Got an email from my old therapist

I'm not doing well emotionally and I have to go out tonight. I'm all jumpy inside, like I'm really, really nervous. I'm on edge, waiting for doom to drop right on top of me, like the way pianos and anvils fall from tall buildings onto people in New York City.

What are you talking about, farmboy?

You know. Like those old cartoons in black and white.

If you say so.

It's true! Those old cartoons with all that great rickety music. Raymond Scott. Carl Stalling in those classic Warner Brothers cartoons.

Anyway, I just took an anxiety pill and hopefully I took it soon enough that this stuff won't grow.

Was anything upsetting you?

Got an email from my old therapist. Not that it was a bad email -- he was answering an email I had sent. I had asked him about a diagnosis, and he gave me a couple of terms. But he also cautioned me that those things are mostly for insurance purposes. 

What were the terms, the diagnoses?

That word is so fuckin' funny, man. "Diagnoses!"

This is what he wrote: 

[You may have had] a Dysthymic Disorder most of your life, with Major Depressive episodes during it. I would also want to consider a Dependent Personality Disorder to help understand some of your issues in relationships.

He also said that I may be smoking too much weed and that this new doctor may have his own diagnoses about my issues.

I guess I've just never seen those things written about me. I don't disagree or anything, plus I asked him, for fuck's sake. But there they are. I really do need to take into account what my old therapist said about it mainly being for insurance purposes.

Yes, farmboy, it could be strange seeing your life's emotions boiled down into a few words.

Maybe so. There's kind of a shock at being a persons who gets diagnoses.

Which, by the way, is still a fuckin' funny word.

Anvils and pianos

You know, man, life is like a fuckin' game of dodge ball. 

You're high, farmboy.

Well, yeah. Sure. But I'm also serious. In your normal day-to-day life you spend an astronomical amount of energy just dodging stuff. It's like anvils and pianos are falling down on you while you're walking down the avenue. 

Like those old cartoons?

Yeah. You know, the ones with the Raymond Scott soundtracks.

Great stuff.

Ain't it? Anyway, man, that's what life is like, one of those cartoons. I mean, it's the I-gotta-pay-those-bills or I better-pay-my-child-support 'cause they'll throw my fuckin' ass in jail if I don't type of stuff.

You have a point, farmboy. I never looked at it that way. I guess I don't think of my life as a never-ending experience with oppressive fear…

Hey! I never said that!

But there's maybe a little kernel of truth to what you're saying. But, man, I can't help it. I'm always having to dodge stuff. Sometimes my main source of happiness seems to be the relief of not having to experience ultimate catastrophe.

It's sad.

Actually, farmboy, I think there's truth in what we're both saying.

Yeah. Fuck, ain't this depressing?