So, how was therapy today Kelly?
“Do you know what?
I got in there right and there was this total plonker in his Granddad’s cardigan and what looked like Cornish pasties on his feet sat down right and I thought, ‘Errr…look at his mush! He should be up in the attic playing with his train sets. Not sat here trying to stare me out.’ I thought, I’m not telling him nowt!
But, I don’t know. I started talking about this tramp Saoirse Nolan yeah, she’s always giving me a hard time, pretty much picking on me cos I’m a bit poor and my Dad’s gone AWOL and my Mam’s a nutter and…well…everything just came out. Like everything. I didn’t even want to but it’s kind of addictive having someone sat there just, well, listening to me.
He wasn’t butting in or anything. Every now and again he asked how I felt about whatever and I was like, woah! No-one has ever asked me that. It’s just like ‘I don’t give a toss if you want Nike, they’re 100 quid cheaper in Penny’s.’ Or ‘I don’t care if you’re cold, just stand by the kettle and make me a tea when it’s boiled!’ I told him how my Mam and Dad don’t care and that I get picked on in school and how my Mam tells me that I’m gonna fail my Leaving Cert so I may as well not even bother. She’s got no idea!
No one cares about me and I know it.
I just get on with it and get a bit like, loud when people piss me off cos, well, I’d probably just cry and I can’t let ‘em see that. No way! They’d just get worse. Nobody has seen me cry. Even me Mam. She’d just like, mimic me like she did in the supermarket when I was a kid cos she had me in the shopping trolley but it was making me feel sick. I wanted to get out and started crying and she just put her face in mine copying me. I didn’t cry in front of her again. I must tell the therapist about that.
But anyway, yeah. I just told him everything and it felt really good. Towards the end like, I could feel all like, tingly in me face because I could get emotional and my heart started racing cos I was, what’s that word? Is it exhilarated? I think I was anyway, I was like all charged up with thoughts and feelings and didn’t want to go. Though, I made out like I did. Anyway, I asked him could I go back the day after and he said yeah.
Happy Days.
Kelly Roberts is a fictional character from a one woman show written, directed and acted by Colette Forde. Kelly is a young girl from a very tough background who is forced by her school to see a Psychologist for therapy. The show is hilarious, but also unexpectedly emotional, as we see that behind the tough exterior, Kelly is misunderstood, lonely, and just trying to get by. Kelly is all of us.
Colette says “This is also a product of passion. It has been proven to me, through these workshops, that teenagers actually have no concept of what it means to confide in somebody and to share what is devouring their sense of clarity and belonging. Also how corrosive these feelings truly are and how they seep out into their everyday interactions and reality, distorting it.
I really want kids to understand that 1. They are not alone, and 2.They have a better idea of what an experience with a trained professional would be like.”
Check out the trailer below, or invite Colette to your school, college or town if you can. You won’t be sorry.
