The Tragedy Owl

“Every time anything notably traumatic happens in my life, a barn owl appears.”

If the sentence shocked or disturbed my therapist in any way, he didn’t show it. I don’t know what I expected from him, but after sharing my deepest, most unhinged truth, I wanted . . . something – something other than a diagnosis regurgitated sloppily from the DSM-5.

I was pretty sure I hadn’t hallucinated the owl, and I wasn’t lying or being metaphorical. In the worst, most tragic moments of my life, my eyes are always pulled away from the disaster, and sitting amongst or just outside the carnage is – or what I assume is – the same fucking owl.

When I was thirteen I was in a car accident. I remember dragging an excruciating breath past my broken ribs as I regained consciousness. When I opened my eyes I immediately looked past the slumped figures in the front seats, through the broken windshield, at a barn owl that was perched stoically on top of the van that hit us. That was the first time I saw him; I thought it was odd. The second time I saw him I was twenty-three, and I laughed when I noticed the owl seated on the deck railing outside of my kitchen window while I scrubbed my blood off of the counters. The third time, just a couple of months ago, I felt fear. I saw him swoop down and land on the hood of the car that had just run over my little sister. The owl always looked straight at me; his leveled gaze unwavering. This time I decided to take a picture of the owl to see if I was imagining him or if he was really there. I’ll never forget the look the hysterical driver gave me after I snapped the shot and realized what I’d done. I think that’s what made me decide to try therapy.

Something about my therapist bothered me deeply. He was a little too sure of himself. When I told him about the owl, he immediately dismissed the possibility that maybe this same bird was materializing every time something particularly scarring happened to me. Don’t get me wrong, I know how it sounds – but it is technically possible, even if it isn’t probable. Maybe it’s just me, but if I were a therapist, I would at least consider it.

He skipped right past that possibility, and I zoned out while he explained to me how my brain worked. I studied his face and wondered what had made this man so certain about how the human mind functioned. I felt like his vision of the world was immature – almost like he stopped learning and thinking critically the moment his prestigious college handed him a diploma. Maybe he just bothered me because I envied him. I hate being judgmental, so I decided to ask him, “How do you know there isn’t a tragedy owl following me?”

“You’re calling it a tragedy owl?”

I didn’t respond in an effort to steer the conversation back towards my question. He put his pen down, grabbed his ankle that he had perched up on his knee, and squinted at me, “Are you aware of how common barn owls are?”

“I have googled the statistic, yes. That doesn’t answer my question.”

I just wanted to hear him admit there was a small possibility I did, in fact, have a tragedy owl. I wanted his pompous facade to fall, and for him to admit that he is just as confused by life as I am. I wanted him to tell me that sometimes he goes back home to his family and wonders why he leaves them every day to go work to provide them with things they lose interest in so quickly. I want to know he lays awake some nights and contemplates the suffocating loneliness that swarms around every human being. I want him to tell me he’s addicted to Adderall or porn. I want him to tell me he’s scared and angry too.

He doesn’t tell me any of those things; he’s very professional. He’s convinced my trauma is causing hallucinations. He thinks I have PTSD. He wants me to tell him about the first time I saw the owl,

“Why do you think you focused on something so average in the middle of a car wreck?”

It all happened so quickly that it’s difficult to replay the event in my head. I was knocked unconscious the moment my mind finally registered we were about to be hit,

“I focused on the owl because my eyes were drawn to it.” I thought about the unforgettable feeling I got while I watched the owl as it stood, statuesque, watching me. I felt like he was feeding off of my panic, my thoughts, the diluted screams in the background of our stare-down – like a psychic carrion bird, feasting on the adrenaline and pain, instead of dead flesh.

My therapist delivered a long-winded explanation about how my mind may have been looking for some shred of normalcy to stabilize it; I focused on the bird instead of my dead parents in front of me, because my mind simply couldn’t handle it.

“You could be right. That could be exactly what happened.”

He smiled, scribbled another note, and started to speak again. I cut him off, “But, can you admit, that there is a small chance that you’re wrong?”

He asked me to explain my thought process while he considered my question. I liked that answer; I respected it. So I tried my best:

“Certainty, for a human, doesn’t exist. No one can truly know anything without a doubt. The whole world,” I gestured out towards the large windows behind him, “is colored by everyone’s limited, individual perceptions. Humans made everything: laws, morality, religion, science…all of it. So, even with something like gravity, there is a small chance that we could be wrong.”

