Re: Ctrl+V
I was working there because me shrink told me too. Why this didn’t alert me to the fact something was wrong I’ll never know, but there you go. You see my entire family was killed in a terrorist attack by the IRA about 18 months ago, so what with the inheritance and the insurance and the random people who kept sending me money by post (I never understood that, what, ‘oh, you poor thing, here, have a postal order for £20’??) I actually would never need to work again. But he said a lack of things to do was making me depressed (nothing to do with having to fill up the family plot all in one funeral, could it?), so somehow I ended up there.
Let’s start at the beginning shall we? Picture it, if you will, me off at university, my family meanwhile, holding a gathering to celebrate my Nan’s 80th without me. Some uninformed idiot wanting Ireland ‘free from oppressors’ bursts in and sprays the house with bullets before hitting the gas tank my grandparents insisted on having for some reason, and blowing everything in the vicinity to kingdom come. He apparently had gotten our old Irish family mixed up with another one, and thus exacted revenge in a manner he thought suitable.
They kept my baby brother alive on a ventilator long enough to for me to say goodbye. The bastard was lucky he was already dead.
Everyone was incredibly apologetic, of course. The British for not stopping the attack, the Irish for attacking the wrong people (yes they said that, I suspect their response would have been markedly different had the assassin actually killed the proper target) and everyone else because I was visible victim of the war on terror. It barely had to be rumoured that I was looking to get out of the country for a while to clear my head of old memories to get every embassy in London on the phone, offering visas, and diplomatic immunity, the works. I ended up here in America because I didn’t want to put effort into learning a new language. I ended up in St. Louis because that’s where the dart landed when I closed my eyes and threw it at a map.
Unfortunately, there’s one downside to the US. The people here, well, they’re extremely into self-diagnosing. They actually advertise drugs on TV, and then you’re supposed to go to your Doctor, and request them. What? I’d love to know when bowing down to the knowledge of the person who actually spent 7 years reading medicine went out of fashion.
They are also into diagnosing others. And so the second I landed here, I was offered counselling at the expense of the state. Riiiight. I refused.
A week later I get a call, saying I /need/ to go in for a check up. On my brain. Because if I don’t, there must be something wrong with me. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be privy to the deepest workings of their own subconscious?
Oh, sorry, am I the only one with my hand up?
So of course, I went. And of course, I was found to be deeply traumatised and was having problems expressing my grief. To the extent that I needed help. Once weekly from now on, and here, take these pills. I asked if there was a brick wall around that I could hire instead. He asked why, and I told him spending the sessions bashing my head against it would be more productive, and probably less painful.