Therapists

All my life I’ve been told I have problems
Never why or how
Just that I have them
And those who’ve told me this have always left me
To pick up the peaces
To try to understand
Because don’t we have to understand a problem in order to fix it?

All these years
Thousands of therapy visits
More than 10 separate diagnoses
Hundreds of thousands of psych meds taken
Countless visits to psychiatric wards
I’m still stuck asking the same questions
Still trying to understand

I wonder at times
 If the questions I ask don’t matter to them
They have their own list of questions
And after a year or two of being asked them
I get asked those same questions again
And again and again
Sometimes by the same person
Other times by a new one

These psych experts
Their questions are like knifes and scalpels
They use them to cut my mind open and look around
I’m told that’s how they try to make sense of my problems
They always write down their findings
I’ve never seen what they write


I’ve always trusted that if I keep answering their questions
Keeping letting them dissect my insides
They’ll eventually give me answers to my questions
Up to now, they never have
And I’m starting to wonder if they ever will
Yet, I keep trusting them
Because I’m told they’re the professionals  
They’re best suited to do the answering
Not me

What if I stopped answering their questions?
They probably wouldn’t want to see me anymore
I’m told if I leave them, my problems will get worse
I’m told their questions are actually helping me
I just don’t know it
But I don’t feel it either

What if the point is not for them to help me?
What if my understanding of the issues they tell me I have is irrelevant?
What if I’m the one helping them?
Perhaps they know as little about my issues as I do
And answering their questions
Letting them cut me open
Is just so they, like experimenters,
Can learn about problems they’ve never known anything about
Maybe they have the same questions I do
Hidden behind what they ask me