“I seem to be dealing with ever-escalating existential dread.”
The thought given utterance careened through the room, knocking gently on the UV filmed window and the galvanized radiator below it. Next to the radiator, framed by a wall of tacky yellow and white birds upon Einsteinian shapes that never seemed to coalesce, the therapist nodded dutifully from his oversized corduroy chair, scratching his secret notes with a well-chewed pencil on ivory paper.
“Have you tried being in the moment? Focusing on the now.” The therapist, Donnelly, asked. He was a stereotype given life, animated by an ironist of a god, and gifted the sense of humor of a week-old cod. Flies should have been buzzing about him if he had lived a hundred years prior, but these days, even dry boring people seemed to have successful careers.
“The moment is dread. How can one avoid the dark when one is literally wedged inside of it?” The Client shot back. The therapist knew his name of course, but did not invoke it, because there were consequences to using a name like that. Dire ones. The client was just The Client, declarative.
Donnelly would have frowned if he had the capability to grimace in The Client’s presence, but instead nodded thoughtfully. The Client saw through the ruse, but let it slide. It had been quite a stretch between sessions, after all.
“So what should I do, Doctor?” The Client followed.
“Talking about it is a good start… but I should note that working through the emotion, while it is occurring, is always the healthier approach. I am curious why you feel such dread.”
“You don’t?” The Client leaned up from his position on the taupe couch, the cushions just as dreary and conflicting as the wallpaper.
“Should I?” Donnelly frowned this time, and deep down The Client appreciated the candor.
“You should. The world is shit, Dr. Donnelly. Filled with misery, death, and despair. People are born to slavery, wage slaves all their lives, fighting others over what should be well accepted basic principles, and are so closeted in their fears and dread, they think the only way to get ahead is to fuck over anyone that even tangentially gets in their way.”
“Oh, I don’t think it is quite that bad…” Donnelly started to protest.
“Oh, but it is! You show a man an empty bowl, and tell him that if it is filled he will be able to eat. The man will agree. But if you add that his neighbor will also eat, he argues that only he should have the food, his neighbor is responsible for his own. YET, YET, it is not the man that is filling the bowl, but someone else! If I fill the bowl, it is his own achievement and it belongs to him!?” The Client waved his arms from his prone position as if directly a choir hanging from the ceiling, which itself was again both taupe and terrible.
“I would posit that most men would not make such an argument.”
“But they would. Ask them if they should starve, they say no. Ask them if they should be unhoused, they say no. Ask them if they should be uncared for when ill, they say no. But introduce one other into consideration, and they will claim it depends on the situation. They do not believe that the society that very much enables an individual to survive should allow them all to survive. It is a wonder that the human race ever survived getting out of Africa. It is a miracle. Honestly, the fact they even managed to thrive was a huge mistake from the start.”
“Ok, so people are terrible. Let’s set that aside. People themselves would not be the cause of your existential dread, as you put it. So what is causing your dread?”
“The world is dying. All the splendor of the early days of man have all but exhausted themselves. Species disappearing faster than they can be discovered. Entire ecosystems collapse because some fat fuck out there wants another hamburger.”
“Now you are just getting preachy,” Donnelly sniffed haughtily.
“And you are being obtuse.”
Donnelly ignored the insult and continued, “The world is a vastly complex system of intertwining and contrary forces, greater than one single person’s understanding of it. The individual buying the hamburger does not think about the rest of world, he is thinking on his hunger.”
“He should be thinking about the size of his gut and if he will ever see his dick again,” The Client groused.
“And the world is fine. Ecosystems bounce back, species evolve into new niches… give it a few hundred thousand years after the human race is gone, and the world will be an amazing place again,” Donnelly said. He sniffed and rubbed a mindless fingertip below his nose, brushing against his wiry gray mustache absentmindedly trying his best not to think about his own mortality.
“You know, I don’t know why I come here, it’s not like you help me.”
“I do help you,” Donnelly countered. “When was the last time you had a panic attack?”
“You know the answer,” The Client waved it away.
“Answer the question.”
“Fine. 1991.”
“And what happened?” Donnelly pressed.
“I rather not talk about it.” The Client’s face soured and he leaned his head back, covering his eyes with his thick muscular forearms.
“Mt. Pinatubo exploded.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fire, destruction, cooling of the earth by a degree…”
“And… nearly nine hundred people died, and another twenty to thirty thousand displaced, millions of animals killed, agriculture disrupted… a cascading effect on the world for another decade afterwards.”
“It was a bad panic attack, ok?” The Client said defensively.
