the unfathomable misery of being

My first appointment with my new potential diagnostician ended up being more disappointing than I had anticipated, but this is always the case.

Prior to my first visit with a new person, I always fantasize beforehand about how the appointment will transpire. I imagine a noticeable connection that will bud into a deep understanding of me by my new counselor. I further imagine the new provider will find me so interesting that it inspires a renaissance of his youthful professional exuberance, manifesting as the new ultimate realization of his life’s purpose. 

What actually happened was a run of mundane questions and answers along with a relatively uncomfortable forced vulnerability when responding to the more invasive queries surrounding the horridly torrid details of my early life’s trauma, followed by a self-admitted, reckless statement by my new PhD psychologist and Carl Jung doppelgänger in a moment of absentminded candor, that I should expect weekly, in person visits “for years”. Makes me wanna get Freudian on his ass and tell him about his mother!

Oof! This was not really what I had in mind. My next appointment is in four days and now I am burdened with the task of asserting myself by re-iterating my original goal in contacting this provider: getting a conclusive diagnosis.

I am so not looking forward to this because I don’t feel I do well in situations where the relationship must be maintained. I find it very easy to give someone the business for whatever transgression I perceive when it is a one time interaction and I will likely never see them again, but navigating the tenuous, emotion fraught border between mutually amenable communication and a brutal dissection of my new victim’s crimes has, for me, never been an easy tread. 

My partner suggests going in with a list of things I want to discuss, so I forget less, but I don’t know how to say what words. I will have to brainstorm with her and possibly others to get a grammatical game plan going and then pray to whatever gods are convenient that I can fake my way through the requisite exchange of interpersonal signals long and convincingly enough to reach a satisfactory resolution and still be able to engage in future communications without any hang-ups.

It certainly feels impossible, but I will once again, despite my historical failure rate, defer to popular wisdom and try to textbook my way through this one. I don’t have any other options. I’m now on a timeline. My partner wants results. So do I, but I am also chained by a fear of repeating mistakes and in so doing, destroying another therapeutic relationship, the whole situation made more difficult by the existence of external expectations and my own feeling that I should have had a fucking handle on this by now.

This is not at all what I expected I’d be doing with my life at this point and it is so utterly defeating to look back at thirty-odd years of work done to alleviate a condition that did not exist while simultaneously looking forward to an equally long slog in attempting to change course and take a new tack on an old problem. 

Cover me… I’m goin’ in!

-HomieCidal Brainiac