You and your Psychiatrist

"I wouldn't really say I go around speaking to myself. It's more like I catch myself simply speaking out loudly to somebody who just happens not to be there."

"This 'somebody,' is it somebody you know?" My psychiatrist put down his pen and pad, leaned back in his chair and looked me in the eye.

"Oh! No, you have misunderstood me. I didn't mean any one particular person; I just meant anybody other than myself," I laughed, knowing he would sit forward.

He did. "About how many members make up this group of people you speak to? Who are they? Do they have names? Are they in your head?"

I stood up and slapped my hand onto his desk. "You think I'm schizophrenic, don't you? How dare you jump to conclusions when you haven't yet got an answer to the last question you asked me?"

"Take your hands off your hips, sit down and calm down." He said this calmly and gently.

"Ha!" But I sat down. And calmed down. "I do know the people I speak to," I said. "You are one of them."

"Me?" He thrust a large hand at his chest.

"There's nothing wrong with practicing conversations out loud that I know I might have with somebody, is there? I've seen people do that on tv in front of a mirror."

"No. Not if you don't always have the person you're speaking to answer or act like you would like him to, but that's not what's happening here, is it?"

"Damn!" I nicked my leg with the razor. Was that my husband I heard in the bedroom beyond the bathroom door? Or had I simply pictured the scene of him walking in, and had I been about to verbalise an imaginary conversation with him?

"Yes, darling, I'm doing that thing again with my psychiatrist, but I'd rather speak to you. You see, he's just realised what I do and my knowledge of that means that I've just realised something too. I'm beginning to slip up."

by Teresa Schultz