Therapy is magic

My therapist has this unique policy of never letting me talk of my family or what has happened in my past. He has this philosophy that since it’s already happened, why bother going back over history, which I guess makes sense.

“The future, that is where all your problems are,” is how Dr. Meesvian puts it. Again, I guess he is right. I have asked Dr. Meesvian many times about my childhood and his answer is almost always the same, “all I know about your childhood is what you tell me, and I figure that must be tainted by lies, deception and drug abuse.”

My father was a poor dirt farmer and my mother worked for an illegal Mexican who ran an illegal burrito stand a few blocks from our apartment. She would walk down in the skimpiest dress imaginable and come home late at night smelling of cheap tequila and carrying 13 dollars in wrinkled one dollar bills. I never knew what she did because quite honestly, the illegal burrito stand was just a tad bit shady.

One day after toiling with his tomato plants until late in the evening, my dad asked me to go check on my mother, who seemed to be working late yet again. I don’t remember how old I was at the time, somewhere between 15 and 25, still in that sweet and impressionable age. I left our place and walked towards the illegal burrito shack and for a while I thought I would never get there, then a white van pulled over and a priest asked if I needed a ride. Now, while I was raised in a strictly religious family, the religion did not involve either neck collars or child abuse, but I did need a ride, so I got in.

He asked where I was going and I pointed to the illegal burrito stand that was fast approaching on the right. He asked if I had ever seen a naked man of the cloth and I opened the passenger door and left. As the door slammed shut I could hear him say something like “god be with you” and I stammered an “amen”.

I walked up to the badly lit illegal burrito stand and a high pitched voice from within the stand itself said, “you want burrito?” I said I was there to find my mother and all of a sudden all the windows shut, the lights went out and a gaggle of immigrants from countries I could not spell ran from back of the trailer.

I walked home that night, having learned a valuable lesson.