Issue 22
Winter 2020
On a Scale of One to Ten
Leanne Grabel
We talked about joy. It was my eighth session with Dr. Misaka, a small woman with beautiful shoes the color of cognac. Kaiser had referred me out-of-network for ten sessions with a psychiatrist. I’d never seen a psychiatrist before—only therapists. It’s because I said rape. It opens a lot of new doors. I told Dr. Misaka I was closer to joy than I’d ever been in my life. Was it true? I don’t know. Maybe. But I felt like I was changing my posture, lifting my head, arching my back, waking each morning with a bit of loft. I told Dr. Misaka I actually had the thought of shining my light on my friend I was meeting for lunch later, right on her pad thai, which she always ordered. I woke up thinking about gleaming all over everyone, like sprinkling sugar or crushed peanuts. Was it true? I don’t know.
“That’s great,” said Dr. Misaka. “You’re an adult now. Your father’s not in the room.” She was right. There was no mean man shouting and swiping at me from the head of the table. There was no nervous mother with ice-cold hands chopping dunes of onions to please her husband, my father, enough onions to start the whole world crying.
Dr. Misaka asked me what number my depression was. Six months earlier, I’d said, “Nine.” Today I said “Maybe .5 … unless we’re talking America, or cancer. Then it’s off the charts.” She nodded. “Why the .5?” “There’s just always something,” I said, “like a rough pebble, or the wings of a small, trapped bird flapping too closely to my ear.” But the data was obviously showing improvement, even if it did feel like I was pulling the numbers out of my still youthful, yes, youthful, ass.
I decided to greet my husband with a joyous kiss as he walked in the door that evening. We’d been pecking for years, while continuing to scissor olives or grate carrots or even dust. But when my husband came home, I was in the basement, rearranging clutter that was older than our children. Now there are half as many plastic tubs, stacked and labeled. There’s even a big space in the middle of the floor. A person could practically have a yoga class there, except who would want to? There are mold spores from the late nineteenth century. I heard they’re valuable because they’re so old. But I’m happy to see the mold drying and dying in the light.
About the Author
Leanne Grabel, MEd, is a writer, illustrator, performer, and retired special education teacher. Currently, Grabel is teaching graphic flash memoir to adults in arts centers and retirement communities throughout the Pacific Northwest. In love with mixing genres, Grabel has written and produced numerous spoken-word multi-media shows, including The Lighter Side of Chronic Depression, and Anger: The Musical. Her poetry books include Lonesome & Very Quarrelsome Heroes, Short Poems by a Short Person, Badgirls (a collection of flash non-fiction & a theater piece), and Gold Shoes, a collection of graphic prose poems. Grabel has just completed Tainted Illustrated, an illustrated stretched memoir, which is being serialized in The Opiate and Husband, a collection of graphic flash memoir. She and her husband Steve Sander are the founders of Café Lena, Portland’s legendary poetry hub of the 90s. Grabel will be the 2020 recipient of the Bread and Roses Award for contributions to women’s literature in the Pacific Northwest. Read Conversations with Leanne Grabel.