[Editorial note 2015 (age 52): This was cut from a long lost MySpace blog entry and pasted into a simple text file, just so you know what all the weird "mood/category/listening to" and other nonsense is about. Yes, I could have removed it, but it is more fun to leave it as somewhat of an artifact of it's time and virtual place, although no layout or graphical elements are retained.]
Sunday, October 05, 2008
The Story of Sigmund Frog
Current mood: ashamed
Category: Life
This post started as a comment on another Spacer's blog, in which she wrote a very sweet poem in memory of her departed pet frog. Her poem reminded me of a frog I once knew who has since passed on. The comment ran way too long and way too far off subject, so I moved it here as a blog post of it's own.
The counselor who was the first in my current series of hot-potato referrals had a frog in his office. He was some kind of tiny aquatic frog, named Sigmund, Sigmund Frog. Get it? Yeah. Anyway, poor little Sigmund lived in a tiny tank on a tiny table between the two chairs in the room. According to the counselor, Sigmund had already exceeded the typical lifespan of his species by nearly double.
I would spend the entirety of every session watching Sigmund, which was a great excuse to avoid eye contact with the counselor. Sigmund seemed so very weak and very tired. It seemed to take the full measure of his meager energy to slowly struggle his way to the surface and stay there long enough to take a breath, only to drift back down to the bottom and lie there inert, conserving and mustering his strength for the next epic struggle to win his next breath. This cycle would repeat over and over while I watched, never varying.
Sigmund's torturous existence seemed such an apt metaphor for the bleakness and senseless suffering that comprises the lives of so many. Perhaps the counselor thought that his patients would feel better about their own lot in life, with Sigmund as the reminder that it could always be worse. Perhaps he thought that his patients would find in Sigmund a kind of tiny suffering soul-mate; someone to whom they could relate and feel less alone in their futility. Perhaps he gave very little thought at all to the plight of Sigmund, or his patients. Like most mental health professionals I have met, he talked mostly about himself.
Even more likely, the counselor saw himself in Sigmund, thus the name. After all, Sigmund's tiny square tank, sitting in the center of the counselor's tiny square office, contained a replica of an even tinier little office for Sigmund. This isn't exactly the pinnacle of subtlety.
I was very conflicted in my feelings for Sigmund. I wanted him to live, was oddly proud of his persistence, almost inspired, yet it pained me so much to watch his apparent suffering. But I could not look away. Indeed, I felt this odd obligation to watch, to bear witness, as if my moral support could somehow be sensed by, and provide some measure of strength to, this frail amphibian.
On what turned out to be my last appointment with this counselor, Sigmund and his tank were gone. Both his suffering and his triumph were over. A few days before my next appointment, the counselor left me a voice mail referring me to a psychologist, who later passed me off to a psychiatrist. If this escalation continues, I'm not sure where the next stop is: in-patient care in a secured facility? I think I would prefer self-directed out-patient care in a nice dark bar, if only my social anxiety would let me get through the door.
I was never given a clear reason why I was being referred on. I was surprised when the psychologist asked me why the counselor had referred me, and if I was still seeing him as well. I figured that even if the counselor did not see fit to explain it to me, he would have at least given some indication to the guy upon whom he had dumped me. The next hand-off played out exactly the same, abrupt and unexplained, and questioned by the latest person burdened with my care. In each case, I advised them to talk amongst themselves to sort it out, as I had no clue, other than that I was being pushed inexorably towards psychoactive medications.
The beginning of the end of my relationship with the original counselor, the one with Sigmund, was probably when I offered the opinion that there can be such a thing as too much self esteem. He visibly bristled at this, and shortly thereafter proudly showed me his book, entitled "Full Esteem Ahead".
I will allow you a moment to savor that.
As is my habit, I immediately flipped to the page in the front with the publisher's information and all the legal fine print. As I expected, it was what is known as a "vanity" publisher, the kind where the author pays the full cost of printing and distribution. Full Esteem Ahead, indeed.
Perhaps an even more significant sign that things were not going well: on the rare occasion that I was able to speak openly and in complete sentences, the counselor would react by literally curling up into a semi-fetal position in his chair. Something about me was apparently deeply disturbing to him. This is why I try to avoid people. I consider my absence to be a public service.
I know this sounds like I am mocking the counselor, and I feel terribly guilty about it, yet cannot help myself. The honest and painful truth is that I genuinely liked this counselor as a person, yet I am sorry to say I never really fully respected him intellectually. He was plenty smart enough to sense this, and it had to irk him, which was a problem, because he was the kind of person who liked too see himself as being above and beyond such low and negative feelings as being irked by even the most subtle signs of condescension from, of all people, a patient.
In retrospect, I think we each had vastly different ideas about why each of us were in that room together, and different expectations of how matters should proceed. We never so much as had a simple conversation to directly address these differences. This exact statement applies to my working relationship, or lack thereof, with every other mental health professional I have seen, before and since, and perhaps, people in general.
I feel like such a jerk over this, and I'm not fishing for anyone to offer me comforting contradictions. Despite my frequent professions of self-loathing, I sometimes nonetheless give harbor to the sin of pride. Probably more often and more egregiously than I realize. Hopefully my frequent and extensive excursions into the bottomless pit of hopelessness and worthlessness are adequate penance for my transgressions.
Besides, who am I to mock the self-published? Isn't that what I am engaging in at this very moment? My only completed recordings comprised a two-song single that I self-published on CD and distributed myself, for free. The almost complete lack of response or reaction of any kind from those who received it speaks volumes. As they say: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all". More likely, the discs were accepted out of simple politeness and were never actually played. Most of the recipients were working musicians, who understandably tend to stay focused on their own work.
Having now thoroughly broken my own rule of never publicly providing information from which can easily be deduced the identity of any of my caretakers, I will take this opportunity to publicly apologize to this counselor. In the very unlikely case that you found your way to this blog: I am sorry for being a condescending jerk and a difficult patient. For any reader who may feel tempted to sleuth out the identity of this caretaker, be cautioned that his is not the only book that bears the same title.
Flying fully in the face of anything that resembles judgment or discretion, I will succumb to the prodding of my evil twin and tell you the intended title of his next book: "The Wisdom of Solomon". And yes, his surname is indeed "Solomon", but don't Google too quickly to any conclusions here either, as there are already several books with varying forms of this title, some of which include a Solomon among the authors cited.
Yes, even after apologizing, I continue to poke fun, but I'm probably just jealous of his confidence, persistence and stubborn accomplishments, if not his punishing puns.
In any case, I still miss Sigmund Frog, yet am haunted by the memory of what I saw as his horrific life. If there are better places for any of us to go, I hope there is such a place for him, although I am not frog enough to imagine just what that might be.
Currently listening :
Sounds of Earth: Frogs
By Various Artists
Release date: By 1999-10-12
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[Editorial Addendum 2015 (age 52): This was selected for re-posting partly to celebrate my recent successful rescue of a wild frog from our semi-feral cats, who had somehow transported their living plaything from the stream behind our back fence all the way up the back stairs and into our bathroom. When returned to the stream, he swam away making vigorous use of all limbs.]
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