09 January 2007
♥ musings of a recovering sociopath.
My shrink's office is in a big, pretentious building with lots of windows. When you walk through the main doors, it feels like you've just stepped into an airport, and I always half-expect a big bald man in security garb to yell at me to remove any liquids from my purse.
Anyway, I check in at Behavioral Medicine. The name of this department always makes me feel like I'm on some nature show with Nigel-the-Safari-Guide narrating my mating habits and scavenging techniques, in a nasally British accent, to his eager and adoring viewers.
Because the clinic was designed by someone who had never had to visit a shrink in Behavioral Med, my wing is in the very back of the clinic, so you have to walk through three other departments to get to it. By the time you've gotten through Optometry, everyone knows you're not there to get your eyeglass prescription updated. They know you're heading to the land of the whackjobs. Of course, there are, on any given day, any number of well-dressed middle-class mothers escorting their children to their little well-kid checkups and wanting to shield little Robby's eyes when one of the psych ward patients strolls through. This is the part where I hope they all think I'm on crack.
In any case, the sign hanging above the reception desk says:
Anyway, I check in at Behavioral Medicine. The name of this department always makes me feel like I'm on some nature show with Nigel-the-Safari-Guide narrating my mating habits and scavenging techniques, in a nasally British accent, to his eager and adoring viewers.
Because the clinic was designed by someone who had never had to visit a shrink in Behavioral Med, my wing is in the very back of the clinic, so you have to walk through three other departments to get to it. By the time you've gotten through Optometry, everyone knows you're not there to get your eyeglass prescription updated. They know you're heading to the land of the whackjobs. Of course, there are, on any given day, any number of well-dressed middle-class mothers escorting their children to their little well-kid checkups and wanting to shield little Robby's eyes when one of the psych ward patients strolls through. This is the part where I hope they all think I'm on crack.
In any case, the sign hanging above the reception desk says:
DEPARTMENT OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE
- MENTAL HEALTH
- CHEMICAL DEPENDENCY
- EATING DISORDERS
So right away when you get there everyone knows there's something wrong with you, but that's okay, because they're all screwed up too.
It's the waiting room at this place that really gets my little wheels turning. If you're there you must either be a druggie or a barfer or just plain crazy, right? I like guessing who belongs to which category, and sometimes I have trouble stifling a gasp when I end up being completely and totally off the mark. I love it when I'm right (I usually am) but I enjoy it even more when they've sent me a surprise attack.
Anyway, all this guessing gets me to wondering--which do they think I am? Do I look like a bipolar patient or an eating disorder case?
I hope they all thing I'm a druggie. Yeah, that's right, you all think I starve myself? Ha!
I try to look like a hardass. I might be wearing a cute little sweater and a pair of khaki cords, but that's just because I'm an addict with class. Any minute now a cop will march in and say, "Gig's up, little lady!" and march me off to the slammer, where I'll inspire a washed-up old English-professor-turned-dealer to turn his life around and write a bestselling novel about me.
Or maybe a fight will start in the lobby and I'll have to use my street cred to break it up. (I've got some kind of badass name on the streets, you know, it comes with the territory.) "Knock it off, guys," I'll say, and one of my sleeves will get all jostled in the commotion, revealing a telltale scar on my left wrist, which I garnered in an especially rough encounter with a rapper whom I can't name at the moment due to his pending legal situation. Anyway, one of these punks will notice it and say, "Sweet Jesus Mary and Joseph! It's Lady X!" and the other will stutter in awe (I'm really badass, you have to understand) and finally say, "You won't get any more trouble from us!"
Or maybe this will be the breakthrough session where my shrink will finally fully comprehend my notoriety and send me on a sensitive sting operation to the Golden Hours Motel on East Colfax--you know the place--where I'll put a stop to a dangerous mid-western crack ring once and for all, saving countless adorable puppies and burros from unfortunate destinies as inadvertent smugglers.
I sit in the waiting room and hope that everyone realizes how freaking badass I am, because I always forget my magazing when I go there and all they have is the June 2004 issue of the Ladies Home Journal, which I've read six times now. I wish I could be one of those tough-to-crack cases like in B-grade movies, where I ask questions like "But why are you here, Dr. Kensington?" and the shrink loses sleep trying to figure you out.
But I love talking about myself (anyone who doesn't is actually lying), so that's probably not going to happen. Though I haven't nearly the willpower to be a difficult CD patient, I thoroughly enjoy the idea that when I step into the hallway and close the door to the lobby, the waiting room releases a collective sigh, knowing that at least for my 45-minute session, the world is safe from a hardened criminal.
It's the waiting room at this place that really gets my little wheels turning. If you're there you must either be a druggie or a barfer or just plain crazy, right? I like guessing who belongs to which category, and sometimes I have trouble stifling a gasp when I end up being completely and totally off the mark. I love it when I'm right (I usually am) but I enjoy it even more when they've sent me a surprise attack.
Anyway, all this guessing gets me to wondering--which do they think I am? Do I look like a bipolar patient or an eating disorder case?
I hope they all thing I'm a druggie. Yeah, that's right, you all think I starve myself? Ha!
I try to look like a hardass. I might be wearing a cute little sweater and a pair of khaki cords, but that's just because I'm an addict with class. Any minute now a cop will march in and say, "Gig's up, little lady!" and march me off to the slammer, where I'll inspire a washed-up old English-professor-turned-dealer to turn his life around and write a bestselling novel about me.
Or maybe a fight will start in the lobby and I'll have to use my street cred to break it up. (I've got some kind of badass name on the streets, you know, it comes with the territory.) "Knock it off, guys," I'll say, and one of my sleeves will get all jostled in the commotion, revealing a telltale scar on my left wrist, which I garnered in an especially rough encounter with a rapper whom I can't name at the moment due to his pending legal situation. Anyway, one of these punks will notice it and say, "Sweet Jesus Mary and Joseph! It's Lady X!" and the other will stutter in awe (I'm really badass, you have to understand) and finally say, "You won't get any more trouble from us!"
Or maybe this will be the breakthrough session where my shrink will finally fully comprehend my notoriety and send me on a sensitive sting operation to the Golden Hours Motel on East Colfax--you know the place--where I'll put a stop to a dangerous mid-western crack ring once and for all, saving countless adorable puppies and burros from unfortunate destinies as inadvertent smugglers.
I sit in the waiting room and hope that everyone realizes how freaking badass I am, because I always forget my magazing when I go there and all they have is the June 2004 issue of the Ladies Home Journal, which I've read six times now. I wish I could be one of those tough-to-crack cases like in B-grade movies, where I ask questions like "But why are you here, Dr. Kensington?" and the shrink loses sleep trying to figure you out.
But I love talking about myself (anyone who doesn't is actually lying), so that's probably not going to happen. Though I haven't nearly the willpower to be a difficult CD patient, I thoroughly enjoy the idea that when I step into the hallway and close the door to the lobby, the waiting room releases a collective sigh, knowing that at least for my 45-minute session, the world is safe from a hardened criminal.
1/09/2007
