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JIM, in his early twenties, walks in and sits down. He isn't nervous or twitchy. He's calm and collected. He's had one meeting with the therapist before, but the policy now is that he walks in and talks. This is his first real appointment. He walks in and sits down on the couch. Looks around him. He stares at a spot where the therapist would be if there really was one in the audience and waits for a couple of seconds. He checks his watch and, realizing that nobody else is going to say anything, begins.
You want to hear my story? You really want me to tell you why I'm here? I'm no good with open-ended questions. I don't know how to explain these things. But there are a few things I do know, and since you're asking, I might as well tell you anyway.
They sent me here. I have no reason to be here. I'm fine. Or maybe I'm not. But hey, I've made it this far without "treatment" or whatever you want to call this nonsense. I suppose you all call it therapy. Therapy. Th-e-ra-py. He sounds it out slowly, considering it, looking around then sits forward on the couch suddenly and looks really intently at a fixed point. Tell me something, please. No really, just humor me for a minute here. This therapy thing, what's the point of it? What is it supposed to do? I'm supposed to just sit here, or I guess lie here as the cliché goes, and confess to you all of my secrets, all of the pieces of my life that nobody knows so that you can put all of this together and tell me everything about me that I don't understand.
So tell me how I'm supposed to do that. Tell me how you expect me to write out twenty-three entire years of experiences, give or take a couple of months, in these little hour-long sessions. Do you want to hear about the time I skinned my knee playing soccer when I was five? Should I inform you that my mother used to pick me up at 3:13 on the dot after high school every single day? Am I going to confess to you that I almost killed myself over a broken heart once? How much detail does this demand? Almost yelling. Tell me, damn it.
His entire body tenses as he stares at the audience as intensely as possible. A minute passes. He shakes his head and leans back against the cushions of the couch, lets himself sink down, spreads his arms. He sits up again, having regained the calm composure he walked in with.
Well, I'm here for the last one of those. I guess I'm supposed to explain that now, aren't I? Pause. I was young. By which I mean this happened two months ago. But two months feels like an eternity when your life goes from beginning to ending in three hours or less.
Where do I start? At the beginning, maybe? But that would take two years to relate because it took two years to live through and when someone becomes your very life, you don't want to cut out any portion of any moment of any day. No, I think I'll start at the end. He takes a deep breath and shifts into a more comfortable sitting position.
She dumped me. It was probably my fault that we broke up, but she was the reason it actually happened. I loved her like I'd loved no one else. She could have slept with every man in the world and murdered half of my family and I still wouldn't have loved her any less. Maybe it was ridiculous, but I would have done anything for her. There was nothing that could have led me to break up with her. But I guess she didn't feel the same way.
So anyway. I said we should spend more time together. She thought I was asking too much. One thing led to another and we were done. Stupid reason to break up, right? But that's just the way we were. Small things cascaded into big ones and we were such a mess that this time, once and for all, we couldn't fix it. I hadn't seen it coming. I didn't know what to do. So I just lived the next few weeks in silence and in shock. I was on auto-pilot. Nothing mattered because all of a sudden, my whole reason for being had gone and disappeared forever out of my life.
He puts his head in his hands and sighs deeply. Some time passes as he's obviously reliving the experiences. He looks up, takes a breath, brushes a hand through his hair, and resumes talking.
One day I woke up, grabbed my cup of coffee as usual. Headed for the door and just stopped. 'Cause fuck, agony gets old fast. He shakes his head slightly before continuing. I walked into my bathroom and took out a bottle of pills. He pauses and smiles, knowing he's more amused by the fact than he should be. Now I was always a guy for economy. Always bought the big bottles. You know, the ones with 300 tablets of 500 mg of ibuprofen. It only takes about 105 grams of that stuff to kill you, you know? That's 210 pills. And I had that. I knew I did.
I don't really know what I was thinking. I don't figure I was. But I took a pill, and I swallowed it. Then another and another. It was a new bottle so I wasn't worried. And I just took pill after pill after pill by the handful, just slowly forcing them into myself. If I had a couple of extras, whatever…who cares? Better safe than sorry. I'd be dead anyway. He stares off into space and pauses for a while.
Next thing I know, I wake up in the hospital. Some nurse came by and filled me in on the details. They said something about being found on the floor with a half-full bottle of pills at my side. I guess I passed out. No clue who could have found me though. I lived alone. But somehow I lived. They had me under suicide watch for a week or two. Then they made me come here. So here I am. Telling you my story.
Now look, maybe you think I'm crazy. Maybe you think I'm stupid for wanting to die over a girl. But let me tell you a couple of things. She wasn't just a girl. And don't give me any of that more fish in the sea bullshit. I loved her. That was what made her so different from the rest of them. And then…why not die? I mean, sure there are things it would still be nice to do. But I don't have a bucket list. I've done all the things that really matter to me. I've loved a girl. I've kissed her. I've held her as she cries. I've tried my best to make her happy. And maybe I haven't done a terribly good job of it, but I did the best I could. That's all I can ask of me.
He stands up calmly, just as collected as he walked in, and strides out slowly.
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