The Alchemist

I feel completely scattered and at the same time linear. Wearing nothing but what I wore yesterday, I come across my laptop, decide to find happiness in a sea of strangers.

My therapist had a deck of cards: archetypes. These are from Jung, personas we wear in public, on the flip side, shadows we keep secret from those who might judge us.

She shuffled them rather obviously and placed "addict" on the top.

She handed me the deck, asked me: "Do any of these cards resonate with you?"

Addict, definition courtesy of Oxford Languages: "a person who is addicted to a particular substance, typically an illegal drug." It's synonyms are "abuser" "user" and "junkie."

I wasn't sure whether to be offended, or if archetypes can be deeper.

How do I really appear to her?

I skipped that card entirely. I settled on the "Alchemist" card, because I told her: "It creates things, like a writer."

At first I thought, my therapist thinks I'm stupid. I don't articulate everything very linearly. I wear the same clothes as yesterday.

I gripe about my mental health to the sea of strangers on the internet, hoping that I don't come across as a shadow self, but as an authentic "junkie" - of my sanity.