Hello, Joana. How have you been?”
I’m sitting in a large and comfortable couch, legs crossed and I’m looking straight at my therapist. She’s a young doctor, super chill and cool, I’ve been seeing her for the past four or five months and I really trust her; it was immediate from the start, as if I had known her from before and I had no issues in opening up to her.
“I’m good, a little bit swamped with homework but it’s all good.”
She looks at me with a smile on her face and she nods.
“How’s school?”
“School’s fine, it could be worse actually. Everyone has been really nice, in general, the teachers are well, teachers. I can’t really say I have made friends yet, but I have had conversations with some of the kids.”
“I see. So, would you say you are adapting well to your classmates?”
I think about it for a moment, “well” is not really the word I would use, but I wouldn’t say I have had a hard time, if there was only a term to describe a point between those two.
“Well…. I don’t know about well, but I definitely haven’t had any problems with anyone. They’ve just been, well…. I don’t want to say weird, but…”
“But something like that?”
I laugh and she laughs with me.
“Yeah, a little.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, its as if the school was divided in two groups. There are the kids who walk pass me and don’t pay any attention, and the kids who stare. I mean, now its less uncomfortable than it was at the beginning. In the beginning it was really awkward, specially with a group of five girls who’d always just stare at me.
One of them, Cris- Cristina, I guess. She’s the one who stares more intensely, and I didn’t understand why at first, but she explained, and it all makes sense now. Its just that… well, I always have this feeling when I’m with her, as if she knows things that I don’t.”
She frowns and writes down somethings in her notebook.
“And what was it that this girl, Cris, explained?”
“Huh?”
“You just said you didn’t understand why they stared until Cris explained.”
