What you’ve got to understand is, I don’t in fact have a self esteem problem, not as such. A problem would be if my personal
sense of worth varied from my actual value in the world, and as the two appear to be in near perfect agreement I think it unreasonable to suggest that my “faulty” self image is anything other than a thoroughly accurate representation of fact. Indeed, I find it rather insulting when others claim to see within me some kind of hidden value, as though they, with the most banal of surface knowledge about my person, are nonetheless capable of far more productively investigating my psyche than I could ever hope to be. After all, I have enjoyed the rather dubious honour of a lengthy and intimate acquaintance with myself, though I would hesitate to call it a friendship.
Anyway, what I’m trying to get across here is that there isn’t anything wrong with the way I see myself, thank you very much. Hate to disappoint you, but I just really don’t have a problem.
But you do. Or at least, you do by the definition established earlier. After all, you’re a “professional”, a couple of rungs prettier on the evolutionary ladder than poor, directionless homo-sapiens. That’s why they’re paying you to sit and judge me, same as any slob on the streets would do for nothing, or the therapeutic benefit of transferring their own flaws across to a disagreeable and convenient scapegoat. No wonder you’re so eager to strap yourself into the bulletproof vest of self importance, it justifies your position and perpetuates itself in the justification.
“What are you thinking?” She asks, leaning in to me with earnest concern spilling out from her mother’s-milky blue eyes. I immediately feel guilty, but am unable to abandon the line of thought, I have to expose her.
“I don’t know,” My reply is short and unhelpful, and familiar to us both. Ever since my first attendance it has been my stock answer to anything my tongue, rather than my mind, is unwilling to contemplate, even the intonation is unchanged.
My mind’s eye meanwhile, is peeling away her clothes, and the layers of perfect skin beneath. Her pretty features and complexion are replaced by awkward, spiderish, twitching nerves, blood, muscle and the usual unremarkable show. When I’ve seen enough I move down her body and dig around for shit. It’s amazing how people forget that angels have to shit. I make a point of reminding myself at every available opportunity.
She’s revealed now, shambling dust no different from me or you or any other construction of amoeba hordes with delusions of grandeur. I could cut her up into a hundred thousand pieces, not one of them would contain the slightest glimmer of poetry or light.
Still, she smiles, in that warm, gracious, accepting way that only mental health enforcers can. It’s pretty much their non-verbal shorthand for, “everything’s okay, and so are you”, which you know is bullshit because if they really did think that you wouldn’t have to go see them anymore. And the world comes sauntering back, (I deliberately refrain from using the word “rushing” as it implies far too much enthusiasm) like a dog that’s recently pissed you off but is too stupid to realise that you’ll still be mad if it runs off and then comes back again, praying for the reboot. Aren’t we all?
Except that I didn’t think that. My eye doesn’t fly about the room on any impulse born within me, I’ve looked at the wallpaper before, I know it’s appearance. But the peach has never before seemed so warm or welcoming, it’s never made me smile.
The next quarter hour drags on without any events of particular note, she asks her questions, I evade them or else reply with words communicating no more significance than farts or belches. She tells me she feels we’ve made some progress today, I smile and say “thank you”, in the same rotted fruit tone, then drift away with the peculiar sensation that somebody has been walking across my grave.