I shift my weight from one hip to the other in an ugly-as-fuck blue plaid chair. The doctor is older, graying at his temples and he’s wearing reading glasses even though he isn’t reading. I sigh. I really don’t want to be here. I feel like a bug under a microscope and the dark paneling of this doctor’s study seems to be closing in on me.
“My drug use isn’t the problem,” I tell him. “The dreams that I’ve been having are my problem. They’re fucked up. I’m sorry,” I quickly correct. “They’re messed up.”
Dr. Tyler smiles a bit as he makes some sort of note on his notepad.
“Why do you think your dreams are messed up?” he probes, his dark eyes assessing me. “Have you ever dreamt them before?”
I shake my head. “They’re about my mother. And I haven’t dreamed about her since I was small. As an adult, I make a conscious effort to not think of her. I’ll admit it, I try to avoid painful things.”
The doctor nods as he takes notes. “That’s not unusual,” he tells me. “Avoidance is human nature. But tell me more about these dreams.”
So I do. I tell him how my mother is pleading. And how I am scared but I can’t see and how my mother has turned into Mila in them.
The doctor studies me yet again. “It sounds like you are somehow associating Mila with your mother. Was your mother like Mila in some way?”
I think on that. And even though it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen it, I can still remember my mother’s smile.
“My mother had a pretty smile,” I tell him. “It was very warm, like Mila’s. Maybe that’s it.”
The doctor scribbles. “Anything else?”
“I don’t know,” I muse. “Mila seems soft and graceful. I think my mother was the same way. My mother was actually a ballet dancer, before she retired when I was born. Mila is an artist…so they are both artistic types.”
More scribbling.
“Was your mother very accepting of you? She loved you unconditionally?”
I stare at him. “I was only seven when she died. But I’m guessing that, yes, that was the case.”
“Is Mila very accepting of you?” Dr. Tyler asks quietly, his pen paused above his pad. I stare back at him. He might have hit upon something.
“Yes,” I tell him. “For whatever reason, she’s been very patient with me.”
“Just like your mother,” the doctor says pointedly.
“Yes.” I agree, my heart pounding for a reason that I don’t understand. My hands are sweaty, too. I wipe them on my jeans.
“Tell me about the drug use,” Dr. Tyler says now, without looking up. I sigh again.
“You’re not going to give up on that drug use thing, are you?”
He smiles and shakes his head.
“People use drugs for many different reasons,” Dr. Tyler says. “I’d like to uncover yours.”
I try to hide my annoyance. I want to get to the root of my current issue, not dig into something useless. But I do my best to humor him.
“I started taking sleeping pills when I was little, after my mother died. My therapist prescribed them because I couldn’t sleep without nightmares. As the years went on, I realized that I liked the way I could take them and slip away from reality. I starting using different kinds of drugs. I’ve never stopped, until recently.”
Dr. Tyler stops scribbling and looks up.
“You’ve stopped using? Why?”
I nod. “I dumped everything out this past week. I don’t want to feel numb right now. Like I keep telling everyone, I’m not an addict. This isn’t a big deal.”
He lays his pen down and studies me. “You don’t consider drug use a big deal?”
I exhale and fiddle with my hands. “Of course it isn’t legal and it isn’t healthy. But what I meant is that I’ve never been addicted. I’ve barely craved anything since I dumped everything down the drain.”
The doctor nods. “Some people do have more addictive personalities than others. It must be harder for you to become physically addicted to narcotics than others. That’s in your favor. But I’d like to talk about why you’ve done drugs for so long if you haven’t been addicted. You’ve just told me that you know it isn’t healthy. So why would you inflict that kind of thing on your body if you could’ve stopped at any time?”
I stare at the floor, at my feet, at the patterned rug.
“I don’t know. Because I craved oblivion, I guess. Because it’s easier to fade out of reality than face it. My reality as a kid wasn’t that great. My mother was dead and my father might as well have been, because he sure as hell checked out when my mother died.”
The doctor nods. “It sounds like you’re a little angry about the way he handled things.”
I think about that. “Yes. I’m angry about it. He had a little kid to raise and not only did he pretty much neglect me and spend every waking hour at work, but he uprooted me and moved me across the country to live in a place where I didn’t know anyone. He couldn’t have made a worse choice. I needed normalcy, I needed to be around people that knew and loved me. But instead, I got nothing.”
“So, you took drugs to cope?”
“I guess,” I answer. “Although that makes it sound like a cop-out.”