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Dr. Carpenter’s BLOG

 

From time to time I will be adding posts here.  Some will be short essays, some will be pictures or photographs, some will be poems.  All will touch on the topic of psychotherapy to some extent or other.  My current software permits no responses from readers on this page, although I would be interested in responses.  If you wish, you can email me your reactions:  info@DrJimCarpenter.com.

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The moments are crowded with judgments. 

He said:

"This is bad and that is worse. How ridiculous of you to think that! That is beneath contempt. Frankly, I can’t stomach it. No offense, but I need to get away from you for a while. What is that stink!

In a cool, empty room I can take a deeper breath. This AC is clean, the filters are new. I can take in this air. I almost don’t smell a thing. It’s really nice to relax, I want to tell you.

I don’t know why I lose my temper the way I do. I can’t blame Carol. I don’t like me either. I really lost it yesterday. I’ve been helping all week. They had made a complete and total mess of it and I volunteered, she was grateful at first. I straightened it out, the way I would do it. At least it was business-like. The numbers made sense, and finally at least she wasn’t breaking the law. But then in a second a mood hit her and she turned it upside down by getting all pissed off at Naomi and took everything back! I admit it, I lost my cool and said a lot of things I wish I hadn’t said. I wish I had never gotten involved. It never really helps for long.

I want to die. I don’t really want to go through the steps of killing myself, but being dead would be just fine.

You know, everything conspires to make a fool of you. You try your best and look how it goes.

I give up.  I really do.

I try to be perfect so this will never happen again. Then it crashes down. What can you do with that?"

There is a mist forming in the air which I can see but he does not notice. It gathers and thickens behind him and makes him stand out for me against a darker background. He rests a bit against this soft background. He rises into the air a tiny bit and does not notice this either. The painful muscles in his lower back seem to relax a bit and he eases very slightly into his rising chair. I see a tableau in the mist behind him. It is his mother crying angrily into the empty night. He almost remembers weeping for her.

His memories are little children sketched faintly in grey pastel, they wait patiently for him just behind him on the floor, so accustomed to their abandonment.

             

                                                                                   

 

 

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