Gray by Pete Wentz, James Montgomery

tries to look interested. And if you’re not talking, he’ll just keep sitting there, staring at you, and the whole thing goes a whole lot slower, and you might not get your prescription at all, or, worse yet, he might refer you to another doctor, and then you have to start all over again. Like I said, I know from experience.
    So, really, the best thing to do is just talk. After a while, you probably won’t even know what you’re talking about, you’ll just be looking at those diplomas while your mouth runs on and on, and suddenly, you’ve said something you don’t mean, and the psychiatrist will lean forward in his chair and say something like “ That  . . . go with that, ” and you have no idea what that was, and all of a sudden you’re rambling on about problems you didn’t even know you had, or, worse yet, problems that didn’t even exist until you made them up and spat them out of the hole in your face. And then you start freaking out because maybe you’ve just uncovered something big, dredged something out from deep within your soul, and now you’re gonna be about fifteen times more screwed up that you were exactly one minute earlier.
    But those moments never happen. I want to saysomething that will blow his mind. I want great epiphanies. I want him to leap out of his chair and thrust his arms heavenward and go “That’s it !” and pronounce me cured, or, if I say something really bad, I want him to drop his notepad and stare at me with wide eyes, his face going white as he stammers something all slow and drawn out like “What . . . did you say?” as he realizes that he’s sitting in a room with the next Ted Bundy. I understand that’s probably not how psychiatry works, but it would be nice every once in a while. Maybe I watch too many movies.
    I’m thinking about all of this and muttering about something when he asks me what my girlfriend thinks about my seeing a psychiatrist. My mouth stops moving and my brain locks up. Panicked, I gather myself up in the chair, run my hands down my knees, cough a bit. I’ve been doing this for years, and I’ve never had a moment like this. Maybe it’s an epiphany.
    “She, uh . . . ,” I stammer. “She’s fine with it.”
    “You know, because she’s studying psych at Columbia,” he says. “We talked about Her in our last session, but it never occurred to me to ask what she thinks of all this. You say she’s fine with it?”
    This guy’s good. He’s actually been paying attention.
    “The reason I ask now is because I wonder if you’re fine with it too,” he continues, failing to notice the gray matter of my brain that’s now splattered all over the back wall of his office. “I’m interested. Do you ever feel like she’s trying to pick your brain? Or maybe that you have to keep things from Her?”
    He’s really making me work for it now. I sort of hate him for it.
    “Because, obviously, as we’ve talked about before, you feel close to Her. I believe you said”—he trails off, paging through his notes—“you said you’ve allowed Her to get closer to you than you’ve ever let anyone get before. So, your relationship with Her is important to you. And I’m wondering how that makes you feel, to have someone so close to you—someone you’ve let your guard down for—who might also be trying to get inside your head. Someone who—by your own admission—has such great power to, as you said, ‘hurt you.’ How does that make you feel ?”
    He motions to me with his hands, opens them flat, palms toward the ceiling. I hate when he does this because it’s his way of trying to draw something out of me, when we both know that I’m just here for the drugs. But I oblige him because at least he’s been paying attention. Taking notes even.
    “Well, I—” is what comes out, followed by “No, I don’t think that.”
    “I didn’t ask what you think about it, I asked how you feel . There’s a difference between the two.” He