Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos Page A

of sick afternoons if I don’t speak up.
    “Mom-I-want-to-see-a-therapist,” I blurt.
    She’s at the counter putting dishes away. I think she heard me and is pretending she didn’t hear me.
    “Mom?”
    “What did you say? The plates were making noise.”
    “I said I need to see a therapist.”
    “What for?” She asks this in a concerned voice, but it’s concern for herself, not me. I’m very sure of this.
    “I can’t really explain. I feel broken.”
    “Well. Maybe you should talk to your father about this.”
    The words
father
and
dad
mean very specific things in my house.
    When he gets back from one of his real estate lunches, he seems like he’s in a good mood. Perhaps this is related to beer. Perhaps not. My grandfather’s relationship with alcohol, the way my parents tell it, could fuel a number of TLC specials about abused wives, lost jobs, and angry children. Still, my father’s anger never seems linked to alcohol—just to fatherhood.
    I want to ambush my father with my request to go to therapy, but my mother ambushes me instead.
    “James has something he needs to ask you.” She stands there in the front hallway, the look on her face pleading with my father to just get through the conversation quickly. I can’t tell if she wants to help or just erase my request from our family history.
    Removing his jacket and shoes, he asks me what I need.
    “I think I need to start seeing a therapist person.”
    His arms flop to his sides and his shoulders droop in an exaggerated manner.
    “Uck. This again? What good did therapy do your sister?”
    “Dale,” my mother says.
    “What? It’s an honest question.”
    “This isn’t about her,” I urge, and that feels about 75 percent honest. “I have anxieties.”
    “Don’t we all.” The Brute sits down at the kitchen table with me. “Therapy isn’t what you need. You just need to organize yourself. Figure out what you want to do in the world. College and work.”
    “I don’t think that’s it.”
    “No, it really is. You’re just at that age where you think everything is so horrible and terrible.”
    My mother puts a glass of iced tea down for him. The glass seems to start sweating as soon as he touches it.
    “Your father may be right, James.”
    “I think this is something more.” I want to say “more serious,” but they’re both looking at me like I’m a spoiled brat. Maybe they’re right. People in the world suffer from greater calamities than I do. I eat, I have clothes, I have a house. I read about people around the world who survive on less than a dollar a day. I read about how there are hundreds of millions of widows living in poverty. I see ads for kids who are born with ragged lips and jagged teeth. I don’t have anything like that. I just wake up with a deep hatred of myself. How selfish is that?
    “You guys are probably right,” I admit.
    “Of course we are. You’re probably just getting ideas from Jorie. And look how that turned out.”
    This, though, is not excusable. I have four response options:
     
    Get up, stomp up stairs, slam the door, ignore them when they begin banging on it.
    Get up, go outside, climb a tree, and come home when we’ve all buried our emotions.
    Get up, tell my father he is a tremendous prick, throw his iced tea across the room.
    Get up, tell my mother she gave birth to fucked-up kids because she married a fucked-up man.
     
    Despite all the options, I pick the quiet one involving trees because I am a coward with nothing to be sad about.

20.
    DEREK GETS ME A JOB at the pizza shop and it’s the kind of thing I guess everyone has to suffer through. Plus, I need money for therapy.
    I come home reeking of grease, of all things. Not pizza, just grease. I have to put my work clothes in the washer immediately, otherwise the stench infects my entire room. Who knew pizza baked in such a horrible stench?
    Because my arm is in a cast for a while longer, I’m just a register jockey who wipes down the booths