"So, I would like to start with some biographical work, if that's okay for you.", the woman in front of Katrina said. She just stopped wiping away the tears she cried before and still was sobbing silently. Just right before she answered the psychotherapist's question about her current state of her well-being. Well, actually she wasn't even able to answer that question but started crying right away. It took her a few minutes to get into talking, to tell her why she is here even. "My friend… he- he died.", is what she hardly brought over her lips and it felt as if someone was stabbing her with a knife right into her heart, when she said those words. The word "suicide" was nothing she felt ready yet to say out loud, especially not in front of a stranger.
"Tell me about your childhood. What was it like, where did you grow up, go to school, played with friends?", the therapist asked.
—-
It was a little old house, just outside London, the walls of red brick, where Katrina grew up. Until today she would describe her parents as loving and caring, even if there were some quarrels from time to time. In general her early childhood was pretty normal, as you would expect from any ordinary child around the neighbourhood. She went to a lovely little school, had quite some friends she would visit on the weekends, a garden, where she would spend the entire afternoon on the swing or on her treehouse. But one of the happiest moments of her childhood, she would recall, was when her parents told her on one Christmas morning that she was to become a big sister. Finally after nine years of waiting, her prayers and hopes were answered. Out of joy she ran into the garden, jumped around in the snow and if by any chance some neighbour would pass by, she wouldn't hesitate to tell them about the exciting news she just received. And as it was, in this nice little neighbourhood, everyone knew immediately about the little person that was about to arrive in late summer. She would never forget the lovely memory in her head, when her mother, pregnant with her brother, stood in a beautiful baby blue dress in the garden, cutting some of the roses to place them in a vase onto the kitchen table. It was, until today, one of the best memories she had in her life. Not that there haven't been any more exciting events, but this one was just special. Thomas, they called him, when her mother gave birth to him on the 29th of August, and he was all the family's little bundle of joy. The way he would grab Katrina's hand with his little fingers, the way he laughed, when she played pick-a-boo with him. When he was three years old, it was her who showed him how to use the tricycle. When he fell for the first time, he cried, but laughed immediately again, when Katrina fake threw herself on the concrete pavement next to him.
It was on Katrina's 14th birthday, that the perfect fairytale between brother and sister took an unexpected turn. After she woke up she ran into the room of her then 5-year old brother to wake him up for her great day. Already the day before he was talking all the time about how he already wants to eat birthday cake for breakfast and now it was finally time.
"Wake up, Tom! Wake up!", she yelled into the room, running straight to his bed, "Mom already prepared the cake!"
"Yay! Cake!", he screamed, smiling, jumping off the bed. But as Katrina ran down the stairs into the living room, where her parents were already waiting with a table full of presents and a colourful cake (just as she loved it), she realised that the little guy wasn't right behind her, as she'd expected.
"Tom!", she yelled, after her parents gave her an insecure glance. They knew that he would often run directly behind her, especially on the weekends or on holidays.
"Coming!", he yelled, still with excitement in his voice.
Katrina stopped at the top of the stairs, looking at her brother and how he was crawling on the floor. She laughed first, shaking her head.
"What's that, weirdo?", she asked him, walking over to him to reach out her hand. He took it, moved his legs in a way as if he wanted to stand up, but fell again.
"Are you making jokes with me?", Katrina asked, now a bit concerned.
"My legs don't want to walk today.", he answered, crawling step by step and hand by hand towards the stairs, where he sat on his buttocks to slide down step by step.
"Mom, Dad, can you come here, please?", she yelled down, ignoring the fun her brother had while bouncing down the stairs.
It took weeks to find out what actually was the problem with her brother's legs. At first the doctors would say that it has something to do with growing, that his joints were the reason for his pain and inability to walk. Looking back, it took the doctors way too long to diagnose Tom with osteosarcoma, a rare cancer, mostly developing in children. Months passed by without seeing neither her brother, nor her mother too often. They spent most of the time in the hospital, where Tom had to undergo not only multiple chemotherapies, but also surgeries. Their biggest hope, if you can call it like that, was when they amputated his right leg from the knee down, because there was a chance of finally getting rid of the cancer. But their hopes were destroyed just two months after doctors declared him cancer free. He relapsed, now also with metastasis in more distant organs, like his kidneys and lymph nodes. His cancer was declared incurable just one month after the second diagnosis and while they were hoping for still some months with him, it only took four weeks, until he died in home hospice, surrounded by his loving sister and parents.
—-
"So we can say, that your first traumatic experience was losing your brother to cancer?", the woman in front of her said, writing something down in her sound of the pencil was mixed with the sound of the ticking clock on the wall. It was so silent in this room, that Katrina felt goose bumps appearing on her arms. It was rarely so silent in this city, but the windows seemed to have quite good noise cancelling.
"Osteosarcoma, actually. But yes.", Katrina answered, now looking into the direction of her therapist.
"Did your relationship with your parents change after the death of your brother?", she asked.
"Well, we were all upset and in major grief. They often were distant to me and their friends. But our relationship was stable, even improving in the years after.", Katrina murmured, scratching her right arm, probably more out of discomfort, than because of an itch, "But all this… It influenced my later decision to study medicine and… you know… doing some not so clever things… that led to this.", she added, pointing to her eyes, that were a milky blue and had stopped seeing four years ago.