Partly because you weaponize the language
of counseling, e.g. when we saw a therapist
after your divorce, he said that no one
can make you mad, that being mad
is a choice. So for decades, you’d push
my buttons, then say “Who makes you mad?”
which pissed me off, if you want to know the truth,
which I know you don’t, which in a nutshell  

is why I don’t want to go to counseling with you.
Another counselor taught you the word triangulation,
distorted in your mind, where my sisters and I
comparing notes consisted of triangulation rather
than an antidote to it, and when my son told you
to go through me or my wife if you want to say something
to him, you said Nope, I don’t do triangles.  

Also because of the pastor who washed his hands of us
and called counseling us a waste of his time
because you seemed determined to thwart solutions
and prolong problems, all that attention seeking
and drama. And because of the time the whole family
went to counseling and I gave you a list of my boundaries
to sign and respect, and you filibustered, refused to sign the list,
and didn’t respect the boundaries. Look, it’s because
you’ve had decades to work on yourself and haven’t.  

Most of all I suppose it’s because you treat counselors
the way a quarterback treats blockers. Oops, sorry
about the sports metaphor. I mean you expect counselors
to do your work for you, to agree with everything you say,
and you discard them if they don’t. Case in point:
when I was sixteen, after you found a rum bottle
in my room, you pulled me out of History class
and dragged me to the Youth Services Bureau  

where two social workers agreed with me when I said
that sometimes you were in my face talking nonsense
to start a fight, and at such times, a good idea
would be to take a timeout and head to opposite sides
of the house. When they sided with me on that one point,
You ran out of the room and down two flights of stairs,
said you were going to kill yourself, got into your shitty
Chevette, and peeled out of their gravel parking spot.  

One social worker wrote down your license plate number
and the other looked me in the eye and said Whatever
happens, I want you to know it’s not your fault. Whatever.
I returned her look and asked for a ride to tennis practice
and said my racquet was in the backseat of your shitty Chevette.
I knew that this made me look heartless, but I didn’t have the words
to explain that about once a week you would say you were going
to kill yourself, but then you’d come home an hour or two later
with a car full of groceries, whistling.