Limitless by Alok Appadurai

Author:Alok Appadurai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alok Life LLC
Published: 2023-05-12T15:39:35+00:00

15: Kathleen Friend –Birthing the Inner Artist

It was a typical workday. With the click of the doorknob, the clamor of children with pent-up, frenetic energy tumbled into my office and made a beeline for the toys. Mom lagged behind, weighed down with years of worry, clutching multiple bags of provisions that she and her three children might need for the next few hours. She had a tired, desperate look on her face. Her eyes were downcast and her facial expression was lifeless; she mustered her remaining energy to yell in the direction of the kids, “Quiet down and quit arguing over the toys.”

She had waited months for this appointment. Child psychiatrists like me are in high demand, and with long stretches between visits. As soon as Mom collapsed into the chair, she launched into a litany of complaints. “He won’t listen to me. He is always fighting with his brother. He lies about his homework and the teacher is calling me every week. He needs different medicine. The stuff he is on doesn’t work.”

On this particular day, the mother’s complaints triggered me, and I asked myself why I was spending my life this way. As long as I could remember, there was a tension between my own mother’s dream of becoming a doctor and my own dream of becoming a musician. She saw in me the doctor she did not have the opportunity to become, but in my soul I knew I was an artist. My mother could see further down the road than I could at seventeen when I started college, and she wanted me to be able to support myself financially. But my heart had other ideas. The conflict was real and unrelenting, but I resigned myself years ago to working as a physician even though it represented only a small part of how I saw myself.

I refocused my attention back to the present and listened patiently to the mom’s concerns. Her words created an atmosphere of heaviness and all I could hear was a long list of “badness,” like a rap sheet for a criminal. She was doing exactly what parents were supposed to do: tell me their child’s problems so I could offer a solution. I spent years learning exactly that, and it used to make perfect sense. Today, however, it felt wrong and off the mark. I felt more like a police officer than a psychiatrist.

“How are things going for you at school?” I asked, turning my gaze toward her son.

Silence. No eye contact. The toys were more compelling. Or did something else make him reluctant to answer me?

“What do you enjoy at school?”

“Dunno,” he said after several grunts.

The initial excitement of playing with new toys faded with his downward stare, hunched shoulders, and frown. I could feel his shame at how his mother described his situation. His eyes hardened as he turned and glared intently at the door. “Can we leave now?”

My heart sank. I wanted children to be seen for their strengths, not their deficiencies.

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