unbroken
I don’t know when they stopped having couches at the psychologist but they should bring them back. I guess maybe they (‘they’ obviously being the Board of Furniture Decisions) figured that lying down is physically the further-est you can get from taking action, although in my mind actually paying $200 an hour to try and unbreak your brain is surely some sort of action and if I want to recline for the process I should be able to. There’s just a normal chair though so I sit in it begrudgingly. It’s our sixth session and I feel like shit. It’s fucking bizarre the things that tip me over the edge. My neighbor’s cat died this week and I kind of considered him to be like Graham’s brother because he was also grey and we live in the same building and I got to look after him on the weekends and feature him strongly in my Instagram stories. I had pet feels for him, let’s just say.
Anyway, it was basically downhill from there.
I’m just so fucking tired. I tell her as she gazes at me impassively which seems to be her default expression. Nothing I ever say initiates any sort of emotive response and the hilarious asshole part of me is tempted to be like HI I FUCKED A CORPSE or something just to see if any muscle in her face moves in any way. Instead I tell her about someone else’s cat dying and how it must be nice to not have to do anything or feel anything anymore, even though he was a cat and I’m assuming his emotions were restricted to HUNGRY and SHITTING (legit emotions). Sometimes I think it would be really nice to not be in a constant state of panic and urgency and take a permanent fucking rest. I cry mostly from exhaustion rather than sadness, twisting the tissue I’m holding into an angry white rope as she gazes at me impassively (yes, again). I’m just tired, I repeat dully while her expressionless Lego-person head tilts in what I assume to be acknowledgment.
She literally seems devoid of any personality and I can’t imagine what her life would look like outside of the hour I spend with her. Like I can’t picture her partner or kids or even a pet or neighboring (alive) pet. It’s as if she just goes back into her box with a foam cut-out in the specific shape of her body until 4:30pm the following Thursday. Whatever she does in there though it’s not reviewing the notes from our previous session. I almost sigh in frustration as I have to re-explain yet another personality defect, and the pain of re-opening that particular wound rips through my brain again, reinforcing the continuous you’re-not-enough feedback loop. I’m not sure whether this is some kind of strategy, like Reverse Affirmations or something, or whether it’s actually like the Excel spreadsheet of her mind de-formulates after each session while she’s packed into her protective foam. The only thing she seems to remember is exactly how to make me feel just as bad about a situation as I did when it first happened. Hey, does this person not liking you kind of remind you of all the other people in the universe who also don’t like you ? IT DOES NOW THANKS.
*cuts self*
She tells me it’s perfectly normal to start thinking about my own death as being a welcome rest because we just had Daylight Savings and everyone is tired. That extra hour, she says, especially when you get up so early anyway. I’m surprised that she remembers this small detail about my life and almost want to congratulate her. It’s not losing an hour, I say. It’s trying so hard at everything all the time, its exhausting. I regularly correct her just to prove that I don’t actually have to be there and that basically I like paying her a million dollars to point out all of the things that are wrong with me and remind me that they’re all connected together since I was a child so basically why bother trying to change anything now you’re 32 and still have the problems you did when you were 12 and 22 but that’s $200 thanks bye, enjoy the next 5-6 decades of putting way too much effort into everything and thinking that everyone hates you, and just remember that some of them ACTUALLY do, and also remember that you’re alone and every relationship you’ve had has been a failure. COOL THANKS.
Fuck this. I can legit get an entire new set of eyelashes for what I’m paying this lady.
I’m certain after being this way for this long that the discomfort of not trying is greater than the endless exhaustion and uncertainty of trying so hard all the fucking time. I literally just want a trained mental health professional to assure me of this fact. Feeling guilty and lazy if I watch more than one episode of Suits in a row (because Harvey), or having a near panic attack if I somehow forget to write my intentions in my daily journal is maybe not ideal, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it ? Anxiety is a physiological response that is there intentionally to keep us on our toes, like in case there’s a dinosaur, but in today’s non-dinosaur times, that sense of fear and urgency can be used to our advantage, like, you are going to fucking die (in a non-dinosaur related manner) so get off the couch (see this is why she doesn’t have one) and go get after whatever the fuck IT is.
If I can’t change the fact that I am in a permanent state of terror of under-achieving then by fuck I will make the most of it. I won’t be seeing Lego Face again, but let’s just say my eyelashes are looking fantastic (and I got to lie down).
