Raiding my hard drive...

Found this rough little gem I have no memory of writing...Enjoy! What’s happened since the last time I saw you? Well, let me tell you about my Tuesday, 3pm. Can’t really say much more about him, confidentiality and doctor-patient and all that. You know how it is! All I can say is that he used to swallow spare change, and on the Monday he’d kicked a cat to death. We’ll call him 3pm for now. He’d been seeing me for a couple of months and he'd sit on my leather sofa, complaining about how the world wasn’t fair, and how he’d been bullied, and how the cat had looked at him funny and so deserved his size 9 Reeboks embedded into its skull. Anyway. It’s Tuesday and I’m listening to 3pm vividly explain the death of this cat. The crunch of bones, the coppery stench of blood...made me feel a bit uncomfortable to be honest. And it’s not just that. Truth be told I'm getting a bit bored. It's not like I hate my job or anything, and let's face it - 3pm's an interesting guy, not the usual Jeremy Kyle reject that I always get. But sometimes I just get sick of listening. I guess you must feel the same sometimes? I realise 3pm’s stopped talking. He’s looking at me and waiting. I’m supposed to say something, but what? What the hell can I tell this kid? I’m looking at my certificates and awards on the wall, the shelves of leather-bound books, a picture of my children on my desk. And then it hits me. I don’t know how to help this guy. I haven’t read those books, I don’t have children. The books were in the office when I moved in and the picture came in the frame. I look back at 3pm and I think, Shit! I can’t help this poor bastard. No-one can! He’s too far gone for that now, he’s slipped too far into the shadows and I can’t tell him this. I’m a doctor. I’m a psychiatrist! And not just that, I’m great. I’m the one the Queen would send her family too, I’m the one who’s going to be sifting through the shit with Katie and Peter’s kids in ten years time. I’m bloody brilliant! He's come to me for an answer, but there’s not a single thing I can say to 3pm except the truth. It’s cliche, but 3pm can’t handle the truth. Even I can’t handle the truth, which is why I pay to see you every two weeks. But I’m looking at 3pm and he’s...scared. He’s off the rails, he’s gone, he’s a murderer of cats. You can’t come back from that. So I made a decision. Right now I'm thinking about all the shit I could get into for saying this, but looking at the poor sod at the time...it felt like the right thing to say, you know? So I lean forward and he sits up on the sofa and leans in too. I’m about two inches away from his face and I say to him, 'Do you know what I do?' And 3pm looks confused. He goes, 'You're a psychiatrist,' and I said, 'Yeah, but what do I do?' 3pm looks a bit stumped at this. He says, 'You make crazy people better,' all tentative like he knows he's wrong but doesn't quite understand why. This is where I did something stupid. I broke the rules and I told him the Big Secret that nobody knows. I said, 'No, I don't make crazy people better, I get paid to teach crazy people how to look sane.' And his face! He pulls away and he’s confused and alarmed and God! It’s funny to look at so I carry on. “I killed a dog when I was fourteen,” I’m telling him, “I beat the bitch to a pulp with a bit of pipe and then I kicked it a few times too, and then I ran away and laughed.” Well, now 3pm’s looking downright terrified! He’s horrified that his assigned professional is also an animal murderer whose just as fucked up as he is! I wait for him to speak. He looks at me and goes, “But you’re sane.” Turns out people are telling 3pm he’s insane, he’s lost it, he’s hopeless! And this, this really pisses me off so I go, “No! No! Look at me! You’ve got it wrong. See, we live in a world where everyone needs a label on everything. If you take drugs you’re an addict. If you don’t eat you’re anorexic. If you cut yourself you’re insane, but that’s just it! Everyone’s insane. Everyone has their OCD and their aborted kids on their conscience and their skeletons in the basement. Everyone’s just as screwed up in the head as you were when you walked home with blood covering your shoes. But everybody else...they just hide it a bit better. You take your drugs away from the dinner table. You hide your food in a tissue. You wear fucking long-sleeve M&S jumpers. You do whatever the hell you can do to get by without everyone trying to section you for making the wrong choices. This is life, kid. We do what we do to get by. I’m not sane but I teach people how to appear sane! That’s what you have to learn to do.” 3pm looks a bit put-out, like he’s disappointed because I can’t fix him. So I carry on telling him like it is. He needs to forget this, I tell him, he probably shouldn’t kill any more cats but more importantly, not get caught doing it. But he’s still a kid at heart. I’m beginning to feel like I’ve given away too much, like it’s Christmas Eve and I just told him Santa wasn’t real just as he put the biscuit and milk on the mantelpiece. I say to him that I can’t fix him but maybe he’s different. Maybe he’s the exception that proves the rule. Maybe he can be fixed and he can get married and be a CEO of a fancy company, and have kids, and a big house and a Vauxhall. So I gave him your number. I said to him, “Here’s a guy. He can’t sort you out mate, but he’ll bloody well give it a go. I’ve been seeing him for going on fifteen years.”