Are You Working With Any Other Agencies?

I walk in the building dreading my meeting just as much as I did the day before. Everything inside me screams, "Leave!" but I can't. I've been railroaded into this by a series of events and a monopoly. I  speak in clipped tones to the pretty young receptionist. I don't feel good. I got sick earlier and I haven't eaten anything. My purple hair is messily pulled back with a claw and my roots are showing. They really want to make sure they have a phone number for me. I sit waiting. I ask how long will it be? I need to run outside. I go downstairs and step outside. A nice man holds the door for me. I puff away on my vape pen. I want to leave. 

I go back inside and twenty minutes has gone by since my appointment was scheduled. The woman I saw yesterday walks in and smiles slightly saying she'll be right out to get me. She looks like she's forty-seven to me with graying brown hair pulled into a messy kind of bun. I would say she was about five foot three or four. I don't know maybe she weighed a hundred and twenty pounds. I sit down again briefly and wait, then rise and pace and pace. There was a young woman in the waiting area earlier who had bright pink and purple hair with shaved sides that everyone seemed to keep confusing with me. Her hair looked better and her outfit was better too. 

A tall gangly man walks by delicately with a single tea bag pinched between his fingers. I notice myself judging most of the people who work there. Not the guy with the tea bag. He was cool. No, it's just that some of these people seem so weird. The mentally ill aren't the ones that scare me. Finally after what seems like forever she comes back for me and leads me to a smaller room than last time. She seems like she's in a better mood. She's wearing a purple long sleeve shirt. Right now I'm filled with a memory of a different time. Strange how one thing leads to another. 

She sits behind her computer constantly typing and asking me questions. The interview was about forty-five minutes yesterday and another forty-five today. Yesterday I felt like I was getting grilled. Today I find a few things out and in the end I'm strangely grateful, which wasn't what I was expecting.

When she asked me if I experienced auditory and visual hallucinations I told her sometimes I see "light beings" come into the room, but I think they're aliens. They look bright and there's a faint outline around them. They'll come rushing into the room like there's an emergency and leave just as quickly. She asked me if I talked to them. I said no. But I do wave sometimes.

She asked me questions about everything. From "Are you in a monogamous or polyamorous relationship?" to a lot of questions about depression. "Do you ever get so depressed that you can't get out of bed?"

"No."

"Are you a vegetarian? Do you have any dietary restrictions? It might benefit you to go gluten free. How many drinks do you have a week? Have you ever been in rehab?"

"No."

"How old were you when you drank alcohol for the first time? Smoked weed?"

"I was fifteen. Sixteen."

"When did your parents separate? Did you say one and a half or eleven?"

When I came in the day before I was supposed to stay for about two hours, but no one explained that to me ahead of time. I was expecting a twenty minute appointment. 

"Do you work with any other agencies?"

...

I didn't know someone performing an assessment on me for a government agency could give me a diagnosis, but she did loosely at the end of the appointment. At least she didn't think I was Borderline. 

By the time she came close to finishing I was calmer. As a handler she was good. Not what I was expecting. I even felt some kind of strange gratefulness and benevolence for her. I knew I would come back, but next time I had to be ready. 

"Are you working with any other agencies?"