There is no me. I blend in. When I sit on a leaf, I’m green, when I sit on a twig, I’m brown, and when I sit on a parrot, I get thrown off. The leaf thinks I’m green and the twig thinks I’m brown. I just wonder why everyone has these weird pictures of me. I’m invisible. It’s better that way, because a visible chameleon is food.
I’m not a chameleon, though, I’m depressed. But that’s just what I think, and what do I know? I went to see a psychologist, who said that she can see that I feel this and that and something else, I don’t recall the exact words, and that I can call that depressed, if I like. Interestingly, that was a while after she told me I could see a psychiatrist or my gp about antidepressants, if I liked, which is something she said very soon, not long after reading „depression“ on my referal. Maybe depressed people would generally be better, if they just did whatever they liked. Like kill themselves. (belated sarcasm warning).
In mid-second session she said that she isn’t there to tell me what to do. I hadn’t asked her what to do. I thought I had just expected that she did her job, because I don’t have to see a psychologist to be allowed to call things whatever I like and do whatever I want. I have to see a psychologist, because I want to know what the problem is and what I can do about it. Maybe she thought there’s a risk that I’d just do whatever she says, well, good luck with trying to make me do something that way, I am not my mother.
My mother is ill. Last week she had a chance of surviving the next five years of 15-30%. She didn’t listen to the doctor carefully enough to figure that out, because she doesn’t really want to know. She’s the one who asks questions that go: „doctor, if I were you’re mother, would you recommend...“ She also told him, that her gp and the other doctor both said she should have that therapy, because they think she’s strong enough, to which the doctor just said: „Well, and I let you decide.“ I liked that. Of course, she asked me what I think, next. I said I’m not yet informed enough to have an opinion.
That’s a phrase that makes sense to me, quite unlike „call it depressed if you like“. I can call it Henry if I like, but what’s the point? If you don’t want it to be understood as a diagnosis, why not say: I don’t want this to be understood as a diagnosis. IF that’s what she meant. It makes me angry that I try to accept that I have a „normal“ problem and qualified people talk to me like, „no, actually mental health is a voodoo thing. It’s essential that we dance around the table before we drink the chicken blood.“ The first person I saw about it apologised that people have to wait in the corridor, where everyone can see them. Hello? Did my therapist just expect me to be ashamed or what? The second person I saw was the one who had listened very carefully in the lesson that taught to be completely undefined. Ergo, I have something so shameful that nobody even dares to define it. No, seriously, that was a joke.
Anyway, they had another test and found out that my mother was lucky enough to have a mild subtype (at a 5% chance), so it’s now unlikely that she’s going to die. Well, now that it isn’t unlikely anymore, that it would be unlikely, its unlikely she’ll die. And what could possibly go wrong, when you’re on arsenic? If I concentrate very hard, I think that I’m relieved, but without focussing at all it’s apparent that I also feel like shit. I have completely lost meaning.
Mid-second session is also when I was finished with mentioning everything that’s shit in my life in a summary kind of way. Sometimes, one hour and thirty minutes is all the time you get to come up with something. Like a question. I quite like questions. What she came up with, I guess, is that she could be quiet and wait if it makes me say more, because that’s what she concluded, wrongly, at the end of the first session when I was already on the way out, that: „she made me tell her somewhat more towards the end“. Fatal misapprehension of how proud I was that I fitted two thirds of my problems into one hour, even providing structure and climax, while being busy crying my eyes out and keeping my voice steady. I was fucking brilliant and she thought that was her achievement? Sure, being quiet might work with people who are not the queen of silence. All that silence does, is to convince me that I’m wasting my time.
30 minutes left to say nothing much, start asking questions about alternatives, medications and duration, and being told that it’s going to take an indefinite amount of time to find windows and turn off the heating instead of closing the blinds. There is no way of doing it faster or different and behavioural therapy isn’t for me, because my problem isn’t that I have to be told how to make lists.
I don’t think I can provide windows. I was more under the impression that I’m naked on a hill in a thunderstorm wearing a copper helmet and shouting: THERE IS NO GOD. There isn’t any kind of window within a radius of two miles, so where would I get a window from and what for? To hold it over my head? I think I know what she meant, but what she said was that my whole life story isn’t even good enough to have a window in it. Well, if there is nothing more I can tell her, and there’s nothing more she can tell me, that’s the point where conversations naturally end, or not? I can’t shake off the impression that people try to find a way around my brain and that might then be their window to my rotting emotions. There is no way around my brain, though.
I see too much. I see bad moves a lot. I have big eyes that move independent of each other. If I didn’t see bad moves, I’d be food.
