My Imaginary Friend.

At age five I had an imaginary friend. Looking back now it had a lot to do with our neighborhood having no kids my age to relate to and me just feeling generally peer-lonely. He took the shape of a cat humanoid, weird thing and I called him Charta. We did a lot together. One time in particular he crawled along the walls around the house while I chased him with one of those spider web remover poles.

My parents knew something was up. From their perspective I spent a lot of time talking to myself. At first it wasn't a big deal, but as I grew comfortable with them knowing about Charta I began to bring him into their lives as well. Sitting at the dinner table with him, going to the grocery store and asking him what kind of cereal to buy (he loved Fruity Pebbles), sleeping at night and scaring me with ghost stories. Things like that.

I heard my parents fighting one night. Charta worried and spent the night scared. In the morning my mom took me to see a therapist, though she called it a "feelings doctor".

The feelings doctor's name was Cogrip. My mom stayed in the waiting room while he took me into a backroom where there were lots of toys and I played for hours. Cogrip watched me from the corner of the room during our session and kept asking me if I was hot and wanted to take my shirt off.

On the way home my mom asked what day I wanted to go back. I liked the toys a lot, but Cogrip gave me the creeps. I couldn't directly process this at the time, but instinctively I knew it. The toys weren't so important to me because I had Charta. I told my mom never. She said I had to go back sometime this week. I told her Charta's name was actually Jesus.

I never saw Cogrip or Charta again.