One day in Paris

“What do you feel when you look back at your childhood?” she asked me.

What I feel? I feel sad, I feel lost. I don’t feel any love at all.

I sat on the couch looking outside the window of my therapists’ room. It was a very sunny and warm April morning.

She was a kind woman. I think about forty years old, married, with to kids, a boy and a girl. Her name was Mrs. Harper. Mrs. Harper knew a lot about psychology, but I also knew that she would never be able to help me.

“Nothing” I finally said.

“What nothing?”

“I don’t feel anything when I try to remember my childhood”

She looked at me, said “Aha” and took notes on a blue piece of paper.

“But their must be something that pops up into your mind or isn’t there?”

“No, nothing” I replied.

I don’t know why I decided one day to see a therapist. Maybe because I felt lonely and I wanted to talk about my past, but I actually don’t know.

“Well then…Is there something important that happened when you were young?”

I had a younger brother who died from overdose at the age of thirteen, my mother was depressive, my father was an alcoholic and didn’t care about anything that happened. The only thing he did was to beat my brother and me.

The only beautiful moment that I can remember was when I visited my grandmother in Paris and how I jumped down the steps of a café in front of the Eiffel Tower. She was the only person who cared, but she died one week later in a car accident on the boulevard St-Germain.

“No, nothing important happened” I replied.

“Well…I see that you are not letting me get through to you. We should end this session. See you next Friday?”

I got up, shook her hand, put on my trench coat and left.

I jumped down the stairs and thought of that one day in Paris.

I actually had hoped that that would have been my last day.