The psychologist's room

What stops me from writing?

In the psychologist's room, I learn there is a triangle, with me at one point, my Dad at another, and a male friend at the third. But there is no connecting line between my Dad and the friend, not the first time it comes into my head. Why were we three all there together? More to the point, what was the friend doing there?

Turns out there were similarities between my Dad and this friend, and I have problems (how benign a word!) with my relationship with both of them. But my Dad is dead, and the friend is very much alive. My Dad is a ghost, and present everywhere.

Many things happen in the psychologist's room. The triangle links up. I feel small, like a pinpoint, while the two men are enormous. My Dad controlled more with silence than loudness; my friend is loud and aggressive and opinionated. (Why do I let him intimidate me?) I have a knot of tension in my forehead. My friend punches me in this knot, and I punch him back. We have a fistfight, then I put my hands on his shoulders, and calm both of us down.

At some point, the image of a pair of scissors appears. I snip the string (for that is what it is) that connects the three of us. My Dad tumbles off into the distance. I tie the ends of one piece of string around my friend, and we have a calm conversation. I start talking about my writing, about the memoir, and am not embarrassed.

More people come into the room, and my friend starts to fade.

At some point, my mother appears, and collects my father. They wave at me, and I wave back. It is goodbye.

The string is hard to be rid of, however. I put it in a bowl, and throw it out of the window, set fire to it, douse it with water. Finally, it becomes an infinity symbol, and I accept its presence in that form.

Now, the next day, I feel irritable and out of sorts, out of place. I want to scream and throw things around. It is, I know, an inevitable consequence of all that psychological and emotional work. I must wait for these feelings to work through me. I must write.

If only my parents, particularly my war-ravaged father, had had the opportunity to work through the scars of their sorrow too.