Therapy Session

Hey there! This is an excerpt from a novel I’m currently working on. I hope you enjoy it!

“I guess it started when I was ten-years-old.”

“And?”

“My cousin committed suicide.”

“And how did that affect your fragile, ten-year-old brain?”

“I don’t know. Really, that’s the truth. I didn’t feel anything and I still don’t feel anything. Even when my grandma died, well, I didn’t really feel anything. D-Does that make me, like, a serial killer?”

“Well, to answer your question, what happened to you after?”

“Um, I ended up getting into a lot of fights at school.”

“There’s your answer. It made you angry, you just didn’t realize it.”

“Then how come I don’t feel anything when I think of him?”

“Simple. Your brain couldn’t handle something that traumatic, so it shut off all emotion.”

“Is that what happens to sociopaths?”
“Sociopathy is usually caused by something violent happening in very early childhood. That violent thing teaches them that other humans are dangerous, and to always view them as a threat. Thus, they don’t feel anything for other humans because, to them, they’re dangerous.”

“That’s just really sad.”

“Uhuh.”

“How do you do it? Hearing sadness all day and then you’re just able to say… “uhuh?””

“I don’t really know that. I think I just got desensitized to it after a while.”

“Sounds like you’re a sociopath…”

“…”

“Too smart for the room?”

“Not exactly.”
“…”

“…”

“Well, see doc, I don’t really know what to say now. It’s awkward.”

“How about this: Your twenty-first birthday is approaching. How does that feel?”
“…Weird.”

“And why does that feel weird?”
“Truth is, I didn’t really expect to make it this long—and now here I am, spilling my secrets to a random person—okay, is it just me, or is all suffering caused by more suffering?”

“Suffering, as in trauma?”

“If you want to call it that.”

“Precisely. Drug-addiction, bipolar, sociopathy—that’s why I’m a trauma therapist. Everything is caused by trauma.”

“Imagine: One cave-man fucked up enough, and now here we are, a whole civilization of depressed, medication-taking, workaholics.”

“Like the story of Cain and Able.”

“Yeah, pretty much. Do you think that’s the case? That one guy fucked up, or is it just human nature to be shitty?”

“I think it’s a mix of both. Nature and nurture. Ted Bundy was a product of incest, and that probably caused his frontal lobe to be deformed, which caused his lack of empathy.”

“I feel like calling it just a, “lack,” is understating it—hey, but that still means that a brother and sister fucked, so, in a way, you just proved yourself wrong. What even caused people to want to commit incest? Shouldn’t it be an obligation to not fuck your family?”

“It’s usually someone thinking that taboo means erotic, at the right stage of development.”

“There it is, “the right stage of development,” so someone messed up, and now a child thinks it’s okay to fuck their sister. Again, the shitty actions of human beings are caused by suffering. It’s a fucking never-ending cycle.”

“I feel like a horrible therapist.”

“…and why’s that?”

“You literally mentioned that you didn’t think that you’d make it to twenty-one, and I just completely glossed over it.”

“Well, do you wanna talk about it now?”

“Sure. Why did you think you wouldn’t make it to twenty-one?”

“I don’t know—well, that’s a lie—it just seems like life’s too much for me.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Being alive, means you gotta work. So you have to apply, wait three days for a call you might not even get, so you have to get dressed up for an interview, be on your best behavior during the interview for, again, a job you might not even get, and then when you do get a job, it’s inherently soul-crushing. And, let’s say you manage to get a job you genuinely enjoy, but that’s a very small chance that only the one-percent of the one-percent get. And even once you get the job, you don’t want to be lonely, so you get a girlfriend. So you have to pick out which girl you like, like you’re at a fucking meat market, and then make a fool of yourself when you ask her out, and then you get rejected, so you ask another girl out, and you get rejected again. And once you do get a girlfriend, it’s gonna end. Either in cheating or a nasty argument or death, and then there you are back at square one. And once you get a girlfriend that lasts a few years, you have to get a house, so you go shopping for houses that you’re gonna be paying off in your seventies, and even then, the real estate agent lies to you, but you can’t even be mad they’re lying to you, because they’re just trying to make a living, and, in a way, they’re a victim of the same system you’re a part of. And then, finally, at sixty-five, if you’re lucky, you get to retire and finally enjoy life, only to die in two years. All of it is just completely meaningless.”

