July 25, 2006

Mental As All Get Up

Lyrics of the day: “I’d like to take your inner child and kick its little ass.” Thanks to The Eagles, I have some reassurance that I’m not the only one who thinks people should take responsibility for themselves, even if that means a little shock therapy to hurl emotions back to a time prior to trauma. Take charge, people! Life is a lot tougher when other people are calling the shots. Guess what? You get to call all the shots in your adult life! Get over it!

With that said I am transported to a time when a friend of mine decided she should see a psychiatrist regarding, well, I’m not actually sure what inspired her to see a psychiatrist. She was incredibly shallow and I can’t imagine that she would have any insights or take part in any emotional self-examination which would motivate a visit to a shrink. But she must have experience some type of emotional discomfort and consulted a professional. She called me the evening of her second visit.

“I went to see the shrink today.”
“How did it go?”
“Fine. I took a long test last week and today we talked about my scores.”
“Yeah? What were they like?”
“The doctor said I’m a borderline schizophrenic.”
“Wow, borderline schizophrenic huh? Did he prescribe any drugs?”
“No.”
“When are you going to see him next?”
“I don’t think I will. He wants me to go back, but now that I know I have something I can blame everything on that.”
“But if you know there’s something wrong with you, don’t you want to fix it?”
“I’ve been okay until now; I can live with it.”

Later we discovered her mother was schizophrenic and her father committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. My friend was the one who found him.

I haven’t seen this friend in about fifteen years. We had a parting of the ways when she got married. She ended up having two children – very ugly children from what I’ve heard. She gained about seventy-five pounds and got divorced. When I think of her now, I wonder if she will become the purple, bloated, dead person in the closed garage with the car engine running simply because she never took control of her life by treating her mental illness. And even though her children are ugly, I hope they have enough sense to get the help they will most definitely need considering the gene pool from whence they sprang. Because we all know, there’s nothing worse than being ugly and crazy.

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