She took notes as my disdain for her built, my disdain for this entire fucked-up system. For what I had done, and for what I had allowed to be done to me.

“When you say you ‘killed your baby,’ what exactly do you mean?”

The rage was pressing against my skin, heating me, grinding against my organs. “Does it matter?” I snapped.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers: they each have a unique approach, but they all want the same thing. A psychologist will work to recondition you, attempting to break your bad behaviours, retraining you to think in a healthy manner. Psychiatrists, those mad scientists looking to level the chemical imbalances in your brain, will throw pharmaceuticals at you, turning you into a pill-popper. As if I needed any help with that. Social workers work for the good of society. They want to fix you, and integrate you back into a world that is made newly whole and cured as a unit. But they all want you to talk about everything: your past, your childhood, your parents, your grandparents, your future. What do you think? How do you feel? What’s on your mind? Where do we go from here?

“Well, yes, it does.” Joanna shifted forward in her chair. “I think you are placing blame on yourself for something that wasn’t your fault at all.”

The fleshy tips of my pointer fingers circled the nail beds of my thumbs, a habit I had picked up to calm myself. I said nothing in reply.

“I think you would benefit from cognitive behavioural therapy.” She was clearly an academic, dressed in plain clothes and wearing no makeup. It was obvious she had more important things to do than agonize over her appearance. “It’s a form of therapy where we focus on your negative thoughts and try to replace them with more positive, healthy thoughts.”

I rolled my eyes without meaning to. I hoped she hadn’t seen. I wondered if she was a lesbian. I thought about how easy it would be to fuck her right then and there, bending her over her desk and slipping my fingers between her thighs.

Joanna eyed me curiously. “How does that sound?”

My left arm began to tingle. I tried bending each of my fingers one at a time to ensure they still worked. Pinky, ring finger, middle finger, index finger, thumb. Repeat. My leg was shaking; the heel of my shoe tapped against the hardwood floor over and over.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

“Fine,” I said, quietly. “That sounds fine.”

“Okay, you can book your next appointment on the way out.” Joanna motioned to the door with her pen and shut the file in her lap, indicating our time was up. “Thanks for coming in today, Grace. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

“Yeah, me too.”

I exited the room, made my way down the narrow, windowless hallway, and rushed past the receptionist. Pushing open the door, I let the cold winter air hit me. The noise of the city was violent—car horns honking, traffic lights beeping, strangers strolling and conversing, busy with their lives, completely unaware, unconscious. My shadow appeared in front of me, giant and lanky, like a cartoon villain. I turned away from it. It made me feel fictitious, a figment of someone’s depraved imagination.