White Bird in a Blizzard Monologues

In 1988, a teenage girl's life is thrown into chaos when her mother disappears.

Dr. Thaler reminds me of an actress playing the therapist. And when we have a session, I feel like an actress playing myself.

Because I never saw my mother again, she remains in absence to me. An empty space. An invisible, half remembered ghost. So even now I catch myself thinking that I'm gonna run into her some day. Like I'll be at a stop light, and look over at the car next to me and there she'll be, scowling at me with disapproval. Or I'll spot her across some crowded street, or train station, and we'll run toward each other like one of those cheesy TV movies. She'll hug me like a long, lost lover, then take my face in her long, graceful hands, look me in the eyes and say... "I'm here, Kat. I'm here."

I was seventeen when my mother disappeared. Just as I was becoming nothing but my body - flesh and blood and raging hormones - she stepped out of hers and left it behind.

That's what I kind of like about him, you know. He's just simple. I know it sounds perverse, but he's kind of like my dad in that way. You scratch the surface, and there's just more surface.