As if being forced to explain and justify herself to some shrink that she wasn’t completely crazy, just stressed to a breaking point (there was a difference after all), wasn’t bad enough. Articulating fundamental truths about her inner most being was verging on some level of Hell, she was sure. Talk about the weather, talk about school, talk about work, or sports even… anything but about herself and about her life especially. It was no one’s business. Hopefully this guy would be smart enough to keep any Freudian theory speculation to himself.
Brenda sat looking out a window at the spots of sunlight that had fought their way through the trees to illuminate the dead fallen leaves on the ground below, and she appreciated the beauty of it. This fleeting moment was summarily ended with the approach of a tricked out SUV booming some racket masquerading as “music” at levels that caused the windows of the small office to shake. The driver of the offending vehicle lingered at the stop sign, just in case anyone on the street had missed him. That figures. She’s willing the noise to eventually vibrate the rolling irritant to pieces.
“Tell me a little about why you’re here Brenda”.
She resists the set up to ask Captain Obvious if he could have been bothered to read the chart before speaking. “I was told that my eligibility depended on it.”
“Fair enough, but specifically I’d like to hear why it is you feel that your being alive is a mistake.”
Brenda pauses to carefully consider where exactly to begin. After gathering her thoughts she says “Life’s positives haven’t outweighed the negatives for longer than I care to recall, which quite frankly isn’t anything new. I’ve contemplated my death since early childhood, somewhere around the ages of seven and nine, which is right about when the nightmares started.”
The doctor leans forward, intrigued, and encourages Brenda, “go on.”
“In these dreams it was never clear how exactly it was that I died; the specific means by which that came to be were never defined. The only common thread between them was that whatever happened did so after I turned 18 but before I could graduate high school. I can only imagine that someone might easily assume that a kid would be terrified by such morbid thoughts… but not me. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I looked forward to it.”
He stares at Brenda momentarily in a state of stunned disbelief. “I see here that the nightmares eventually stopped. Tell me more about that.”
“Yup, right on cue too, between turning 18 and graduating high school. Life went on, and like a good soldier I trudged through it. On the day of my 18th birthday, I withdrew myself from my old high school in Southeast Georgia, and the very next day I was standing at the Grey Hound station, holding a ticket in my hand and waiting to catch the 10am bus to Venice Florida where I enrolled back into school and completed my senior year, even though I desperately wanted to quit. I was in Florida for three months when I had that dream for the very last time; and never again.”
“So what happened after that? What was it that made you feel guilty for living?”
Once again, Brenda resisted the urge to rise from the couch where she was sitting, look him square in the eye and slap him for having the gall to collect $150 per hour to ask patients stupid questions. Repeating herself was a major pet peeve and she had just gone over all of this in the lengthy paperwork that greeted her upon arrival at his office. This merely served as further proof that someone didn’t bother doing their due diligence before walking into a room with an accepted new client, regardless of the reason behind it. She felt it irresponsible.
“On Memorial Day weekend, one week prior to graduation, Carly, her fiancé Justin and another woman, Ms. Trevor who I had attended church with at one point were all murdered.” For a long time I carried the guilt for what happened to her, feeling that it should have, was supposed to have been me to take my leave of this world and not her. By then I’d been prepared for nearly a decade after all. I never bothered applying to colleges since (a) I hated school, (b) my family had no money to pay for it and most importantly (c) it hadn’t occurred to me that I would still be breathing, so why even bother? Then a funny and inconvenient thing happened… nothing, nothing at all. What was worse, I found that she was too chicken to do the deed myself, having been imbued with various denominations of Christianity in which such things are considered a no-no along the way with the so called ‘fear of God’ thanks to growing up in the Bible-belt and all.”
At this point Mr. Shrink concludes that Brenda is suffering from is something called survivor’s guilt or a type of posttraumatic stress disorder and silently circles the little diagnostic code box indicating same for billing purposes. She thinks to herself, well isn’t that all nice and tidy.
Leaving the office, she reflects on the session as she makes her way out to her car, satisfied that she had accomplished the deed she was sent to do. Curiosity about how and when her inevitable demise would finally come eventually brought Brenda around to embracing a philosophy imparted on her by her dear departed friend Carly, whose idea it was to live life as though it were one big adventure and as often as possible, without regret. And so she did. Already suffering from a number of known conditions and likely a number of additional undiagnosed issues as of yet that may just as well remain unknown. None of the things of which she is aware of are curable and all affect the quality of her life in a negative way with no significant improvement anywhere in sight. Brenda fumbles with her keys when a smile spreads across her face at an all too rare moment of enlightenment. The realization that the plus side to all of this is that there’s a 50/50 chance that she won’t be breathing ten years from now anyway thanks to a history of short lifespans in her family DNA. She had already outlived her biological father by two years at this point and was fast closing in on the next deceased relative longevity milestone.
Sadly Brenda has had a front row seat to watching people she loved slowly rot away into nothingness; the wonders of modern medicine prolonging life far beyond the scope of any meaningful quality. People are so focused on longevity that they agree to subject themselves to treatments that are more horrible than the diseases themselves. It’s not until later that they regret their decisions and wait in hopeful anticipation of a merciful death that never seems to come. Her epitaph would simply be that she’d “had enough”. Sitting in the driver’s seat and having turned the key in the ignition, the engine purring gently, she pats the dashboard with affection as though talking to a cherished pet and says “Ok, Bessie, let’s go home.”
Bio: The past eighteen months have been, to put it politely, challenging. Essentially the end of life as I previously knew it. The return to college life following more than a decade hiatus has been, well… let’s call it colorful. I managed to survive my first semester back in the swing of things and am currently working on a second. It is my goal to complete an Associate in Arts Degree by December 2013 and continue on to study Criminal Justice Forensics.