Ode to Therapy

I have this thing. This councellor, therapist, shrink thing. Whatever she is, she drives me mad.

I had one before, a woman, and I stopped seeing her because I didn't like her. Now I have another I don't like, and I'm thinking, "is it me?". Probably. So I'm trying to stick with it, but she frustrates me so much. She says stupid things. I told her I didn't feel like I was normal (I'm not, and everyone around me knows it. Even strangers sense it on me, like I smell that says I don't belong) so she said "What's normal anyway? Who decides what's normal?"

I mean, please! Is that seriously supposed to solve anything? Of course there is a normal. There is acceptable behaviour, appropriate thoughts, average expectations. All just ways of saying normal. I don't think like other people, I don't feel safe around people. Sheila (that's her name) doesn't understand that.

Somehow, we got on to the topic of other people, how people sense weakness and how nature still plays a part in our behaviour. I said that we are all descended from predators, and it is in our nature to fight and defend ourselves, to cull the weak and take what we want. It is in our nature to kill, and therefore we all have the potential to be killers; it is within us all, restrained (mostly) by social training. She took this to mean that I saw every person as a potential axe murderer, that I thought everyone was out to get me or something.

She steers our conversations (I think they all do that) and I think she's already made up her mind about me; she makes our conversations fit her diagnosis.

But like I said, maybe it's me. Maybe I'm paranoid, insane, crazy. Maybe I am everything she thinks I am, maybe I just don't want to accept it.

All I want, what I have craved for as long as I can remember, is to be understood. To be able to talk about any of the stupid, crazy, often disturbing things that pop into my head without getting that look. To see someone's eyes light when they realise they understand what you're saying, that they get it. No one ever understands me (isn't that the most overused dramatic sentence ever uttered), they just don't. My head is so jumbled, my mind so messed up. And Sheila's useless. I'm starting to think she might be completely sane, which is not good. Everyone knows the best psyciatrists are the crazy ones, they know where you're coming from.She doesn't get it at all.

Unless I'm "being difficult"

Am I?