He picked up his pen and dropped it on to the floor, “You can be certain this pen will always hit the floor when I drop it.” I’m not sure if I made up his patronizing tone in my head, or if he actually thought he needed to explain the concept of gravity to me.

I pressed the bottom hem of my shirt between my fingertips anxiously, trying to think of a way to effectively communicate without immediately turning to sarcasm or dark humor. I looked around the room at all of the framed diplomas and certificates. He was a man who took pride in his education, so maybe that was the route to take. I made another attempt to explain my thoughts:

“‘This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction,’” I cleared my throat; I always felt obnoxious when I quoted someone. “That’s a quote by a philosopher I think does a much better job of describing what I’m trying to say. So like…” I bent forward and retrieved his pen from the floor, “There’s no way for you to prove that if you continue to drop this pen for the rest of eternity, it will always hit the floor. You can observe it hitting the floor, and come to the conclusion that it will always hit the floor, but there’s no way to be absolutely certain.”

He sighed knowingly, “I have read Camus. Isn’t that particular essay about suicide?” He gently held his hand out for his pen, “Are you having any thoughts of hurting yourself or others?”

I felt a very familiar feeling as my body started to heat up, and I clenched my jaw. Every time I get angry I cry, and I didn’t want to appear weak to some gaslighting asshole with a degree he clearly shouldn’t have. I hated that question; I’ve always thought it was incredibly stupid. Everyone has thoughts like that sometimes, and you should be able to talk about them without being issued a pair of ugly grippy socks.

I tried to remain calm. I told myself he’s just doing his job, which first and foremost is to make sure I’m safe. Maybe he hadn’t read the whole essay,

“That’s not the point of the essay, the absurdity of life is–“

“Are you purposely not answering my question?”

My lip trembled then, and I know he noticed. I thought about the second time I had seen the owl. It was the first time my ex boyfriend had punched me in the mouth. I wanted to laugh now like I did then. My therapist reminded me of my ex; every time I tried to explain how I was feeling, he would twist my words into something else entirely. I would get so frustrated and angry that I would cry and scream in an attempt to get my point across, until he calmly called me crazy and asked why I always had to yell? Why couldn’t I just communicate normally, like he was? Eventually, when I mastered not giving him the reaction he wanted, my ex started to hit me.

I took a deep breath. I counted to seven as I inhaled, and then I counted to seven again as I exhaled. Maybe I just don’t understand the purpose of therapy, or maybe my “insanity” is just a “perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” It’s a shame R. D. Laing died in the 80s.

“I’m not going to hurt myself, or anyone else,” I answered robotically.

I didn’t say much of anything for the rest of the session; I wasn’t sure what the point was. I wasn’t in therapy because I needed someone to explain to me that coloring a mandala can help a person cope with triggers; I was in therapy because I needed someone to just be human with me for a minute.

I left my therapist’s office feeling a lot lonelier than usual. The world felt stagnant to me. I felt like everyone around me was drowning, just like I was, but instead of fighting against what was so obviously drowning us all, we manufactured gills instead. The mechanical gills are beautiful, but they don’t fit right, they break often, and people die constantly while wearing them. We’re all dying; no one is fighting to live anymore. We go through the assigned motions: wake up, work, eat, sleep, repeat, die. Swim, swim, swim. And then sometimes someone surfaces, gasping for air, and in their delirious exhaustion they ask: why?

…and those people are given Zoloft and Xanax, their gills are re-fitted, and they are thrown back into the water to complacently drown again. How are we supposed to make it to shore when everyone is acting like it’s perfectly normal and natural to remain submerged?

I stopped walking and turned around. He could call me a conspiracy theorist, a socialist, a hippie, a maniac, depressed, delusional, traumatized, dramatic…but I was going to make him at least listen first.

When I rounded the corner of his office building I stopped. My therapist was laying on the ground, and he looked very . . . dead. His receptionist was on her knees beside of him, still trying to resuscitate him while she used her shoulder to hold her cellphone to her ear. She was crying and screaming into the phone for help. My first instinct should have been to run over and help her, but I saw something move in my peripheral. I turned to my left, and sitting on top of my therapist’s Tesla was the tragedy owl. He opened his beak and spoke in perfect English – his voice was low and deep, like a ritualistic chant:

“No one knows anything. Get out of the water.”