The Counselor's Waiting Room

So, every week I sit in one of the most uncomfortable waiting rooms in existence. It's the waiting room at the student counseling center. Think about it - with the stigma we have in our society about getting help for your mental health, it's not a place you where you want to run into someone else. The scene seemed like a good one to write, so here I go.


The room is small, with room for only seven chairs. The lamps cast a softer tone on the room than the florescents would. The magazines on the table are so old, they're not worth reading. The first thing that distinguishes this waiting room from the multitude of others is the white noise machine next to the ancient periodicals. It's supposed to give the room a calming feel, but it seem to utterly suppress conversation as well.

It's all well and good when there's only one person here but when a second enters, awkwardness enters with them. Both people know why the other is here, but it seems taboo to bring it up, even in the office. Each person is afraid the other is trying to figure out what's wrong with them, as if you could tell that by a face.

As a third person enters, the awkwardness only becomes more palpable. No one is willing to make eye contact, so their eyes move anywhere and everywhere else. The air in the room suddenly makes the simple still-lifes on the wall more fascinating than anything Picasso ever held in his imagination. One person becomes a connoisseur of shoes, suddenly riveted by the curve of a sandal or the sole of a tennis shoe. The third picks up a pamphlet about something they don't need in an effort to look busy. Silence reigns, made so much more palpable by that dratted white noise machine.

These painful moments can only be broken by each person being called out by a professional, when they will take all those suppressed thoughts and pick through them until they can make sense of their lives.


-Kat