One pill makes you smaller, and one pill makes you tall...

My volatile childhood spawned a volatile adulthood. By the time I was 21 and mercifully employed at a legitimate job, (actually, my FIRST legitimate job) I was worried that I had missed something in life. Some big secret that normal kids are told that puts them ahead of the curve in life against the orphans. Everyone seemed to just go about their business as if nothing was nothing. Hey, don’t laugh, lots of us REALLY THINK THIS.

I didn’t know where else to look for some kind of inner peace, so I had decided I needed to see a shrink. Not because I was masturbating in my own feces and eating flies, mind you, but because I had bought into the golden rule for contumelious childhood’s: Fucked up kids grow into fucked up adults. Society has been drilling this into the heads of children through those sappy after school specials with the Scooby-Doo endings for as long as I can remember. And kiddies, mine ranks up there with the bastard child of Oliver Twist and Roxanne the crack whore. Terrified of transmuting into yet another basket case who couldn’t keep his head on straight without a few ounces of pure uncut Venezuelan injected under the eyelids to get him through the night, I decided to enlist in the help of a professional.

So I called the number, made an appointment, and walked into the office with my head held high. My first duty was the completion of a psychiatric evaluation: Do you enjoy hurting animals? Um, no. Do you sometimes think about hurting yourself? No again. Do you want to molest a child? Jeezus, no. After a few quick notes in her notebook, (what the hell is she writing in there??) I was set for my next appointment.

The next week I met a middle-aged man named Alex. He had brown curly hair and smelled of old pipe tobacco (I would later discover that his WIFE, of all people, smoked the pipe. Dunno why that still messes with my head…It just does). I saw him for a year. His office was what I would call a “classic” shrink room: Dimly-lit room, leather couch, desk, easy chair, wall full of books. Every Wednesday night I would sit in Alex’s office and talk about what was happening in my life, crack a few jokes, and philosophize poorly. We had lots of things in common, including a love of archeology (I was auditing classes at the University of South Carolina at this time, and Archeology was one of my favorites). It was kind fun, I actually looked forward to our visits…and that disturbed me. After all, therapy is not supposed to be fun. I was supposed to be laying on the couch, painfully reliving my childhood as my shrink held my hand and said, “It’s OK…let it all out.” Wasn’t I? I’ve seen the stupid movies, this has to happen SOMETIME. Obviously, I wasn’t making very good progress. After every visit with Alex, I would end up driving home thinking to myself on how much harder I would work next time. I would cry in his office if it killed me, Dammit!

Like I said, I stayed with Alex for a year, maybe a month or so more. One day, at the beginning of what I hoped was going to be a very painful cleansing session, Alex announced to me that he was moving out of town, out of state and out of my life. Our sessions were effectively over.

“But…” I sputtered helplessly, “Who am I going to see now?”

“Well I could refer you to one of my colleagues if you wish, but really don’t think that’s a good idea. In fact, I would strongly advise against it”

Aha! He DID like me! “Why?”

“Bobbe…it’s time you came to grips with the truth— you are sane. You have always been sane. You have deep reserves of strength, and you know how to employ them to your benefit. Seeing another doctor would really only burn through more of your money…And you don’t really make that much at Pizza Hut, now do you? You need to accept that.”

My sigh of relief was immediately followed by one of disappointment. I mean, what was wrong this dude? Didn’t he know how bloody the first 19 years of my life were? Of course I was fucked up! Doesn’t he know the Abused Child’s Golden Rule? Did this idiot honestly think I was going to be completely cured in one year? OF COURSE NOT! I was going to need years and years of intense psychotherapy until I could safely enter the world of the sane. How could you trust me not to freak out one day and splatter some pimply-faced teenager’s parietal lobe all over the anchovies? I might even need electroshock!

“Doc, I think you’re missing the big picture here. I DON’T FEEL DIFFERENT. In fact, I wouldn’t say we have made one foot of progress forward since I’ve been coming to you.”

What he said next almost put me on the floor.

“What, did you think I could just hand you a pill and all the bad dreams would go away? That, you will have to work for yourself. Bobbe, I honestly think you’re going to be all right. You have a volatile past, but it seems like you’ve put it into perspective in healthy manner. You certainly shouldn’t continue to make a cross of it just because everybody else in your life does.”

“You mean…there’s nothing wrong with me?”

“Besides a mild case of stubbornness, no.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this hundreds of dollars ago?”

“Because you would not have believed me. You would have just found another Doctor.”

“You mean all these visits were nothing more than a….”

“Placebo, yes.”

“Um. Well, fuck a duck. I feel a perfect moron.”

“Don’t feel bad. You aren’t my first moron.”

I left his office for the final day armed with new knowledge: The Abused Child’s Golden Rule was basically bullshit. Essentially bullshit. The Youth Penal System had decided to play one final joke on my already fragile mind: Everything it had fed me about what I was “supposed” to be WAS BULLSHIT!

It was a rather longish ride home that night, and I remember it well: I rode my motorcycle down the main drag of Columbia, South Carolina until I arrived at the outskirts of town. From there, I just found a quiet place and parked, & watched the stars until the sun came up. And at this point, I came to three conclusions:

1: I was going to draw a mental picture of the person I WANTED to be. I would include every nuance and skill I thought this version of Bobbe should have.

