A Brief History of the Psychotherapist:
At the age of six and seventh-twelfths, Hanna Leon lost her father to a piece of tightly knotted rope.
It marked the end of her childhood innocence, that day, staring with unsure fascination at those familiar, neatly shoed feet dangling above the kitchen floor. Perhaps morbidly, she had even reached out to touch them, half-expecting a twitch or slurred grumble to “go away” in place of the funny stiffness.
Only in retrospect did it all begin to make sense, picking up a slew of new words amidst the gossip and hysterics. There were certain things in particular she heard mentioned often, like gambling, and alcoholism, and debt. Her mother cried incessantly… changed, even. There had been many weeks spent with the blinds drawn, she faintly recalled, often excusing herself from that Once-Home-House whenever the air grew too thick, or the sound of sobbing got too intense, or the broken vase shards on the floor cut her bare feet. Rarely did she have a destination beyond out. That was good enough.
Perhaps some selfless desire to “help” her ailing mother had been the compelling force towards that path as years went by, or maybe it was just the constant immersion in lunacy twisting her own psyche. She never debated it too much in retrospect. With no authority to provide a curfew, her schedule remained pleasantly open to do with whatever research she pleased, and travel anywhere her legs were strong enough to go. Collecting appropriate literature was the first step. Granted, this was destined to be difficult for any young, lone pre-teen in a small rural village-city, but Hanna embraced it as a worthwhile hobby to help the years pass. Occasionally, she would even suffer the good fortune of running across a passing psychiatrist or two just baffled enough to humor her persuasions for a short term ‘internship’. The only problem was money.
Her eventual solution for that… was not her wisest ever, in retrospect. Perhaps she had gotten too confident in her own studies, telling herself constantly that a well-fortified mind could handle anything with stressless grace, and the physical only affected the mental if one allowed it to…
Around the age of fifteen, she attempted prostitution for the first time. It was, as they said, ‘good money’ for the act, and one of the only “jobs” she could find with a paycheck fat enough to support herself and mother both. She could barely remember his face despite the significance of it all: just an average fellow, probably of an average age, with thankfully fair intentions despite his… needs. When she broke down and cried after the fact, he kissed her on the forehead with a peculiar tenderness, almost like her father used to, and offered her his jacket to walk home in.
It was a red jacket, more particularly. She knew because it was still hanging on the coat rack in her office, carefully tailored and repatched whenever any fabric gave out.
Several weeks passed before she could bring herself to walk the streets again, and mostly from a once-again pressing need for money. This time, she forcibly detached herself from her feelings, and choked down any tears. It was just a job, she kept telling herself, and there was no need to take it personally. Bruises weren’t permanent fixtures. Men payed, satisfied themselves, and left. It went like clockwork. Her body grew slowly, healed sluggishly. A year or so passed with the intermittent ‘side work’ to bolster her funds until she had her first real episode.
She’d been walking with a customer when it happened, and hardly remembered passing out. All she knew upon waking was that the man hovering over her was definitely a new face: sandy, bespectacled, and terribly distraught with concern.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re awake! With that sort of dreadful pallor, I nearly took you for a ghost on the road and passed right by and— oh! Do forgive me, my dear young miss; how reprehensible of me to neglect you your tea a moment longer…”
His name was Langston: Langston-Kai Tsholofelo Vandrooghenbroeck the Twelfth, and quite possibly the most peculiar, life-altering individual she would ever know. He was a thirty-something, terribly old fashioned, yet endlessly adoring gent with a beautiful wife and young son in Porooskia.
Had she been a believer in much of anything, perhaps she would’ve called it “desiny”, that meeting… but from there, despite her slowly failing body, life itself seemed to take a gradual upward turn. Using decent social connections and some well-developed street smarts, she kept herself stable (in more ways than one) with black market trade in lieu of other, more physically taxing activities, buying and selling wares in her spare time between study for a generous profit. Somehow, things worked themselves out, and when she had at last compiled funds enough to make certain her mother would remain “taken care of” properly, it was time to hit the road as a true, if not self-proclaimed, traveling psychotherapist.
