A Nearly Normal Family(48)

You quickly learn to tell the difference. Even though most of them have the same cold eyes, there is a crucial difference between apathy and contempt.

Jimmy is definitely one of the power-hungry ones. It’s something about how he looks at you. Sort of from below and above all at the same time. As if he considers himself better than me, superior, even though he knows deep down that it’s really the other way around, and that makes him furious. He spends way too much time at the gym. His upper arms are thicker than his thighs, and his neck would look better on a bull. I have such an urge to pin those fat arms to his sides.

He responds to every question with another question.

“Are you joking? What do you think? Do I look like your mother?”

I just want to scream in his face.

If one of us needs a psychologist, it’s sure as fuck not me.



* * *



I have a theory about psychologists. I’m not saying it’s true for all of them, but I certainly have encountered my share throughout the years and so far I haven’t run into any exceptions.

Here’s the thing: if you get a degree and are fed a bunch of explanatory models and diagnoses, it seems to me like it’s pretty much unavoidable that you would later try to apply what you’ve learned. It would be stupid not to. So you get out of school and greet people—clients, patients, or whoever—with the attitude that you should be able to explain why people are the way they are and do the things they do. A psychologist’s job is basically to force the rest of us into one of their templates.

Suggestion: you should do the opposite!

Reason: people are unique.

All those psychologists who came and went. Was that life? All the self-assessments and personality tests. The first thing they start with, obviously, is a rough childhood. It seems to be every psychologist’s wet dream to find a broken soul who has repressed a bunch of terrible memories from their childhood.

The bizarre thing about all these diagnoses they throw around is that it’s so easy to see yourself in most of them. There’s not a single psych test where you wouldn’t check off some of the boxes.

For a while I was sort of obsessed with that stuff. Since everyone believed there was something wrong with me, even my own family—or maybe my own family most of all—I tried to get to the bottom of the problem. Everything I read said that it would feel better when you put a label on it, when you could put a name to the problem, when you knew that there were lots of other people dealing with the same thing.

At first I thought I had ADD or ADHD, then Borderline Personality Disorder, Schizoid Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder.

I came to the conclusion that it was all bullshit.

I am who I am. Diagnosis: Stella.

There are an infinite number of things wrong with me, I won’t deny that. I’m anything but normal. My brain fucks with me twenty-four hours a day. But I don’t need any other name for that than my own. I am Stella Sandell. If someone has a problem with me, maybe they’re the one who needs therapy.

And it’s no secret that psychologists often have their own mental issues. If they don’t start out with any, they show up later. Too much Freud would make anyone nuts.

It was while I was reading up on all this that I got hooked on psychopaths. I guess you could say I became obsessed with them. They say it’s good to have a hobby, so I replaced handball with psychopathology.

The psychologists I met before I came to the jail were similar in some ways. Most of them were women, many of them were redheads, often with a particular “concerned” look, not infrequently dressed like a high school music teacher. A surprising number of them spoke with a Sm?land accent.

So as Jimmy the Guard hustles me in to see the jail psychologist, it’s not all that easy for me to conceal my surprise.

“Hi, Stella. I’m Shirine.” She’s dark and pretty and has her hair in two tight braids—a Middle Eastern version of Princess Leia.

“I don’t need a psychologist,” I say.

I’ve actually prepared a hailstorm of flashy words like “violation of integrity” and “overreach of power,” the kind of stuff that always has some effect on public servants who have underestimated you. But Shirine just sits there like she’s fucking Lady on a meatball date and I can’t even bring myself to raise my voice.

“That’s okay,” she says. “I understand you feel reluctant, but I meet with all the teenage inmates here. It’s not up to me.”

She smiles warmly. She really looks kind, the way you mostly only see in little old ladies and puppies.

“I mean, it’s nothing personal,” I emphasize. “I’m sure you’re great. But I’ve been to a lot of psychologists.”

“I understand,” says Shirine. “I won’t take it personally.”

Then there’s silence, the kind I can’t handle. Shirine sits across from me, smiling, letting her sympathetic gaze fall upon me.

“So you’re going to make me? We’re going to sit here for an hour every week and stare at each other?”

“It’s up to you, Stella. If you want to talk, I’ll be happy to.”

I roll my eyes. No chance I’m about to talk, no matter how gentle her brown eyes are and no matter how much she smiles like Lady. What am I supposed to say? I’m never going to tell anyone what I’ve experienced. No one would understand. I barely understand it myself.