"Ms. Meadows, Clinically Depressed Therapist"
I see people everyday, driven to despair by the dysfunction of their own minds, and it only makes me sadder. I want to help them, but how can I help when I know there is no Hope...?
Several of my patients are suicidal. How can I help them when the Abyss is the only Truth in this world? I wear a hat to cover the patches of my scalp where I have pulled out my hair...
I see their fears, and know they are right to be afraid: it would be pointless to tell them otherwise, yet I do, I tell them that meditation may help, that they can control their actions through self-awareness and deep breathing. Ha! The only real options are alcoholism or a prescription drug stupor...
Sometimes I wonder if they can smell the alcohol on my breath; due to black-outs I seldom remember patient sessions at all. All my patients blur into each other: the commonality is that Death alone will put our problems at Peace...
There is one patient that is consumed by the idea that tiny invisible spiders are crawling over his body. When he talks I can feel the spiders, too, under my hat, swarming over the raw red patches of bare skin. I want to tell him that I feel them, too, but that would only solidify his despair, so I suffer the spiders in silence...
Sometimes I poke the skin on my thighs with a pin, where no one can see. When I look at the tiny droplets of blood I can discern faces, and the faces haunt me until the alcohol takes them away...
Another of my patients is a stalker, he is obsessed with a woman he once had coffee with. He has delusions that All Will Be Good once they are together: well, delusions and exquisitely detailed rape fantasies. And who am I to say that this Happy-Ever-After couldn't be True? I certainly don't want him to rape her, but -- really -- in the Big Picture -- does it even really matter? We are just bags of tattered flesh...
I am very drunk, but I will drive to the Liquor Store to get more alcohol. It's OK, I make the drive drunk all the time...
I am Laslo.
To be honest, I quite often skip your fantasias at Althouse; didn't always do so but the so often present use of sexual deviancy &c to make your points (many of which I agree with) just became tiresome, coarse & off-putting. But I'm glad I followed the link here; now will have to read the 'Historians and Therapists made insane by that Trump fellow' posts over there.
ReplyDeleteIf you skip them you'll never know what you missed, but I appreciate the comment - thanks...
ReplyDeleteI am Laslo.