2: I was going to do whatever it took to build this person. Whatever training, whatever sacrifice, whatever work I needed to do to achieve it, IT WOULD GET DONE. I would be THAT Bobbe Edmonds, and shed THIS Bobbe Edmonds.

3: I was leaving everything else that didn’t matter right here on the side of the damn road & backing over it with my motorcycle in about 15 seconds. 14...13...12...

…And I haven’t looked back since.

Really, as I have grown older & discovered that freedom from your past and acceptance of yourself are not mutually exclusive. People just, as a whole, refuse to accept accountability for their actions. I have discovered an entire subculture of people who cannot, or will not, allow themselves to grow out of whatever age the most traumatic occurrence in their lives were. I mean, I have met 52 year olds who were still stuck at age 17. And sucking at it. And Dagon forbid this PC touchie-feelie, hands-across-my-goddam-face attitude towards therapy today does anything to actually HELP these people who are living out the rest of their lives whining for a handout of some kind.

I have all the sympathy in the world for abused kids. I speak from a particularly fine-toothed observance of my own life. But there is a point in every person’s life where they are no longer a child. For everybody, that age is different. It could be as old as 20. It could be as young as 14. It could be younger, older, or anywhere in between. But you all know what I’m talking about. It’s that transcendental moment in time when everything just…clicks. Your eyes are open. You can do it on your own, now.

In you’re head, YOU KNOW.

It’s what I imagine that history-altering bite from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil must have tasted like to Adam & Eve. And the second you turn that magical age, my pity disappears. While your first 18 years are beyond your control, the rest of your life isn’t. From here on out YOU are responsible for your own actions. You and you alone. Happiness is perfectly within your grasp. But just like everyone else, you have to work for it. It isn’t a gift, it’s an accomplishment. Problem is, most people DON’T WANT to work for happiness. They would rather whine about their miserable pasts for the rest of their damn lives. They use what happened to them in the past as a crutch for whatever they do in the future.

How many sluts do you know that blame it on their sticky fingered Daddy’s? How many violent husbands do you know that blame it on the beating they got when they were 6yrs old for spilling a glass of milk? How many mass murderers have tried to blame Jesus for the collection of toes they have in their basements? People do these things because they want someone ELSE to either take responsibility for them, or at least displace the blame a little bit & have others share in it.

So, I would like to express a subtle message to the eternal whiners of the world:

IT IS YOUR FAULT YOU A FUCKED UP ADULT. YOURS AND NO ONE ELSE’S. NOT YOUR DADDY’S. NOT YOUR MOMMY’S. NOT THE NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR’S. YOURS. YOURS. YOURS!

I don’t understand why people don’t take some fucking responsibility for their actions. If you know you are acting abnormally, is it that hard to get some professional fucking help and learn to function sanely? Is it that hard to decide to break the circle and pursue health and happiness? Is it?

It’s not. But if you ask one of these eternal whiners, they will tell you different. They will cry and whimper and get down on their knees while they beg you to understand how…very…hard…it is. What the whiners fail to mention is that they like feeling miserable. They love sympathy. They enjoy pity. They crave your attention like a heroin addict craves a needle. They THRIVE on it.

I bet you’re wondering what you can do about the whiners, right? I mean, you care about somebody, you want to extend the right hand of Christian love to them. What can be done to rectify the lives of these poor souls? My answer is this:

NOTHING

I have had to fight, kick, scream, claw & work my tight little ass off for every luxury that I enjoy today. And I have to continue to do so if I want to keep all this shit I have acquired. And I know how hard it is; There are days I almost have to cattle-prod myself to get out of bed & face the real world. But I do it every day, without fail.

No one can change these people but themselves. If it doesn’t come from within their own desire to have something better than what they’ve got, nothing you can or would do is going to help them one whit. But if you clutch their heads to your bosom and stroke their hair every time they fuck up, you better believe you can make it worse. Instead of feeding their sick appetites, why not refuse to be a part of the cycle altogether? Instead of giving them your sympathy, how about jamming a bit of reality down their melancholy little throats? For example, when someone says to you:

“I can’t get a job because my Dad was on disability his whole life and he never really taught me what real work ethic was.”

You should say, “No, you can’t get a job because you’re a lazy piece of shit who prefers the unemployment/welfare/handouts instead of getting your ass out of bed & busting it down to the BONE to prove your worth of existence in this gift of life that you are squandering away with your verbal droppings.”

When someone says, “I brought 5 guys home from the bar last night and let them jerk off all over my stomach because the kid next door touched me in an adult way when I was just a child and I never really learned to express myself any other way but sexually.”

You should say, “No, you brought those guys home from the bar because you are a dirty, dirty slut. But that’s OK because you are going to get a STD soon (if you don’t have one already) and die, but only after your crotch turns black and your clit falls off.”

If you use any of the above lines, however, I should probably warn you: You may be labeled heartless. Don’t be afraid to be. Learn to tell the difference between help and harm. The real world offers a much more harsh lesson for those who can’t learn THAT one.