Microstory 232: Perspective Seven

This is an experimental Perspectives microstory. The introduction can be found in Microstory 225. More to follow.

As a therapist, I understand that it’s my job to be patient, unbiased, and careful. It can get pretty hard, though. One of my clients is a chronic cheater. I’ve tried to give him my best professional opinion on the matter, but in the end, he’s an adult. At some point, you just need to grow up and make the decision to stop your destructive behavior. I admit that I kind of tried a little experiment with him. I kept altering my diagnosis little by little. Each time I did, he would be able to resist his temptations for a while, but then he would regress. His brain was excellent at finding loopholes to his condition, so that he would never have to actually change his ways and commit to being a better person. When I first went to college, I had every intention of studying philosophy. I knew this upperclassman girl in high school who happened to be taking philosophy class while I was a freshman. She gave me her locker combination, and I would regularly go in and take her textbook to read ahead of time. Once I actually took the class for myself, I was a superstar, and already knew the “answers”. But then I got to college and realized that I no longer cared. I don’t know what happened in the short year between my formal introduction to the field and starting summer classes at the university, but I was done with it. I understood the value of asking questions with no answers, but I was no longer personally interested in the matter.

I spent a couple of years trying a few things; English literature, film and theatre, and even art history, the biggest cliché of all. Upon starting psychology, time was running out, and I really just needed to settle on something. It was a relatively small program, if you can believe it, so I chose to trust the devil I knew. I continued to pursue the subject in graduate school, and here I am. I considered going after the research side of the field, because I’m not a particularly warm and inviting person, but there’s too much math. I kind of have to push myself to talk to these people every day. But now I find myself trying to figure out the solution to a dilemma. After some deductive reasoning, I’ve discovered that my newest client is one of my oldest clients’ most recent extramarital affair. I suppose it was bound to happen, with statistics being what they are. Both of them are aware of some vital information regarding an ongoing case involving a kidnapping and a police shooting. The new client is an FBI agent who’s being told to hold back the evidence while the old client just overheard it, and is married to the cop involved. Suddenly I’m feeling like I should have at least kept going with philosophy for one more semester, so I would have had the opportunity to take Ethics.