Brain decided it was time to distract on the way there. I formulated a chapter or two in my head about the similarities between my journey to a session and life in general; mainly the mind numbing drive through it and the rules that must be obeyed to reach ones destination safely. God forbid if an accident (rejection) should occur to wake me from that numbness.


The first hour was mostly about today and how I felt in it. The second part of the session was hypno. It didn’t work. For the first time ever, I opened my eyes on the count of 96, and told him I remained distracted. That’s when I got the all too frequent question thrown my way, "What are you trying to avoid?" I stepped out for a ciggie to try and answer it.

We concluded it was fear of rejection again. I told him I didn’t want to feel trapped emotionally under hypno, and lose control. He reminded me of how I perceive him as a positive authority figure, and one that might reject if I dared to show anger. That didn’t make sense because I had already displayed anger under hypno, and his shrinkness had always accepted it. "Tell it to my brain," I wailed. " She wont listen to the likes of me."

I started to feel the familiar safe mode as he counted me down again.


My minds eye showed me an aerial view of grandmothers house where my older cousins were playing on the front lawn dressed in their summer clothes. The house was full of adults, including my two uncles. I was in that house, but had no sense of where. My mind zeroed in on a dark mass that represented my mother. A small hand reached out from that abyss towards me. I felt a jolt when I saw it was me, and asked, " How am I suppose to care for a needy infant? My mother should be caring for her?" I quoted then what my brother once said to me. " We brought ourselves up."


Aerial view again, up above the football field across the road from grandma's. In the centre was an infant me, feeling I had been unceremoniously dumped there to face the world alone and unprepared for it. Magically, within a few seconds I grew into an adult with a mission to return to the house and have a few precious moments alone with my mother.


I brushed aside the other adults and met up with her in the kitchen. All windows and doors slammed shut to allow us privacy. I kept saying, "What have you done?" There was no sign of guilt only the fake smile she used to fool people into thinking she cared about her kids. Whatever height I felt in age it was taller than her. Mothers demeanour changed to how I saw through her as a child. That black mass shrivelled and shrunk into a pint size pile of crud on the floor. I opened the stove door then and popped it in.

My separation from Ma remains incomplete as the effects of her psychopathy remain in my head.


The drive home was angst free except for the multitude of Saturday shoppers that tend to fill the highway at that time of the day.