Choose a character sitting in the circle at a group Therapy session, the story of another character already posted, the story of the man running the session, maybe someone acts out? I don’t know, but I think you do Lots of possibilities here Guidelines: State your character’s name as the title along with the reason they are in this group therapy session. I'll start out: Ann Marie Jaque: Addict; Self-injury I wasn’t a freak. I didn’t want to be here, I was fine. I just kept telling myself that, it wasn’t denial, I knew what denial was, I knew what it was oh so well. And that wasn’t my problem. That was the least of my problems. What was my problem? My mom got angry at all the hair dye, my mom got angry at all the eye makeup, and my mom got angry of my coming home late at nights. It wasn’t always this way, it used to just be the hair dye and eye makeup. Not the drugs, not the cutting, not the oh so many stereotypical things a punky teenage girl can get herself into. This was my problem. The blue plastic chairs like the ones from English class. The ugly carpet the color of someone’s puke after eating fast food and drinking too much beer. The other people sitting around, shaking from with-drawls, wrapped up in their own tragedies. The problem was there wasn’t a soul here that would ever understand me, no matter what they said. ‘I haven’t been out of high school for that long.’ Haven’t you? Because it looks to me you have. None of them could ever understand what made me different. For years, it was people like me who I hated most in probably the whole world. Why would anyone play into those stereotypes? Are they stupid? Why should someone just break that easily, there were always better answers. There was always a good side. There was always something to look forward to. But that was so long ago, before everything just…shattered. When he looked at me, I felt my hands turn cold. Each beat of my heart sounded too loud, feeling like it shook me, like I had been punched right in the chest. His eyes were brown. His skin tan. His hair an ugly shade between wheat and grey. “And what’s your name?” I heard him say, trying to speak too clearly and spitting out each syllable like I was a kindergartner. He was talking to me.
Alice Beatrice York (aka ABBY), teen pregnancy, parental concern I see where you're coming from Ann, with your mom I mean. *shrugs* I was sleeping with my boyfriend, and then he broke up with me. Sometime after, I missed my period, but I had a new boyfriend I hadn't slept with yet. My mom didn't know about my period until my second boyfriend, who was just stupid, asked me about it in front of her. I never thought anything of it, but my mom freaked out. She wouldn't let me use birth control, no, we're "Catholic", we use natural methods. Guess that's why the slut had 5 kids... So, apparently I'm "making the same mistakes she made" and "running my life into the ground". I mean, it's just a baby. Sure, I can't be 100% sure who the father is, since I did have a one night stand with another guy while I was with my first boyfriend. I stopped having boyfriends now, and I'm just enjoying myself with the guys at school. I'm already pregnant, so it doesn't matter anymore. Mom wants me here so I can understand the "severity and consequences of my actions". Well, I can see that... she's got five kids, and she turned out all right... aside from her nagging at me.
Alice Beatrice York (aka ABBY), teen pregnancy, parental concern I see where you're coming from Ann, with your mom I mean. *shrugs* I was sleeping with my boyfriend, and then he broke up with me. Sometime after, I missed my period, but I had a new boyfriend I hadn't slept with yet. My mom didn't know about my period until my second boyfriend, who was just stupid, asked me about it in front of her. I never thought anything of it, but my mom freaked out. She wouldn't let me use birth control, no, we're "Catholic", we use natural methods. Guess that's why the slut had 5 kids... So, apparently I'm "making the same mistakes she made" and "running my life into the ground". I mean, it's just a baby. Sure, I can't be 100% sure who the father is, since I did have a one night stand with another guy while I was with my first boyfriend. I stopped having boyfriends now, and I'm just enjoying myself with the guys at school. I'm already pregnant, so it doesn't matter anymore. Mom wants me here so I can understand the "severity and consequences of my actions". Well, I can see that... she's got five kids, and she turned out all right... aside from her nagging at me.
