at her hands. She hadn’t intended for the words to slip out like that. She'd only meant to defend herself, not completely insult her aunt. Even if the words were true. The fact was, her aunt didn't believe her, so how could Jaz open up to her? How was she supposed to get better?
It wasn't her fault that her aunt seemed to be void of feelings. In fact, she was pretty much insensitive most of the time that it made Jaz wonder why the hell her aunt had gone into a career that's main objective was to help people. Does she even care about her patients? Jaz wondered. Maybe that's harsh, she considered, but she wasn’t sorry for what she’d said, just maybe how she'd said it.