Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always wanted to help people. I was soft and caring by nature, so my natural instinct was to be a nurturer. And so I perused a career in psychiatry. Having just finished my graduate school, I had began work as a licensed psychotherapist. Talking to people and digging deep down to understand their motives fascinated me. I also wanted to help them work through whatever issues they were having. Most of my patients had underlying childhood traumas. After two or three sessions, I had usually made a breakthrough and found what was the root cause of their issue. An abusive mother, an overbearing father, everyone had a trigger. And thus with time, everyone became a cookie cutter patient. Each one same as the next… that is, except one.
They never told me his name. He was brought in for a pre-trial psych evaluation to determine his mental state. The only thing I had on him was his prisoner#. I asked him, “What’s your name?” He simply smiled at me and said with a cheeky attitude, “Just call me Mr. X”.
“Okay Mr. X, do you know why you’re here?”