Henry Locke Henry Locke Habitual Arson. Attachment Disorder. Court Ordered Therapy This place is fucked; all sat around in a circle spilling our respective guts to a room full of strangers who pretend to give a shit about one another. We're supposed to force smiles and be grateful for the sob stories we're all peddling. Thankyou Janice, for sharing your little anecdote about how losing your child led you to a solvent addiction. Makes me sick, putting all this despair in one place and just letting it fester, all the while pretending like we're 'getting better'. What the fuck does that even mean anyway? It's just another bullshit term used by ignorant assholes in suits to make the true face of the world more palatable. It's a waste of my time even being here in the first place; problem is, if I bail now, I'm back inside for God knows how long. Sometimes I wonder if that wouldn't be a better option. But that would be just what that prick wants; prove him right all along Useless brat, you'll never amount to anything! Then he'd throw in a healthy beating to make sure I really got the point. Well, can't wait to hear some of the gems we've got here today...
David Shcwartz mild-Schizophrenia, dillusional Violence always made me nervous so I was never a violent person. I guess that's why I'm not in jail. My parents said they wouldn't send me there if I didn't do anything bad. They'd send me to a camp where they would teach me how to control myself. She never believed me and it hurt sometimes. I could never express in words the way I could feel the energy that crept up from within me. The ability to feel a world flowing, churning, swaying against itself like currents in the air. She didn't know while I was a kid playing outside that I could make the wind blow. And that the swing-horses could talk and they told me things about the natural world beneath our own. How everything was losing it's color and the world was headed for a very sad place. I kept it in for a long time, but it was when I began to express myself that people grew nervous about me. Kids grew mean and they began talking about me. Sometimes my parents where angry also, but mostly they seemed scared and that hurt too. I felt like lying and saying I didn't believe any of it, but it hurt too much to say. I just stayed in my room and tried to connect with them. Connect with the feelings, talk to the feelings. I'd talk for long periods. Sometimes I would just leave and follow them wherever they pulled me. Follow, even though I was scared, down the road and across the highway. They always felt far and on the horizon. They always felt like they were calling me to my destiny. But then I was either found by my parents, the police, or some stranger, and rushed back. Then they really got frightened when I started to cut myself. But I didn't know any other way. It hurt so much. Their fear, loathe, and...and the fact that no matter how hard I tried...It just felt better to cut. The happiness is slight and sharp , but it was never enough to kill the pain.
Kevin Roland Therapy coordinator I inhaled, looking around the room, hearing the blood rush in my ears and my hands turning red and sweaty. This isn’t what I wanted my career to be. Honestly, when I went to school to be a therapist, I imaged the man who talked to me when I was little. A little red sofa in a clean tan room with dark bushy carpet. I imagined “how does that make you feel?” “What do you think that means?” “Is there anything else you would like to talk about?” I imagined one-on-one with saddened children, scattered parents. I imagined traipsing through shattered memories and churning thoughts. This wasn’t what I imagined at all. I couldn’t let it show, couldn’t speak of it to anyone, couldn’t explain it without releasing the secret: these people sickened me. They were dirty, crazy, spewing nonsense and cluttering an otherwise issueless world. I despised them for coming here, for infecting what I had always believed was a good world deep down. But gulping it down was something I could do, putting that behind me, fooling all these horrible people into thinking that they were the center of my thoughts. “And what’s your name?” I finally asked, looking carefully at a smaller girl sitting in the corner. She was young, her hair cropped short around her face and falling down her back, dye faded in her locks. Her eyes hid behind thick eye liner and long sleeves covered her knuckles, showing just the ends of her fingerless gloves. I studied her. She was looking at a man sitting across the room from her who, consequently, was looking at me. I watched her eyes rove over this man, watched the look of awe spread across her face. He had been in and out of prison and, right now, him being here kept him from being in prison. He wasn’t the one she should be inspecting. The amount of fires he had set… She shouldn’t be studying him so intently. I watched her move her head slowly to look at me, her eyes cold and calculating. “Ann.” Was all she said. I hated her.
