How I love the silence of the consulting room when my patients are in their deep sleep and my fees are being paid. For me it’s like a lunch-hour nap I can be awake to enjoy. Two minutes ago, the confetti of their grievances was everywhere, and then—snap! I haven’t seen them this relaxed since, well, since last week. Concerned observers might ask why I don’t cure them. The answer is: I don’t cure, and there is no cure for riding a dead horse. Their problems are solved in advice columns every day. Mom, Dad, you’re sexually incompatible. That was clear when you were dating, but the fact that she liked to give you something “for special occasions” seemed charming. She’s unfulfilled, but not by you; for fulfillment she’d need a goal, and for that she’d need an imagination. No “occasion” will ever again be “special” enough. Why can you not see this? The kids see it. They “act out” because their personal family sitcom is all situation and no comedy, plus detention is cool in their circle. It’s no wonder I prefer the whole lot of them hypnotized. They dress well. If I propped their heads up, they could be posing for a catalogue. My diagnostic training is wasted on the bland. What I wouldn’t give for just one pungent psychosis that would flavor every family enmeshment, or a deviant strain of parentification over generations. I had a vocation for that, I thought; instead, I’m solving riddles of why girls eat, or why they don’t. Or why daddy here thinks his pothole under repair of a wife is unsexy. Maybe that’s the deepest plumbing of the heart; maybe my problems are as obvious as theirs; maybe I’m the one who’s being cheated when I put them down.
Copyright © January 1, 2007
Very Short Novels 
5 comments
Comments feed for this article
January 2, 2007 at 3:40 am
Lola Rogers
This is a fine story to start the new year.
Hey, thanks, Lola.
–David
January 2, 2007 at 4:18 pm
timethief
Another interesting angle … hmmm … Happy New Year, David. 🙂
Thanks, timethief, and HNY to you, too. Time to get the brains back in gear, yes?
–David
January 4, 2007 at 8:59 pm
sarah flanigan
Brutal in its honesty, David. As only you can do.
Sarah
Thank you, Sarah. They say a cynic is a sentimentalist on guard.
–David
January 5, 2007 at 5:55 am
Annelisa
Ah, private musings… we all have them, don’t we? And yet they usually don’t seem appropriate things to say. Unfortunately, I tend to blurt out what I’m thinking, so don’t often hold the private stream of thoughts for long…
But, it’s the sort of dialogue that pops up in your head, when you have a moment you don’t have to respond. I can just imagine a therapist thinking like this…
(by the way, I’ve visited a few times recently, but didn’t comment, as the new layout confused me, and I couldn’t find the comments… didn’t realise they were hidden at the bottom (are they set to come up below the sidebar?)
Thank you annelisa. You’re too kind to say everything that pops into this therapist’s head. I agree, the comments do get hidden. Glad you eventually found them!
–David
January 11, 2007 at 11:40 am
red dirt girl
hello David,
while I was away it seems that you continued to play with words so eruditely; prey upon our deepest fears (is my therapist really as bored as I am by all of my wasted years???)
though i have found hypnosis to be remarkably reliable when it comes to letting go of trauma…….a train ride through horrific events – that i watch with face glued to the window, happy that my train no longer stops at their stations…….and yes, i believe, after a long, long while………the therapist’s secrets get mingled in the mire of my own……..no man can remain an island for long.
good to be back…….and thanks for your kind words of encouragment.
red dirt girl
Welcome back, red dirt girl. There’s room on the couch. After the train has passed through the station, which is more changed, the station or the train?
–David
the train……..it finds a new track to follow, through countryside of a quite different nature……..at least that is the hope – and without that small four letter word, where would we all be in this world???