“And the reason that you have been my client since then, right?” Donnelly pushed.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mother made me do it.”
“Should we talk about your mother?”
“If you as so much as whisper her name in here, I might have another panic attack. Don’t get all Freudian on me, as I know it is total bullshit.”
“Well, I won’t invoke your mother. Last thing I need is a visit. But I do help you. Even if you may not realize it at the time.”
There was only silence from the large man reclining on the couch. Donnelly took the lack of continued argument as a subtle compliment.
“Let’s take a different tack. Why do you think humans are so terrible?” Donnelly tried.
“That’s a tough one,” another protracted silence, followed by a heavy sigh. “Because they were made to be terrible, but it was the best attempt compared to everything that came before, so… kind of a win, I suppose.”
Donnelly looked over his notes. “You are concerned for the planet, for the animals and their ecosystems, you think humans are uncaring menaces and that they hate each other as much as they hate themselves, but that does not explain your dread. Why do you feel responsible for it?”
The Client sat up forcibly as if yanked by invisible marionette strings. “I never EVER said that I felt responsible!”
Donnelly tented his fingers over his notebook, chewed pencil between two of them. “That is the most forceful response we have had today. I think you may feel responsible. Think about it. Why would that be?”
Waves of emotions crossed The Client’s face, like shadows of cloud between his face and the sun. Doubt, concern, belief, fear, anger, grief, then acceptance raged across his features individually, each distinct and of its own. “By the Father, I think you are right.”
“Go on,” Donnelly waved.
“I never… I mean the Owled-One said something like that once, but I thought she was being petty. Maybe she was right? Maybe she was trying to tell me something important, but I was so offended by her rejection, riled and angry, I failed to see it?” The Client put his sandaled feet on the faded carpet, and ran his hands through his hair as he processed the discovery. “Then, the anger, the rage, was it displaced? It’s my fault? By the Father, it’s my fault! Shit! I can’t believe I have never seen this before.”
“Be careful with shouldering blame, it may not be all yours to carry. You can still feel grief, even a sense of accountability, but you are in no way culpable for the world as it is today. As I said, the world is a complex, interwound, highly volatile intersection of forces greater than any individual, even for those like you.”
“I gave them the skills, the training, the desire to push forward… I mean the Owled-one helped, as others did here and there. But the inevitable outcome of the forge is the machinations of man at a grand scale. That is it! I am filled with dread because the fucking humans are using the things I taught them to destroy everything around them. I feel responsible, and that is the dread… and the panic attacks to boot.”
“This is a marvelous breakthrough,” Donnelly waved a hand towards The Client. “But you are not to blame. A parent cannot blame themselves when their child dies of their own accord? Does the mother blame herself when her son dies on a foreign shore? Should she? He made his own choices, took his own path, right?”
“I suppose. But the sense of it… Doctor. I gave them the tools! I gave them the training, and put them to work all that time ago, and I have been standing by, just watching in horror ever since…” The Client nodded to himself, his mind working through the complexities and implications. “I am going to have to think about this a little. Maybe from home.”
“That is a brilliant idea. Your mother has been looking forward to you spending some time back on The Mountain. At least that is what she said to me last time we saw each other, which was years ago…” Again it wasn’t just any mountain, it was The Mountain, declarative. “And we are about of out of time, anyway.”
The Client wiped at his eyes, and Donnelly noted a sense of relief in the sunken hollows of The Client’s face.
“Yes,” The Client slapped his knees as he stood up. His muscular frame rose of the couch gracefully, preternaturally as a dragon rising through wisps of clouds. “When should we visit again?”
“It seems time works differently between us, but when you are ready, just reach out like you have in the past. Don’t wait so long next time, eh?” Donnelly joked. “I may not be alive.”
The Client narrowed his eyes as if taking the Therapist for the first time. “Ah, you are older. How long has it been for you?”
“Eleven or twelve years now, I think.”
“Blink of an eye, eh?” The Client smiled.
“For some more than others.”
“Goodbye Dr. Donnelly, and you can use my name, it is… acceptable this time. Thank you.”
“Of course, you are welcome… Hephaestus. Give your mother my best.”
The God turned and the world shifted subtly, one moment there was a massive brute of a man standing in front of the door, and the next, nothing but the smell of hot ash and smelting iron in an empty room. The Therapist leaned back into his chair and glanced at his watch. He had at least an hour before the next clients were going to show up, but at least they always brought some treats to discuss their marriage over… and they typically used the door.
Donnelly glanced at his door, and lightly grinned at the reversed lettering on the glass of his office door.
Dr. Ephram Donnelly, Psy.D. Therapist to All