Sophie Golding, Heroin, Anorexia/Bulimia, Cutting I've been in and out of therapy since I was seven and every time my parents would tell me it was my last chance before they sent me away. They don't realize that if they would spend even a little bit of time with me and a little less time at work helping everyone else I might not be this way. If they would sit me down and ask why my arms were maimed beyond recognition, stick thin coated in a menagerie of keloided scars and needle marks, and really cared, things might not be the way they are. But my mom is always at work tracking down rapists and helping victims, oblivious to the fact that she could find both in their own home. The cold, plastic chair greeted me and I met it with the bulletproof facade I always wear, "Fuck you and have a nice day". I didn't want to be with these people, these degenerates who understand nothing about me. The quivering, insecure man in his consignment store tweed suit was so incompetent that I felt no pressure to even make up a lie to the question shrinks always ask, "Why?" He didn't know and he didn't care, maybe I was sitting with my parents after all. If this was my last chance I'd just sit on my ass and wait to be sent to the loony bin. There'll be no drugs but there'll be no Jesse sneaking into my bed at night either. I sat back and relaxed as much as the hard plastic would let me, and waited for the show to begin.
Adam: Child Molester I looked at the faces around me, and they were all ugly. All of them had fake problems created by themselves and their demented minds. No one in this room except for me had a plausible reason to be who they were. "It's your turn." said that therapy coordinator. I looked straight in his eyes and I saw indifference and fear. What a shitty therapist. After looking at him until he looked away I pointed at my mouth and by swinging my finger slowly I made it clear that I was mute. He handled me a notebook and a pen, "Write your name." he said. I didn't have a name. I grew up in an orphanage and whenever people asked me what my name was I tried to explain that I was mute and meanwhile they just walked away. I chose what seemed best at the time: Adam. "No surname?" the therapist asked, to which I responded with a shrug and a harsh look. I had therapists before, they too loved to hand me notebooks and have me write down the answers they wanted to hear. Bullshitters, all of them. I learned how to read and write in school, and I quit soon after that. The education system does not provide for mute orphans as well as they say. I never grew up, no parents wanted to adopt a weird mute kid, and at age 15 I realized no one at the orphanage wanted me there either. Since then I have struggled to stay alive on my own. And that is where I started to connect with kids. They didn't judge, a kind smile was enough to get them to like you enough to give you some attention and ask you to play with them. In the end I'm still a scared mute kid trapped in the body of a man. And that's why I'm better than any of these sick people. I feel attracted to kids because I never had a chance to stop being one.
Alex : Bipolar disorder, minor Schizophrenia, Thought disorder, MDD, minor Psychosis. "I envy dads death... I think I may have mislead them to much. Look at me now going to a F**king groupie, I told you so, you know me and you never said stop... O shut it... Its so annoying with you here inside this space I only wish to call home!" Concentrate! "Hello all, my name is Alex, and I seem to see this reality different than other people, yes you people! Look at them sitting here like sheep only awaiting for salvation to some pre-past reality..." "I see their faces as if I should feel some sympathy, I fear that the only solution..." Hi and what's your name kind young man, said the therapy coordinator. "I'm after a child molester nice how on earth will I top something that sick....." Hello.. I'm Alex. I guess that's all you need to know, right... Absolutely! its a good start, the therapy coordinator replied. 'with a real smug face all over..' "I would not even think twice to make this guys life shit, look at him sitting there! doing everybody such a big favour what a fool..., 'you know you never make things easy, you confuse everyone; really me to..'" So Alex what brings you to this "shit pile of a group"?? session? the coordinator asked.? Sorry could you repeat the question? Alex asked. Coordinator, Would you be kind and tell us about your problems? "My problems... did he say that?? " Alex!?, the coordinator asked are you with us?? Yes I am, I am at least I think so? Are you here with us? Wait!, I'll start: I think reality is just something we project from one another like a data link between minds, and while this is in action we roam a realm of nothingness. The world maybe here or it may have been here, I guess it all depends on your current time space in your reality. You know Doc you sit here trying to help these people, what will you be able to do, mend there thoughts with words? You know the mind stores everything, and a problem stays a problem, every little thing that went wrong or right in my life is tucked away in a box deep inside this reality connected to this, capsule or body. For everything is free and nothing will ever matter? you know that right? you do ? doc...??! Hello everyone, my name is Alex...