“…Wow.”

“That’s all I really gotta say about that.”

“It sounds like you need meaning.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t that solve everyone’s problems?”
“Have you ever heard of Viktor Frankl?”

“Nope.”

“He said that the freedom to choose one’s attitude allows people to have meaning in the face of adversity.”

“So if I’m getting my ball’s chopped off, I can just be like, “well, this is fun?””

“Hmm… you’re angry.”

“I am—and I’m sorry, alright? It’s just… this whole fuckin’ conversation sucks.”

“I must’ve awakened something in you.”
“Yeah, you did.”

“What made you so angry?”

“You just made me think, I guess.”

“That’s understandable…”

“…”

“…”

“What’s it like being a therapist?”

“Hard.”

“I mean, yeah, that makes sense. My dad was a case manager at this therapy and painting thing, and he’d just spend almost all of his time off writing notes for his patients.”
“That’s usually how it goes.”

“He even had a system down. He’d color-code shit and then copy and paste whatever into it. He told me never to tell anyone.”

“That’s… not good.”

“Yeah, his boss held this competition where the patients voted for the best case-manager. He won—so he must not have been that bad. He probably just hated taking notes—and I mean, I would too.”

“I think every therapist hates taking notes.”

“I think that’s called projection.”

“Honestly, you’re right.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“My mom was a pretty absent parent.”
“And what do you mean by that?”

“What I mean, is that weed and booze was always more important to her—and all that makes me think is, what drug could be so powerful, that it makes you choose it, over your own fuckin’ kids?”

“Well, like we said earlier, addiction is caused by trauma. It’s not that she didn’t love you, she was just loving you at her maximum capacity to love.”
“Then why have kids? Why bring someone into this world, when you have your own baggage? Was she just going about the motions?”
“You don’t really like to show people how smart you are, do you?”

“…Not at all.”

“Why?”

“I remember trying to explain this theory I call, “The Cyclical Nature of Time And What It Means For the Heat Death of the Universe,” to my boss at work, and he just looked at me like I was an ape—like, you really should’ve seen the look on his face. Life’s basically just one big costume party, you can never be your true self.”

“So… what’s the theory?”

“Okay, just know that I’m no quantum physicist, alright? I’m most likely completely wrong. By saying this, I’m probably just making myself look like one big fuckin’ pretentious asshole. Do we got that?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, so there’s this other theory called, “The Heat Death of the Universe,” and it states that billions and billions of years in the future, every star in the universe will die out, leaving nothing but a vast expanse of nothingness. Well, the big bang happened because of atoms heating up in a void for billions and billions of years. So, if the heat death happens, doesn’t that just mean another big bang will happen?”

“You’re misunderstanding the heat death. It means that there’s no activity, anywhere.

“See? I made myself look like an ass.”

“Yeah, but not many people think like that.”

“Right.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“You know, doc, I feel like this session has been half of me talking about my bullshit thoughts, and half of me rambling about my problems.”
“And how does that make you feel?”

“Shitty—well, no, I just hate being this vulnerable. In a sense, you’ve pierced my armor.”

“I mean, if you’re not extremely vulnerable, I can’t help you. You won’t grow.”

“I know that.”

“So, when do you want to schedule another session?”

“Time’s up already? Damn, that went by fast.”

“That just means I did my job.”

“Right, getting me to talk and all that shit.”

“Exactly… let’s say, September eleventh at nine?”

“That works. I’ll seeya later, doc.”

“See you.”