You Can't Break Her

Chapter seven: part four | March

March 1997
Counselling centre
Bayhollow, Ontario

"Welcome, my name is Cindy. I will be working with you today." She seemed nice enough.

I had no previous experience with therapy. I was nervous but had been reassured by Lana and Dedra that I would be fine and it would help.

The woman motioned for me to follow her. "We will be in the youth room." She opened the heavy door to show me a room filled with toys of every kind and brightly coloured walls. "There is paper and crayons on the table for you."

I sat and grabbed a crayon.

"One minute, Ama. I would like to talk a little before we begin." She took a drink from a water bottle and offered me one from the plastic bin beside her. "Each session we will start with colouring, you will draw me a picture of how you've been feeling."

I took the bottle and nodded. I wasn't listening. Art took more patience than I possessed, or so I had learned every time I had tried previously. I clutched a navy-blue crayon and grounded it into the white sheet of paper. A thick blue bar ran horizontal across the page. My hand slipped and marked a line that ended on the table.

Her eyes were wide. She seemed worried when I glimpsed her to gauge her reaction. She had a pencil crayon in her hand and had been doodling. She placed it in the table and clicked her pen while adjusting her notepad on her knee. She scribbled for a minute.

Time was subjective. If she wasn't angry, it would fly. However, if she was upset by my mistake, it would slow to an excruciating crawl. I put the crayon back in the cup I got it from and ripped the page in half.

She was scribbling more and not speaking. She didn't look mad. In the short time, I was willing to risk making eye contact.

"I'll take this page, and you can start a new one. Or would you like to play with the toys?" She looked around for something that might interest me.

I grabbed a marker and another page and drew stick people.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions now," she announced.

I laid my arm out on the table and put my head on it while I coloured.

"How did it make you feel when your mother hit you?"

"I don't know." I coloured in a building on the paper. "Bad," I answered what I thought she wanted to hear. I was still hoping life would go back to how it had been, regardless of how awful everyone said my mom was.

She jotted in her notepad and then looked back as I averted my gaze. "How did it make you feel that she abandoned you?" She asked some more questions before I left, but they were all centered around that one topic, my mother.

My foster mother noticed that after each session, I seemed to get worse, my attitude would flare up, and I was more angry than when I went in. She sat in on a few of the sessions and realized that each one was the same. The same questions were followed by the same answers. The councilor would ask those questions until she got the answer she was looking for. I was taken out of that program shortly after.