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Friday, Feb. 11, 2005 - 5:23 p.m. MY SOCK DRAWER I currently feel quite lousy. I seemed to have staved off all illness this winter until this past week. Now my sinuses are completely clogged and I can barely hear of out my right ear. The annoying sinus headaches I have been experiencing have kept me up all night. Four the past two days, I have been going to work the next morning and resorted to taking sick leave both days in order to return home to salvage the lost sleep. I am not quite sure what I can write in this physical condition. My head certainly is not thinking clearly, and whatever feelings I truly do have are overshadowed by my physical ailments. I would go on to discuss the new therapist I saw for the first time yesterday, but I am so anhedonic right now, I doubt I can do justice to the reason I had gone and the results of our first session. However, I will do my best. First, I suppose I shall discuss the reason I went. Much earlier in the Experiment, I wrote entries illustrating the apparent prison I was in through quite elaborate terms. Since then, my themes of loneliness and desolation seemed to have lightened up a little as a result of a budding social life. However, since that time, I have not really taken a step back to really determine where everything is headed. I am now getting glimpses of what may result, but I do not think I am prepared for it. I went into the therapy session trying to describe my situation as thoroughly and succinctly as possible so as to make good use of time and get to the nuts and bolts of the therapy. It was obvious to me that I was very businesslike in my manner as I explained everything to him with the same approach I would take at a business meeting. In addition, I was wearing work clothes which already gave me the persona of a straight-laced business professional. So one of his first questions of me was, “What does your sock drawer look like?” I grinned when he asked the question. I knew exactly the answer he expected–that of course being that I am one of those anal-retentive types that makes sure all of his socks are perfectly matched and ordered in his drawer, geometrically laid out, and ordered by shade of color. Why did I grin? I know those kinds of people because I work with them every day. I also know that I am not one of them. I have no sock drawer. I never match my socks. In fact, when I am in a hurry, I often just dig through mounds of unfolded clothes to find socks that remotely resemble each other to put them on, if I was careful enough to wash them. The therapist, thinking he had me all figured out, what quite surprised. Then he asked what my desk at work looks like. Of course, I keep my desk immaculate, only because I have been chastised for sloppiness in the past. Based on what he told me, the therapist was trying to label me an obsessive-compulsive, but for whatever reason, I do not meet the typical model of one. Most obsessive-compulsives think their neatness and quest for perfection make them superior human beings, and that anything short of such perfection makes them feel worthless. I, on the other hand, appear to be the direct opposite. I hate perfection, and anything near perfection makes me feel worthless. He gave me a psychological term for that condition that I cannot remember. However, I believe he has struck a vein that has not been hit before in any previous sessions with other therapists. The vein is the apparent dual-life I appear to be living. On the one hand, to the outsider, I appear to be this meticulous professional who exhibits upright moral character, concern for other people, and on and on. On the other hand, I am this sloven bum who sleeps away most of his weekend, does not give a shit about what other people think about how he lives, does not really want people to interrupt his life in any way, and, well, I could go on, but I have not spoken about this dark side of my character often in this diary thus far for obvious reasons. I am ashamed at this side of my personality because people seem to like the other side. The other side is the one in which people listen to me, respect me, and befriend me. The session ended with the therapist’s recommending a book which I have started reading, but I have been too sick to really concentrate on. At any rate, I am convinced that this dark side of my personality is what has always held me back, and no matter how much pain and suffering I must endure, it is a part of me that I must change. I just hope I can first shake off my sickness. |