Psychiatrist

Shortly after my sister was born, I started seeing a psychiatrist once a week after school. Every Tuesday, I'd sit anxiously in the car as my mother and I drove to the next town over. I remember in the beginning I was so nervous. In actuality, I was nervous when it came to any kind of social contact with someone besides my family. We'd parallel park, then I'd jump out of the passenger door hard onto my school-only shoes and easter dress. My parents, especially my mother, always cared so much about what others thought of me. While I was running around the house in my old baby shirts and ripped jeans fresh with grass stains and dog drool, anytime I was in the company of someone my parents felt intimidated by (which was quite a lot of people), they'd dress both me and themselves up as perfectly they could with the discount clothes they had bought with the remainder of last month's check. Back then, my family was having a hard enough time trying to keep the home we lived in by fixing our land lord's problems, like unclogging her toilet, or painting her side of the duplex, just for another month of low rent. My Dad was also working a side job in Beverly on nights, so often the dinner table would be empty, leaving more canned corn for my mother and I. So being sent to a shrink was actually a bigger deal than it seemed, since it cost nearly one hundred dollars every visit.
Walking up the stairs of the old victorian house, once loved and lived in, now turned into a complex full of offices, I'd run fast to the top floor. By his door, he had a large, wooden sign hanging with his name and specialty; psychiatist. A psychiatrist is someone who specializes in the diagnosis of mental disorders. I didn't know or understand that then, but I sure as hell do now.
My mother would knock on the door, and as if he were awaiting our arrival from right behind the door, he'd automatically open it and greet us the same way he had every week. After the first few weeks, I'd just dismiss myself into his office while he and my mother chatted about any new discoveries he found about my problems, or some ideas on how to help me at home. All the while, I'd be sitting on his carpet, eyeing his box of games and paying no attention to what they were saying. Eventually, she'd leave me be with him, and he'd let me take out a game to play. It was usually Don't Break the Ice or Ants in my Pants. We'd take turns while we held a casual conversation. He'd ask me typical questions about school, my home life, and I'd answer his questions painlessly. Soon, our one hour would be over and my mother would be waiting at the door. We'd walk out together, holding hands, back when she used to be okay with touching me. When I got into the passenger seat, there would always be a brand new blank fuzzy poster waiting for me to color when I got home.
Eventually, I was diagnosed with both social anxiety disorder and anxiety attacks. Shortly after that, I stopped going to the sessions. I don't remember that time all too well, but I do know I stopped coming home sick from school on an almost daily basis, and everyone thought I was cured. I even thought I had gotten better.
A mental disorder is something that affects my everyday life. Living with one has changed my life in so many ways, mostly negative. I never did get better, and to this day I still feel like the young girl in the back of the first grade classroom, suffocating with my heart about to beat out of my chest.
Still. And I always will.

Opium

Like most things in my life, one scent can take me back to a certain point in my life or remind me of a certain someone. Smell is an important sense both mentally and physically. It can keep you safe, it can make you feel, it can help you remember.

With my mother's perfume, named Opium, it does not bring me back to the days of comfort spent with my loving mother, or of beautiful days when she'd dress in a summer dress and make fresh salad and cut fruit on a day when it was too warm to cook. It does not remind me of the romance she and my father held in their 18 years of marriage. It is none of that to me. 
The expensive fragrance only fell onto my mothers throat when she was full of guilt and lies. Days when the air smelled of her were days when the silence was filled with my father's never-ending questions. Days of second guessing and lies. That was the air I grew in.
Those nights, when she was at her ends with his persistant pushing and prodding, she'd dress in her finest lingerie while I sat behind her on their unmade bed. She'd paint her face up in the lopsided mirror, one of the only in our house, and coat her lips with blood red lip laquer. She'd perfect her fine hair with loose curls; my father's favorite on her. She'd find her best knee highs, the ones with the least tears, and slip her feet into one of her many vinyl stilettoes to match her lips.  After her final touch, the expensive perfume my father would struggle to afford to buy her for her birthday or christmas, she'd spin around and ask me how she looked.
'You're beautiful' I'd say while beaming up to her, already in my pjs and fully equipped with my Babydoll and puffy in my arms.
She's swoop me up into her arms, and tell me it was getting late for a young girl like me, nick at night had already taken over my favorite television station full of children shows, now only with teenage drama crap. She'd carry me to my bedroom while I'd make sure to position my arms around her neck in a way that wouldn't ruin her still warm, golden curls. After she'd tuck me in, I'd drift to sleep with the perfume that had rubbed off of me dancing around my throat like a rope about to tighten around my clavical. All the while, my mother was pleasuring my father into silence the floor below.
The day after, my father would always return to his usual state, either pretending, or really forgetting about the smell of another man on my mother's breath, or her not answering the home phone while he was calling from work. She'd always carry a grin on her face, knowing she had won yet again with her only prized possession; her body.

The Beginning.

Looking at the person I've become over these past 17 years leaves me confused on how I was granted the traits and personality I have, and who has played the biggest part in my growing. Realizing now, it has not been just the misbehaving of a typical teenager; not the cigarettes, the alcohol, nor the sex is to blame entirely for my far off dreams and low self-esteem. The cheating, abuse, and sexual harassment aren't the pure root of all my emotional trauma and vulnerability.  Nothing is to blame for every flaw, every highlight, and every nothing of my life.
To let myself take a step back, to look at what has become of myself, my upbringing, my childhood, means that, as always, I have a story to tell.

Its not always the events that stand out in life that make us stand out as individuals.