No Strings

Chapter 48--The Healing Process

I stared down at the wallets in the glass. The clerks pointed me to a few. I saw one that was a twin of my first wallet. I paid for it.

"Do you need a bag?" the clerk asked.

"No... I'll take it as is."

The clerk handed it over I shifted myself down the counter. I shuffled my money out of the old wallet into the new one. The old one was cracking and falling apart. I shifted business cards out of the old wallet. Old business cards of people I'd long lost contact with surfaced. I stacked those in a pile. The clerk watched, amused.

I paused on a gray one with worn edges. A psychiatrist's name was on the card in shiny black ink. I had never been a fan of psychiatrists. My mother had insisted that I was the one that needed the psychiatry in the first place, so I didn't want to validate her, but it was the tagline underneath her name the caught my eye. She was a specialist in helping women recover from abuse. I had to admit to the abuse of the past three relationships. I was fed up with it.

She might not be in the same office. The card was old and dated to the time I was dating Ted. I shuffled that one to where I kept my credit card. I needed to get to my night classes in advertising. I stuffed the other things into place.

#

I stared at the card again. This time I picked up my cell phone and called the number. I was a failure at relationships and kept going back when I shouldn't. I wanted to know why. I'd only heard clichés about why women did this to themselves, but somehow I didn't think they fit to me. Hitting the numbers was the only way I could get an answer.

The voice at the other end answered in a professional manner. "Sorry, but that doctor has moved, would you like another doctor, or would you like her address?"

I hesitated. I didn't know if I should be doing this. Did I have enough budget to cover the expense? But I said, "The... new address and phone number please."

"Thank you, please hold."

She gave it in that mechanical way as if she'd been dealing with it a lot. There must be a lot of battered people in the world for her to use such tone.

I thanked her and stared at the new number. I'd called the first, so I figured I should call the second. I sucked up my pride and made an appointment. I'd joined all the crazy people in the world, but I didn't feel one bit of regret about it.

#

The place looked like a psychiatrist's office. While the white walls didn't use color theory there were still pictures of open fields, oceans and other cliché kitsch pictures that one would expect in such a place.

I'd half expected Van Gogh's "A Starry Night" or Munch's "The Scream" prints on the wall.

The carpet was a mix of grays and browns. This office didn't know about color theory. In advertising one had to know that warm colors lifted the viewer's mood. Yellows, oranges, reds and warm browns were more suiting. It had a better psychological effect.

My name was called. I went into the office. The office had warm colors decorating the walls. It hadn't occurred to me that this was a better marketing plan. The fact that the office was in a basement gave control over the lighting. Warm red-browns seemed to say, "Trust me," and the soft yellow light gave a sense of warmth.

"Admiring the décor?" the psychiatrist asked. Her voice was wry. She must have realized what I was thinking. She already knew my profession.

"Considering the waiting room is so drab, yes."

"Even psychologists need a little help sometimes," she joked.

I didn't laugh. It was too old of a Hollywood cliché line. I continued to admire the room more. The carpet was different from the one out in the waiting room. It was taupe with specs of grey-blue.