The waiting room and how therapy fucking sucks

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

I consider my going to therapy for my panic disorder to be a very tender topic. But since I am the guy who's perpetually low on material and the guy who'll post anything on the internet regardless of morality or legality, the sensitivity of the topic is not going to stop me from writing about the details of my therapy sessions on the internet for all my future employers, family, friends and potenial casual sex partners/admirers to discover.

So I went to my first therapy session for this year and as I was sitting in the waiting room waiting for my name to be called by the secretary, I remembered why I wasn't too crazy about going to therapy in the first place: The severity of my mental disorder is nothing compared to those of other people waiting to get a psychiatric consultation. I cannot find the words to describe how uncomfortable it is to wait in a waiting room with people who talk to themselves while they drool or people who talk about how they saw a yellow leprechaun beat up a proboscis monkey the night before when my only dysfunction, if you can even call it that, is that I suffer from a very common disorder that 3% of the world's population suffer from at some point in their lives and the fact that I obsessively masturbate to Kim Chiu's Whisper commercial to the point where I flog my penis for more than 10 minutes waiting for Sana Maulit Muli to return from the commercial break because I found out that I can blow my load over my head and into my hair whenever I see Gerald Anderson and Kim Chiu on TV together.

(I just reread that last sentence and I realized that I might be crazier than I thought. Also, if Kim's or Gerald's lawyers are reading this, you might want to take a screenshot of this blog post right now, print it out and mark it as "Prosecution Exhibit A" for when you press charges against me in the future. Thanks)

Waiting in a psychiatrist's waiting room is also overwhelmingly awkward so really, while all the lunatics in the room were talking to their imaginary friends or drooling the fuck all over the place, I was slumped over in my chair, sweating anxious sweat with my face sunk in my hands waiting for the secretary to tell me that the doctor's ready for me.

The fact that there are attractive normal people (I use the term "normal people" here in relation to the lunatics in the waiting room. I'm not crazy. Really.) who walk in once in a while serves only to further exacerbate my anxiety. The feeling is quite simlar to the feeling I get after visiting a massage parlor/prostitution den/chlamydia hive. You know how it goes– You just paid some weird, young southern girl who fronts as a masseuse to have sex with you only to end up passing out and peeing yourself in the shower because you were drunk as fuck; So you ask for a handjob instead. You slip into your clothes after experiencing what is quite possibly the worst orgasm you've ever had and casually walk out of the massage parlor only to run into an ex girlfriend who is way hotter than she is when you broke up with her.

Ex Girlfriend: Mike! What are you doing [glances up at the sign over the massage parlor which reads "Majestic Gentleman's Club"]…here?
Me: Um [lips shaking], I'm writing a piece for [insert prominent newspaper here] about prostitution. I just went inside to interview some girls who have been victimized by white slavery at such a tender age.
Ex: [unconvinced] So you write for [prominent newspaper]? You know, [Some bigtime editor] is a very good friend of mine, I should ask her about you.
Me: [nervous as fuck] well I guess you could but she probably doesn't know me being that I'm new and all.
Ex: [Shrugs] Right. Oh by the way this is my new boyfriend Diether Ocampo.
Diether: Musta pharree dude?
Me: Hello.
Ex: Listen, we have to go, we're going over to his place where I'm going to let him stick his penis in my anus and let him fondle my breasts to his heart's content. For free.
Me: Okay bye. [fighting tears]

Because the Philippines is a backwards-ass country and people here live in straw huts and do nothing all day but play with their mustaches and worship stone gods, the stigma associated with seeing a psychiatrist is as strong as it was back in the 1800's. To most people here, when somebody is seeing a psychiatrist, it automatically makes him crazy and thus should be avoided at all costs because there is a great chance that he'll murder your entire family and rape your dog if you provoke him enough.

For this reason, I am afraid that somebody I know might see me in the waiting room and automatically label me a looney without even Googling my name and finding out that I am quite popular on the internet and women literally throw themselves at me because they find my immaculate grammar sexy. (As always, just play along)

And ladies and gentlemen, you know what they say: "What you fear is what you find" (I don't know exactly who said this but I'm guessing it's from a Metallica song or something) and true enough, a girl I went to gradeschool with came in after I've been waiting in the room for about 15 minutes and sat right across me. Now, this girl is not particularly attractive but seeing that she's only there because her mom asked her to pick up anti-depressants for her and that she's the only real semblance of sanity in that shithole, I proceeded to strike up a conversation with her.

We got to talking a little about our personal lives. It turns out that she's married and has a baby and she's doing marketing for an FM radio station; I, on the other hand, told her that I do marketing for an internet company and I have a famous blog which is quite a big deal on the internet. I also, subtly, hinted that there is an internet cafe downstairs and we could maybe go down and read my site to pass time while we wait for the doctor then she, not so subtly at all, hinted that if I don't stop insisting to her that she should read the blog, she will call security as she is now seriously creeped out.

Stigma. Proof. All in one paragraph.

God, I hate therapy.