Professionally Popular

Mind and matter

If you take all of the fish and whales and everything out of the ocean then the water level would only drop by the width of a human hair.

My therapist told me this.

In her parallel my 'need to please' is like a body of water, and other people are the sea-creatures that I keep wet and comfortable. And if they were all to leave me, then I would still be a wondrous ocean that wouldn't have lost an inch of value. At least, that's what I puzzled together through the gauze of her Polish accent, and her interruptions to ask my opinion on whether to swipe some guy left or right on Tinder.

I told her that to be a large ocean without anything in it would be even worse than to shrink to the size of a puddle. Because if I took up seventy-percent of the earth's surface, without accommodating any lifeforms, it would be extremely humiliating to face people on the world's beaches, as I'd literally be the biggest waste of space on the planet. But at that moment she matched with a stocky Algerian man posing over the hood of a white Audi A6 that clearly wasn't his, and she told me that our session was over for today.

Of course, I didn't expected a lot from a therapist that operates from the back of her family laundromat. But when she pulled her community college degree from between the pages of The Chakra trap: why you are sabotaging your spirituality by denying yourself happiness, I realized even twenty dollars was overpriced.

I didn't have much choice, though. I couldn't ask my parents for the money. If anyone found out I saw a therapist, I would be absolutely mortified. Then again, there wasn't much rush in seeing an actual professional. I just wanted to make sure there weren't any kinks developing in my psyche. You know, just in case. It would be embarrassing to suddenly develop Tourette's during my prom queen speech, for example.

I also just really craved the distraction the appointment gave me, it had been a though week.

For starters, my dentist refused to whiten my teeth, since they were already the brightest shade known in the profession. And I couldn't find as much as the smallest spot on my skin, not even when I scoped it with a magnifying glass. I even called my dermatologist to ask her if there was a way to tell where acne might sprout up in the future, but she hung up when she recognized my voice. Then, this morning, I tried on Hannah's new lipstick, and it looked so fantastic on me that she threw it in the trash, crying. And no other girl dared to wear it after that, even though I know some of them had waited in front of the store for hours to buy it.

Everything was maddeningly perfect, and I just couldn't cope with not having anything to improve about myself.

Before getting the shakes, though, I thankfully realized that right after having a thigh gap, and at least two different shades of colour in your hair, sporting a healthy mind is the seventh most attractive quality. So I made an appointment with the only therapist that would see me without there actually being anything wrong with me, and who charged exactly the amount I got for returning a ghastly Hollister shirt that my mom had burdened me with to the store.

I didn't expect the therapist to be downright unqualified though.

'You seem very hung up on what people think of you.' She said, after she miraculously heard my recap of the past week over the flood of her incoming Tinder messages.

Well, obviously.

Being conscious about what others think of me is like my best characteristic, right after my cheekbones. I mean, if we were put on this earth only to entertain ourselves, we might as well have been grey blobs, right? My hippy parents had filled my head with enough of that self-acceptance crap already. Luckily I managed to shrug that none-sense of before going to elementary, or I'd still be wearing wool socks and crocheted parka's.

All in all the only the only thing my therapist had enriched me with today was a real-life example of how not to wear auburn hair, so I was happy that our session was cut short.

'Miss Lifley?' She looked up from her phone as I was about to turn the handle of her plastic door.

'Yes?'

'Does a plain scarf still work on a plaid dress?'

Hearing this, I forcibly swallowed my disgust and clung onto my polite smile with the greatest effort.

'It's best to avoid plaid all together this summer, June was the cut-off.'

I closed the door behind me, suddenly desperate for a cappuccino.

'Does the car come with the muscles?' I heard her purr into her phone as I walked out of the laundromat and dodged a host of her cousins, who carried piles of appallingly bland shirts that I didn't want brushing my Alberta Ferreti blazer.

I shivered and decided I'd better make it a double espresso.

With my coffee in hand, driving to school, began my daily ruse.

I wish I could tell you that I drove a classic burgundy Porsche Speedster, because when I was a young girl, the novel Lolita was my obsession, and for a time my only ambition in life was to be whisked away by a forty year old European with a car just like that. I even bought the heart-shaped glasses that the girl on the cover had on, and I wore them while standing next to the road, seductively sucking a lollipop, until my parents dragged me inside for a long talk about stranger-danger.

I still liked that car. Any car would be better than the one I drove; all four windows were cracked, there was a hole in the floor that had threatened to swallow up more then one pair of shoes and a grotesque grey paint job hid the car's brand. Which was probably a good thing, since I feared the car was a 1987 Yugo, or worse.

The car also made my mornings horribly complicated.

Since