You walk in and sit on a chair or couch and start rambling about your life. “My mother well…” , “My father yeah…”. You spit out a miniseries of events as you recall them from birth until the moment you last pulled into the parking lot before the final episode appointment. The therapist will nod while writing notes. Occasionally asking a follow up question as if they stepped away during a commercial and may have missed something. When that final day comes where you squeeze the last ounce of toothpaste out of the tube, you feel relieved. “Maybe this isn’t to bad after all”, you think. Finally someone else has all the pieces of the puzzle that made you, you. Someone else can finally see you.
See, that’s the rub. That was just the opening monologue, the back story, you’ve set the stage for the show. All the pieces you so painfully pulled from the corners of your memories will now be examined and the way you placed them together checked for accuracy and fit, ACT I. You will find that some pieces you just wedge together or merely sat next to each other or even worse through into a “fuck it bucket” because you couldn’t find their place. As it progresses you will even find pieces that you hid in the crevice of a couch in the basement that you covered with a sheet and used as shelf for years.
As the puzzle you so haphazardly put together is dismantled to be reframed ACT II, you begin to notice that you’re missing pieces that through no fault of your own, just didn’t come in your box. This is where Act III comes in. You and your therapist will now roll up your sleeves and figure out a way to make the missing pieces or make the pieces you have fit so you end up with a completed project. Completed never will look like the picture on the box, but it will resemble it. Anything broken and pieced back together with super glue, even with the utmost precision, will never look new. It will always have the markings of reconstruction visible to those with an eye for detail.
This entire endeavor will shake one to the core. Purposefully digging up the bodies you buried and then tossing out the tools you used to dig the graves. I’m told you’ll be given new tools and help with your puzzle. The therapist to sit beside you, holding your hand and providing direction but here’s the last kicker, it’s YOU who puts the puzzle back together.
At the end of ACT III I assume a resolution should emerge, the new puzzle revealed and the audience applaud. Ill take my bow and give my speech “I’d like to thank the academy, my therapist, my second grade teacher for always believing in me …” At least that’s how I think it will go. I’m minutes into Act I and I’m still editing my opening monologue. If you need me I’ll be in the basement searching the couch, digging up bodies and crafting my happy ending.
Lola Trying 