It’s a bad move to use something I mentioned in one sentence, as an argument against another form of therapy, when you didn’t even make sure you got me right, because that way, the argument will fall apart and open the view on how you just tried to convince me of your view by making up rubbish arguments. So behavioural therapy isn’t for me, because I didn’t get on with the university corridor person who told me to google a therapist, which didn’t help me one bit? That’s not an argument against behavioural therapy, that’s a joke. A completely unnecessary one, as she’d already explained her opinion differently, but maybe thought I didn’t react convinced enough. After all, when I asked her, if she could recommend a behavioural therapist, all SHE came up with was that I could look in the yellow pages, where sometimes it’s mentioned which style therapists are. I checked - it isn’t.
Doesn’t make her view wrong necessarily, I know that, didn’t make me want to come back either. I had let the corridor person into a discussion about the different therapy „styles“ and he told me they really don’t like each other. Seems he was right about that.
The experience made me hate people more. It’s not advisable to hate people more, when you already hated people, if you ask me. My plan was to go see a psychiatrist instead and medicate it away, because people are obviously too stupid to help me. No offence. Well, it probably is an offence, but if you’re offended it just prooves that people are stupid, somehow. But now, I don’t want to talk about the same things all over again. It seems pointless. Maybe that would make me a better client, because if I don’t talk, then at least it makes sense to look for a window. And I can let tiny bits of information slip and they could congratulate themselves for their extreme cleverness that enabled them to achieve that. Maybe I’ll try to play treasure hunt next time I see a therapist, they might be of more use, once I made them feel good about their detective skills. It does work a bit like a treasure hunt in „In treatment“ I have noticed, which is due to the need for dramatic effect, I hope. You know what Paul would say? He’d say it’s interesting how I’ve been mixing stories of my mother and my therapist, especially since it’s months between them, and that I describe it like they both lack understanding and that I seem to be angry and feel powerless.
I have no idea what I’m doing anymore.
I know where the two stories connect. I feel miserable because of one and I’ve already felt rather miserable before, and there is nothing I can do about it because of the other. I tried, it was pointless, I’m angry, I hate people, I can't go back there. Yeah, it would be easier to get help, if I didn’t hate people for being such stupid idiots, wouldn’t it? What do I do now? Whatever I do, I’ll do it alone, as always, and as it’s unlikely that it’ll kill me, well, what do I actually complain about?
I’m angry and that’s difficult, because I’ve learned that it means „I’m an insensitive, ignorant, stupid, blathering berserk who runs Amok, hurts everyone and blames the telly“ from the alcoholic paternal side. I don’t know how to be angry properly, so I put it here just so that I am officially angry. I couldn’t tell you what the point of that is, but it feels like there is one. I got a car insurance bill for christmas from my father. Maybe I’m actually not angry.
I feel betrayed by the pictures some people have of me and I’d like to turn into green slime and jump into their faces for that. But that would probably involve talking and I don’t see how that’s worth it. Unnecessary to say that I don’t trust anyone much. I think it’s impossible to help me, I don’t want to see anyone about anything, I haven’t worked much for three weeks, though I have a deadline that says „if you work 14 hours a day, you’ll only be two months late.“ When I saw the psychologist I didn’t work properly for two weeks, because I had appointment anxiety, and all she said was that I couldn’t expect anything to be different till way past my deadline, which happens to be the time I’ll have to move places and get a job, if I’m halfways sane at that point, so sure, I could start therapy and then break it off, so that I gain „therapy experience“. How is that good enough? Somehow I don’t believe in „therapy experience“, I believe in „traumatic therapy break off“. I can’t get help on cost of work, because work is the only reference frame I have left, it actually helps me, and I don’t want to get drugs anymore, because I don’t want to talk to people. Well, my mother isn’t dying, so I should get back to work somehow. Not sure how, given that I don’t want to think about it. I should find back to my calendar and make a list. It must work, simply because there isn’t another option. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so fucked in my life and I’m getting too old to believe that it’ll be better one day.
I’ve been editing for a couple of days, I could probably go on editing for weeks. I think it sounds like I’m inconsiderate, when being considerate is all I ever do and I’m really tired of it, so I won’t go on editing for a couple of weeks. I want others to be considerate for a change. And it doesn’t cover what I’m angry about the most. I don’t know if I could express it, if I hadn’t been asked not to talk about it, though I doubt anything I say can stop people having the wrong image of me. It’s more likely they’d just smirk and say: Haha.. that isn’t you, look here, in this picture, THAT is you.. thought you could fool me, ey?“ And then I’m just more invisible.
And now, I’ll change that. Not sure if being more inconsiderate is such a good idea, but... did I just say that? I meant being more inconsiderate is a fantastic idea, of course. Alternatively I might be losing my mind. Who knows.
