Skittles

“What do you want?” She asks with a strange look on her face

I scratch my head. Flip the pencil a couple of times. It falls. I pick it up again and place it on my ear. Take a deep breath, ready to push out a long string of words out, but quickly exhale and say nothing. I pick a book from the coffee table. It’s called “A sad clown”. I look at her. I look at the book. Look at her again. Put it back down. Finally look her in the eye and say: What do you mean?

“What do you want from life? How do you feel recently?”

I try to collect myself. My thoughts should be on being and acting like I’m a whole person, not a bunch of skittles in a jar. It doesn’t work. There’s an overwhelming amount of blue and I wish they were purple. That’s how I feel. But how to put it into words? “More purple”

She looks at me. Tries to scribble something on her notepad, but seems to struggle. She stares at me for 5 more seconds. Five long seconds. I look at her. Her gaze descends on her notepad again. Pencil down, again. She looks back up at me. 5 more seconds pass. “More… purple?”

I am suddenly back to my childhood. I’m having skittles. I’m eating them, one by one. Yellow, nice. Red, nice. Orange, nice. Purple, whoa, this is on another level. Is that what I mean? Should I tell her? It’s been a while since I’ve had one. Do we call them skittle individually? I can almost imagine the taste. Wait, how long have I been silent? This can’t be good. “I like skittles”, I say.

She takes a deep breath. Looks back at me and asks: “You like skittles?”

She is just repeating my statements back to me, I realize I’m not giving her much to work on. I try to clear my voice and explain. “When I was a child, I really liked the purple skittles. I think I’m like a jar full of skittles and I wish I was more purple”

I can read on her face some relief. She’s probably happy her client is not completely out of his mind. That social services do not need to be called. I wish I could prove her wrong, but it’s too late, the cards are on the table.

”Do you dislike yourself and wish you liked yourself more?”

I am taken aback by the simplistic conclusion she’s drawn in her head. “No, I like myself. I wish I had more of the purple ones though. They taste really good”. God, I’m doing it again. This makes no sense. I need to pivot. “I like myself, but some parts of myself I like more. I wish those were more prominent”. That will do.

She smiles and nods. I think we’re done for the day, that’s usually her behavior when we get there. I smile, stand up and thank her. I try to take my jacket off the hanger, but it seems stuck. Those goddamn traps. I pull again. It’s stuck. I slide two fingers under the collar, but there is nothing there. It’s been a few seconds now, I feel embarrassed. I pull it again, really hard this time. It snaps and turns upside down. Hundreds of skittles fall out the pockets and scatter on the floor. A loud noise, pebbles hitting the stone.

She looks at me, in disbelief.

“I like skittles”, I say, profoundly ashamed.