Pathological happiness: Should he be a client?

A client’s mother abandoned him when he was six years old. She did take the two younger children with her. As he remembered it twenty-three years later: “When mom moved out . . .” He was forced to choose between her and his grandparents. He: “I had the option to live with . . .” Father remained unknown, but that was fine, understandable, because he’d been told the baby wasn’t his, so why shouldn’t he leave and have his own life?

There were more bright shining orbs before his eyes, or in place of them: Though dependent on pills at 11, marijuana at 14, meth at 23 and heroin at 24, he’d now been clean for nearly two months. That is, with the exception of alcohol, bottles of vodka per week. But what antics would happen when he was in damp mode!

Consolation prize: It had never been good, living with his grandparents. They were never pleasant, and he would later steal from them.

There is a sometimes-revealing Sentence Completion exercise I’ll use. Clients are instructed to respond spontaneously from the heart and gut – “Quiet the severed head and let the chips fall where they may.” Most clients find some unexpected darkness, honesty. Then again . . .

Mother was always – “supportive.” She never – “turned her back on me.” All my life – “I’ve been pretty lucky.” If I were really honest and let myself simply be what I am – “I’d be even happier than I am.” Sometimes I want to cry out – “how happy I am.” Why do I always – “end up fucking up again?” Right now I am feeling – “anxious because I’m being asked questions.” Whenever I try – “I usually succeed.” If people knew how much anger I had in me – “they’d be surprised how little it is.” That is because – “I try not to hold onto things.” Sometimes I push my thoughts away because – “I’m too busy at the time to think of them.”

My mission, since I chose to accept it, will be to find the inter-dimensional block of C-4 to crack open his lifelong dream. The body would fall from the highest roseate cloud and crash to earth. He would stand up, stunned, look around and see nothing familiar, absolutely nothing. Time, he would see, had been a joke: It never moved on. He would have no thoughts that had any capacity for action, because they would be from his false adult that was held in the little palm of a child’s hand. He would be born anew, which sounds right in the psychology and self-help books, but is impossible.

He'd be cured of his life of happy delusion. That would lead, certainly, to a clean and inspired life, or possibly one engulfed in some fatal final substance.

“I’m typically a very self-aware person.”