# INFO # > "Inner thoughts", 'Happenings everybody may see' Usually doctors would ask questions first? "I guess this one is different!?". Coordinator, Well Alex; Here we let you speak first since your the more important ones sitting here, no need for me to ask you anything. Alex, I guess that's true, this way maybe different. Maybe if 'They' did the same thing I wouldn't have been like this you know, or maybe you don't... All I can say is that nothing in this life could even show you the pain and suffering I under go each and everyday. I bet you have no idea what this feels like! "Well Its not about you, its about us" These voices tell me things. Coordinator; Alex you know you are safe here, nothing can hurt you. Alex; "Doc you don't know shit" I guess so, its not me I'm worried about... 'Turning my head looking out through the window I see a bird sitting on a branch' "I wonder how it would feel to be free from this Torment" Doc worry never helped anyone, its some self illusion you cast to soothe yourself from a fear, with the hope it wont turn into something bad; but at the end it doesn't help because it turned into worry you see? Coordinator; 'confused' Alex... How would you describe confidence then? Alex, nothing more then the same, everything in this room has no meaning what so ever. Nothing here has any meaning you and me and all these "f**king" people around me. "Seeing her like this makes me sad the fact that I couldn't do anything about it... You make me sick I hate you I hate You! I F**king Hate! You!" 'Slight tear running down Alex's cheek... A small drop of life...' Coordinator; Alex tell us about your mother? Alex; "My mother!? I can tell you something about a mother..." My mother you ask, she is one of a kind... She is scary I guess, 'with a smile' and lovely at the same time, my mother re-mind's me about myself actually. I could almost say we are one person but surly has our own differences. This one time I got home from a friends house, we only chilled mostly played some board games and nothing else really. So I got home and I found her in one of those moods, not really sure how to explain that but anyway, she came up to me and the first thing she said, without even greeting me or whatever. She said; You smell like alcohol why did you drink? You are drunk!. 'Anger within her eyes' I could feel the fear and pain rushing all over my body not just my spine, my whole "f**king" body. Confused out my mind and scared to death I turned around and started walking back to my room, I never tried to convince her she would flip... On my way back I could hear her screaming something I didn't even care to turn, I kept walking. "With fear you run, you always run away! Stand up... Stand up, you have to get up..." I saw blood all over the floor, from my view I saw the ceiling and I thought I'm busy dying, I could feel pain in my chest, with no strength left to even raise my arms I said one last thing, 'I love you for who you are'. "You know this is it" I fear my mother never made it, last I could remember I held her hand on the way to the hospital, and nothing but sadness ruined my hunger for revenge. I still see her every now and then, she comes to visit you know, she brought me here...
Syrianne, ex-cultist and drug addict, scizophrenia, delusions "You, you're new here. Can I ask why you're here?" The Coordinator turned his attention to the girl dressed in black, with curly black hair that tumbled down her back. Her face was gaunt and pale, but her eyes were vivid and blue, so light a shade they might be grey. Syrianne gave him a hollow stare. "I am a husk of what I once was. Without everything I am empty, but... it was killing me. If you all only knew what I've seen in my life, what exists in this world. I have feasted in realms of hell and heaven both. I have spilled the blood of others and risen demons and spirits from the ether. You all think I'm crazy, but hey, a person dancing to music that isn't playing might seem ludicrous. Now we have iPods. This world disgusts me. You people... and your petty ailments. You know not what lies behind the veil!" The Councillor was blank faced. "I thought they said you were clean. What are you on?" "A pox to you! It would be blasphemy to grace this place with my sacred acid self! I told you, I am a husk. I dwell not in the acid state; the things I saw, the visions, the prophecies. My mind was warped and twisted. And now they're making me come here. Get on, stew the darkness in someone else. You have nought but empty words to give me."
