Child Abuse?
I’m not certain I would diagnose myself with chemical depression. But if I am currently suffering, a definite symptom would be my recent interaction with a nine-year old girl.
It was one of those waits in a dentist’s office that confirmed that I am no one, zilch, nothing in this world. First x-rays with that lead apron which must be cancerous itself. Then a one-hour wait in a waiting room where the only magazine—an issue of Parenting from May 2006—appeared to have been covered in semen then blown dry.
For half of that wait it was just me and her—this precocious, sadistic little nine-year old.
“How old are you?” she asks suddenly, after fifteen minutes of sweet silence spent mostly with me looking at the pregnant women in the magazine ads trying to decide if they are really pregnant and her regarding her palms as if they were a television or a video game console.
She was wearing a dress that poofed dramatically at her waist, and she smiled at me as if she’d been taught to smile by some grifter. There was no parent around, and she was in the room alone when I got back from my x-rays—heightening her suspicious origins.
“Too old to be asked,” I said and turned the page of the magazine in a manner that elicited the loudest possible noise.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Smile straight to frown. She was good.
“It’s ok. Here’s how old I am.” I put the magazine down in my lap. I flashed ten fingers her at her three times then added a quick OK sign.
“Forty-four?”
“Thirty-three.” I picked up the magazine.
“My mom predicts I’m going to live to be a 120.” The way she pronounced “predicts” was lispy and impossibly affected.
“You’re lucky,” I said, and turned the page again. I’ve been hearing a lot about living to 120, as if this were the new 100. And frankly, it makes me queasy. Who would want to live that long in this world? Can you imagine the neck of a 120-year-old woman, the plastic surgery that would require?
But they, the potential 120-year olds, its easy. Just eat no meat. In fact, eat very little. The less you eat, the longer you live.
Wanting to live forever must be a sign of mental health—just as being depressed by the idea of living past June is pretty certainly an indication that hospitalization may be necessary. However, there is something troubling about people who are so greedy for life that they need to live too much of it. Certainly there’s some kind of narcissism there.
“Yeah, when I’m a hundred twenty you’ll be…”
“Very dead,” I interrupted.
“145.”
“I have an idea,” I said. I had no idea what I’d say next. “How about we see who can be quiet longer?”
That made her sad frown come back.
“You know they say the less words you say, the longer you live.” That probably was true, somehow.
“Really?”
“Shhh,” I said, very softly, certain that I was doing the world a huge favor.
“For Some Reason It Never Feels Right” is the occasional blog of Linda Weissberg MFT.