text: The friendly front desk lady stood at the door, holding out a giant candy cane to me, almost invitingly. -"I don ́t think I like the sight of that." I sighed. She looked at me with puppy eyes and slowly came closer. -"Doctor Harker requires a favor." Molly beings. -"Let me guess." I interrupt her. "a last-minute patient?" She nods silently. -"I have a plane to catch Molly." I say with a sense of urgency. I can see that Molly sympathized with me but was unable to conjure up the words to express it. -"I can give you another free meal voucher." she smiled gently. -"I didn't have time for more than a cup of coffee today." I shook my shoulders. Molly hurriedly fished the voucher out of her pocket: "Look! Dinner and three sides, plus dessert." -"What time is this patient coming?" I asked. -"She's already here." She replied quickly. I glanced past Molly in the subdued waiting room, where the only obvious sign of the holidays was an overaged wreath and a light-trimmed elf sitting on the edge of Molly's counter. -"This is an exception rather than a rule, so it must be an emergency." Molly tried to convince me. -"Yes, some people need extra support around the holidays." I said under my breath. Over the years it had kind of become the norm for me to work on Christmas eve, I never minded celebrating a couple of days later, because I never “did” Christmas in the traditional sense, but I always enjoyed spreading some holiday spirit. But that year I had been invited to an actual Christmas celebration. -You go now." I said to Molly. "Happy Holidays! We'll see each other again in the next year." I tried to sound as cheerful as possible, suppressing the urge to look at the clock with all my might. -"Are you sure?" Molly asked, impatient to leave. "Can I let the patient in?" I nodded and blew her a kiss: "Go now!" -"I heard gunshots on my way here." said the dazzling woman absently, casually strolling into my office. -"Oh." I said feeling silly. -"Maybe someone bringing in a last-minute Christmas dinner?" she continued. I was a little annoyed that she started a conversation without greeting me or introducing herself. It crossed my mind that there were no woods or fields for miles around to shoot game at all. I got annoyed that I let myself be bullied, by someone a little rude, but was probably hiding behind this slack attitude out of nervousness or to put on an attitude. She walked around my desk a few times, then stopped and gave me a cold look: "Do you have any M&Ms?" I smiled absently and shook my head. She let out a loud sigh and turned around to take another look at the interior of my office: -"Well," she began, "I think it's quite something that you don't have statues or elephants in here. -"Good." I said just to say something. -"They belong in India." she continued. -"What can I do for you?" I asked, not wanting to discuss elephants or any other item on my desk any further. -"Maybe you can prescribe me something." she said as if that were the most normal thing in the world. I coughed and invited her to sit down. -"Prescribe something?" I asked, " What for?" -"Because I'm dead inside." she answered dead serious. Not wanting to continue the conversation by starting with a rejection, I asked her to tell me more. She rolled her eyes in reply. -"This office is inspiring and embarrassing all at once." she said, curling her lips in disdain. I felt myself getting angry inside. I did not want to miss a plane for some bratty bitch who thought she could come in and extort a few pills from me. -"You've probably seen Dr. Harker before, haven't you?" I asked as politely as I could muster, "He's the one who asked me to see you before I left." But she did not answer me and shrugged her shoulders in boredom. -"Okay," I said, "Let's try this again. What can I do for you at this late hour on Christmas Eve?" -"Social anxiety." she answered dryly, peering past me through the window behind me. "I'm not good at expressing my feelings." -"Okay. Please..." I started, but she interrupted me: -"Please don't ask me how I feel because I don't know." -"For what it's worth, many people don't know how or what exactly they feel when they come here." I tried to reassure her. -"A doctor once told me I had tight angles." she started. -"Who was that doctor if I may ask." I asked. -"A funny guy, who said he would torture me." she answered. -"And did he?" I asked in shock. -"What? Torture me?" she laughed faintly. "No, he said that stress played an