The Boy and The Mermaid

Alone in his consulting room, Dr Mark Jones PhD MBBS DPM FRANZCP,sits in his leather swivel chair,and reads over the rough, preliminary notes for his latest case:

Client is a physically healthy, intelligent, likeable 13 year old boy. He was referred to me by his family GP, Dr Bruce O’Connor who suspects that Thomas suffers from PTSD. After spending some time with Thomas and his parents (father and stepmother), I tend to agree with Dr O’Connor’s diagnosis.

One of Thomas’ more meaningful symptoms is that he has been displaying developmentally regressive behaviours - case in point, he has recently formed a friendship with a mermaid. According to his father, Thomas was six years old when he last had an imaginary friend.

It was when Thomas was six years old that the trauma in question occurred. During a seaside vacation he saw his mother being fatally attacked by a shark.

It is my ‘feeling’ that the family’s return to a beachside suburb and the introduction of his step-mother (i.e. a new mother figure) has triggered Thomas’ memory of this tragedy in the anxiety- reducing converterd form of the mermaid.

At present, and until further sessions, it is my opinion that a course of Zoloft (100 mg  daily for 10 weeks) accompanied with CB and play therapy should  be Thomas' initial treatment.

He looks at his old, worn carpet  and thinks, I really need to get new carpet

 Sometime later, at the beach, Thomas sits on the rocks that face the water. Simone the Mermaid swims about .
“So how did the session go”? Simone asks Thomas.

“We talked mainly”

“About what”

“About how you’re not real”.

“Oh yeah? The f*ck I’m not real. If I’m not f*ckin’  real then how come I can do this? she says as she splashes Thomas.

“Hey for a mermaid you’re not very nice.

“Who the f*ck said that Mermaid had to be f*ckin’ nice”?

They’re nice in all the stories, all the books and movies.

“That’s f*ckin’ fiction!  And fiction is Bullsh*t. I know some mermaids who are real bitches. I’m very nice compared to them”

.

“So what else do you talk about at those sessions”?

 “About my mother and how she died”

“How did she die?
“She was eaten by a shark”.

F*ck me dead, no! that’s how my mother died. f*ckin’ sharks! I f*ckin  hate those motherf*ckin’, mother eating, codsucking c*nts!   I miss my mum so much. I got this tattoo for her. She presents her left (“closer to the heart”) shoulder to Thomas; there is a big red heart tattoo on it with a scroll saying ‘Mother” beneath it.  The top half, the human half, of Simone’s body is a smorgasbord of tattoos. On the back of her neck, there is a line from Wallace Stevens: “She sings beyond the genius of the sea”. Poseidon, rising up from a stormy, foamy sea and holding up his trident covers her back. There’s a Sheela na Gig on Simone's belly with a quote from a Mermaid poet above it.  Aphrodite is on her right shoulder.

“But f*ck, I’m f*ckin swearing too much aren’t I?  I mean it not right to swear so much in front of a kid like you, is it?  F*ck .

For a moment or two there is silence

“You’ll be ok, honey, we’re all f*cked  up in our own ways. I mean f*ck, I’m tripolar myself”

“Tripolar?”

Yeah, it’s sort of like being bipolar but we mere-people have an extra dimension of emotions that you humans don’t have and we can’t explain it to you because unlike us you guys don’t taste colours or smell sounds, and you can’t communicate telepathically,so you only get ‘depressed’ or ‘maniac’ but never ‘xrgutynk’.

Thomas the boy and Simone the mermaid continue on chatting, until they hear Thomas’ step-mother calling him. As Thomas heads home, Simone shouts out to him:

“If you have to, you can tell your parents and the shrink that I’m not real, I don’t mind”

Thomas turns around and smiles and says “thanks”.

10 weeks later,

“So how have you been feel lately, Thomas?”

“Good, I’ve been feeling good, Dr Jones”

Thomas looks down and notices that Dr Jones’ room has new carpet. The carpet is blue and Thomas feels funny. He can't explain it  and then he realizes that he is tasting the colour blue.