James Mandarin

Notepad

"When did you begin cutting?" An Li asks as he opens his notepad.

I stare at the wooden clock on the wall, not wanting to make eye contact. "Year Eight."

"What triggered this behaviour?"

I pause from a moment. "I was under a lot of stress."

"What kind of stress?"

There are a million things I could list down: my parents, the bullying, the depression, the pathetic feelings in my chest, the loneliness, and desperation –the fear of being unloved.... "It's private."

An Li looks at me through his thick rimmed glasses and says, "This is a safe environment."

"Is it?" Nowhere is safe in this world. I can't even write my deepest thoughts in a journal or type them in a protected document on my laptop. You know why? Because your deepest, darkest secrets come out, no matter how hard you try to hide them.

An Li sighs and removes his glasses. He cleans them with the small handkerchief on his lap before putting them back on. "James, I promise you, this is a safe environment. You can tell me anything without the fear of being judged or ridiculed."

Is that what Shrinks are supposed to say?

I remember when Anna, the girl in my year, told one of the counsellors she suffered from bulimia. Her parents found out a couple of hours later and the rest of the school knew within eight hours.

I've heard the school counsellors in the staff room, talk about the students that come to talk to them. I hear them laugh. I hear their giggles. Their lips move rapidly as the words spit out of their mouths like rapid gunfire.

"Little children with little problems," They say. "Let them wait until they get to the real world. Then, depression will seem like a small marble, in comparison to the day to day troubles they'll face."

People judge and ridicule, even Shrinks. No one can pretend to be perfect.

An Li purses his lips together for a moment and looks at me. He resembles a blowfish and a dark shade of red, lowly creeps across his pale, porcelain cheeks. "What makes you happy, James?"

"A lot of things make me happy," I reply. "Art, math, books..."

Cutting makes me happy.

But I don't say that.

An Li crosses his legs. "Good!" I want you to go home and spend your time doing something that makes you happy, James. Bring whatever makes you happy with you to our next session and we shall continue our discussion." The small alarm clock on the table beeps. An Li smiles. "Your hour is up James."

I walk out of An Li's sophisticated office into my father's wreck of a car and head home in silence. Once I arrive home, I lock myself in my bedroom and set up my art supplies. I take a blank canvas and begin painting.