important role." I nodded. "Please continue." -"Fuck!" she said. -"Excuse me?" I asked. -"Another therapist ordered me to let go of my thoughts because it was my thoughts that tormented me." She paused and looked straight into my eyes, "I like my drunken monkey thoughts. Well, most of them." She smiled shyly, "I like being alone with them." I was about to ask what those thoughts were about, but she went on to say, "And another one told me to step back and drop all attachments." -"Are you feeling depressed right now? I asked. "That's the problem," she replied firmly, "I don't feel anything at all." -"Don't you celebrate Christmas?" I asked curiously. She pursed her lips and blew a raspberry: -"Christmas, what is that anyway? A few Christmas decorations, bows and stockings, and a freaking baby in a creche. That fucking doll always ends the Christmas spirit for me!" she says, suppressing a yawn, "I don't understand it all. Friends writing stupid cards and announcing hopeful things. Everybody is happy and all is bliss! What does it even mean when people say they are overcome with a feeling of joy? Nah, I don't understand it." -"Maybe the beginning of grace is not resenting other ́s blessings." I said doubtfully. "So, you don't have any plans for the holidays?" She shook her head. -"not even pick a movie somewhere?" I insisted. -"Movies are boring." she said dryly. "Life is boring. to me all is equally flat. It's all like a mechanical production." -"You lack the capacity to feel joy, sorrow, or love?" I asked. She rolled her eyes in boredom. -"The only emotions I am familiar with, are fear and anger." she said softly, as if embarrassed. "It's not that I lack the words, I have no feelings at all." -"And yet, you do recognize fear and anger. That's a start." I tried carefully. -"Fear, anger, and confusion." she corrected me. -"Of course." I agreed. "But there must be something else going on for this to be so unbearable for you right now." -"I met somebody, and I don't know how to feel about her." She sat up straighter and rubbed her eyes. "It ́s confusing. She confuses me." she continued. -"Are you in love?" I asked. -"She showed up and something changed. Everything is weird and it ́s confusing. I don ́t even know if I ́m able to like her." she said in a breath. -"It sounds like that woman managed to kindle some sparks in you." I pointed out to her. -"I'm not good at expressing my feelings." she said awkwardly. -"I always try to win people over by buying them things. -"Do you have any friends?" I asked. -"I don ́t think I have real friends. They are all fake. I think I was friends with my brother." Her face softened a little when she mentioned her brother. -"He always stood up for me. He said he always could tell how I felt. Which was funny because I don ́t know how that feels: to feel." She suddenly seemed very tired and helpless. -"I do not believe that you have no feelings. You have no words for your emotions." -"You know I built a successful career for myself." she said with pride in her voice. "And I have been married twice. Yes! I had two wedding days. I said - I do - twice." she held up two fingers to emphasize the double. "I have no happy memories from my marriages. The men were simply not right for me." She pushed back her hair and continued, "anything I do that requires an emotional response, feels fake to me." -"So, you do feel?" I started. -"Most of my responses are learned responses." she said softly. -"What do you mean by learned? where did you learn them? I asked. -"By watching TV shows." she said shyly. "In an environment where everybody is happy and jolly; I act like I ́m happy, but it ́s all a lie. I just act. I think I do feel something, but I don ́t know what it is I ́m feeling, or what it is I am supposed to feel." I nodded understandingly, not wanting to interrupt her story. -"I put myself on a pedestal to be something I ́m not. Cognitively I can react just fine. but it is not real. It ́s all fake, and I am so tired of pretending." She hid her face behind her hands. -"It is not right to have to live like this." I said understandingly. -"I have a vocabulary. I have words for emotions. I just don ́t know if it ́s the right word, for the right emotion." she continued. -"How do you know when you ́re scared?" I wanted to know. -"I find it scary when my heart starts to race." she replied. -"Are your parents still alive?" I asked. She shrugged indifferently. -"My mother once hit me so hard in the face that