Anger Management

“You can call my Cindy, okay?”

My “therapist” gives me this sappy look that’s supposed to look warm and friendly but really just makes me want to throw my cheap hot coffee at her. I raise my eyebrows to let her know I’m unimpressed.

She keeps the smile for a second longer and then lets it go. She has seen my files. She knows why I’m here. For the next hour she asks the usual questions and I give the usual response, which is literally nothing. I hate therapist. I hate doctors and experts and quacks who assume they know everything about me just because they’ve read stuff in fat, dusty old books. As Patient A who has had X, Y, and Z done to her, I clearly must be treated with This and That and a little bit of Those and voila! I shall be cured. But I am not a textbook case. I am me. A person. But no gets that.

When the session is over I drive out to my boyfriend’s ranch. He’s out in the field, combining the winter wheat, but I’m not here to see him. I rummage around his house, find what I need, and drive out to the pit behind the automobile graveyard. Load ‘em up, shoot ‘em out. Back in the day I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. After just a few weeks of practice, I’m almost as good as my boyfriend who has been shooting almost his whole life.  

Blasting the hell out of old cars, empty gas cans, and hundreds of beer bottles. Now that’s what I call therapy. Sometimes, if it’s late or there’s been rain, my boyfriend will come join me. It’s not quality time together, though. There’s no teasing or laughing or flirting. Just bang bang bang bang, reload, bang bang bang bang, reload. He asked me once if I picture certain people in my mind when I shoot. I just shrugged. Usually it’s just mindless. I just do it to settle my nerves. But when the nightmares get bad, when flashbacks threaten to pull me under, then I’m aiming at someone. Someone in particular. Someone who, if he wasn’t already dead, killed in the raid that resulted in my rescue, I would be tracking down right now. But someone else took him out before I got my revenge, so this is my alternative.

I used to draw for therapy. That was back when the only things that upset me were school, friends, or my obnoxious roommate. The me that drew for therapy didn’t know how easy she really had it. I can’t do that anymore. I tried. All I ended up doing was digging the pencil into the paper, carving the word “Fuck” right through the paper into my desk. After I broke the pencil and threw at the wall I decided I needed something that would channel my anger, not try to whitewash it.

“Anger Management.” When they said the two words I thought of the Adam Sandler movie. But instead of Jack Nicholson and a hilarious comedy, I got a dozen “experts” prescribing drugs and telling me “healthy” ways to manage it. Apparently pulling out a small arsenal and shooting inanimate objects in the middle of no where doesn’t count. Maybe if I stopped flushing the meds down the toilet I would be more considerate of their opinions. But the drugs make me feel weird, like there’s a haze between me and the rest of the world, so I avoid them.

Instead, I pelt a rusty Oldsmobile with some .45s and wonder if the continuous recoil from the guns is the actual therapy, kind of like electroshock but with less sizzle and more bang. I wonder what Cindy would think of this therapy, with her sappy smile and crappy coffee. I thank God for a redneck boyfriend who doesn’t mind part of his land being used as a war zone every few days. We both know that’s what it really is. It’s me versus the pent up rage, the confusion, the chaos that is always on the brink of consuming me. I fight it, quite literally, with bullets. It sounds terrible out of context but it is what it is.

I wonder if I’ll ever win. I don’t consider the alternative. When the thought of losing crosses my mind, I head out to the ranch. I grab something heavy and powerful, peg that thought to the side of a dilapidated Dodge, and blast it to pieces. My therapy might be unorthodox, but it sure does work.