my eye was black and blue. Then she put a patch over my eye. At school, the kids asked why I was walking around with a patch over my eye. Then I said that I was a pirate A girl told me that girls could not be pirates, especially if they were ugly. When school was over, I walked home past her front yard, where she was playing. her and pushed her she tumbled back onto the lawn and began to whimper a door flew open and a huge dog charged at me snapping and snarling I tried to get away in panic, but the girl's mother grabbed me and drove her nails into my shoulders. She wriggled my arm behind my back and hissed in my ear that I was a very naughty and ugly girl. I felt embarrassed and stumbled home on the sidewalk. I looked for my mother, and when I finally found her, she looked at me very angrily look. That girl's mother had called her. She screamed that she was extremely disappointed in me. When I was six, she set fire to the house, while me and my brother were inside. Later I heard from people, that she suffered from postpartum depression. There was no treatment. She went to prison. Everybody called us little shits, and nobody wanted to look after us. We were in and out of care homes. I never saw my mother again." She had told this sad story in one go. -"You said you were ashamed? Could you feel then?" I asked. -"I was flooded with misery. I imagined that no one wanted me because I was bad, naughty, and ugly." she added. -"Have you ever kept a diary?" I wanted to know. -"Yes, I have." she nodded vehemently. "a black composition book, which I always kept well hidden." -"What were you writing about?" I asked. She gave a little laugh and said, "Flowering coverage of the cute boy who accidentally bumped into me. And love poems. I don't remember why I wrote." -"Perhaps writing was your refuge." I spoke. -"You know," she began, "now that I think back on it: I could feel. I could feel colors. I still can feel colors and even taste them. And I can taste words as well." -"Maybe because of the colorlessness of your childhood, you learned to preserve the richness of texture. Tone, depth, movement, in an effort to make the world look lusher and more vibrant." I thought aloud. She fell back, exhausted. -"Anger is all I feel, and yet I don't know how to express it." she groaned. When I try to write it down, it loses volatility." -"How do you convey the anger you feel?" I asked her. -"I think I ́m way beyond anger. It ́s rage! Sometimes I shake with rage. Blind rage; uncontrolled and unstoppable." she said with clenched fists. "I live on a constant low boil of anger." -"Like most people." I tried to comfort her. "Most people spend their lives with a deep-seated fury." -"That's kind of sad, no?" she asked. -"And yet," I began, "Italians rage against each other full of desire and smoldering jealousy. -"You almost make it sound beautiful." she sighed." -"Perhaps you are not emotionally blind. you ́re numb and a little colorblind on the emotional spectrum." I continued. -"Is there help for me?" she sounded almost pleading. -"Yes!" I assured her, " It ́s called psychodynamic therapy." She wrinkled her nose and smiled weakly but hopefully. -"What does that mean?" -"Well, I don ́t know exactly, but it will help you to uncover unconscious thoughts and behaviors." -"And this will make me feel better?" she asked in a childish voice." - "I am firmly convinced of that." I said, "The anger you're feeling right now; voice it and learn to listen to it." -"And meanwhile?" she insisted. -"Well, isn't this the season to be jolly?" I laughed. -"Even if I have to fake it?" -"Yes!" I said firmly, "Fake it till you make it! Translate your anger into a language in your head, listen to it and hang on to it! That's about all you can do right now, but it's a mighty good start. " -"And what are you going to do now?" she asked innocently. I could hear the final boarding calls in my head. I took a deep breath and said: " Over the years it has kind of become the norm for me to work on Christmas eve. I don ́t mind celebrating a couple of days later, because I never “did” Christmas in the traditional sense, but I always enjoy spreading some holiday spirit. And though this year I was invited to an actual Christmas celebration, I think my plane is already up in the air... - “Because of me?” she almost sounded guilt-ridden. I smiled and nodded: “Not to worry! I have a free meal voucher. Look! Dinner and three sides, plus dessert. Can I persuade you to join me?”