NARCISSISM SERUM
My Therapist Hooked Me Up to a Lie Detector Machine
The more I talk, the wiser I become
My therapist hooks me up to a lie detector test every other Wednesday. On alternate Wednesdays, I just make shit up. I gotta get out the lies or they fester and transform into politicians.
You probably think that’s unethical of her, but it was my idea. I had no idea if I was telling her the truth and she thinks I have an honest face. That’s a bad combination for mental health.
Before the lie detector test, I had decades of therapy. The more I talked about me, the more amazing I became to me. I could hardly pass a mirror without bowing. The more I talked about other people, the more I realized everyone, except me, was a marginally deluded low functioning jealous idiot buttsmock.
When my friends and co-workers started interrupting me all the time with the words, “Are you fucking nuts, you self-absorbed narcissist cowpie?” I wondered if my therapy was faulty.
In my fiction workshop, my teacher kept scribbling in the margins, “Unreliable narrator!!!! Unreliable narrator!!! Unreliable narrator!!!!!!!” I thought the exclamation points were a bit heavy-handed, but her pen weighed 150 pounds because she was training to be an Olympic weightlifter.
I tried bringing members of my family into therapy several times — as witnesses, you know? Family is remarkably objective. Family, as a rule, sees one other through totally unclouded lenses without any ulterior motives to protect their own narratives. That’s why holidays are so fun — so much truth.
I sat behind a double-sided mirror and watched my family talk about me. I gave my therapist a list of questions to ask them.
- Was I a happy child?
- When did I stop being unhappy?
- Were there early signs of my wanting to turn my pain into knock-knock jokes?
- Who was my mother's and father's favorite child?
- When I found out it wasn’t me, did I go nuts?
- Did I eat my pain? Feed my hungry heart?
- Did I have inappropriate crushes, like on the creepy mailman or my science teacher with the green armpits?
- Did I quote myself frequently in public?
- Was I overly fond of giving eulogies?
- Was my dog the only person in my family who really knew me? Was my dog a person?
When my family answered the questions, I realized they had no idea who I was. My sisters and brothers saw me as a totally oversensitive sociopath which seemed like an oxymoron. My parents' answers made me look like someone I wouldn’t sit next to on a bus, in a blizzard, if the only alternative was freezing to death in a ditch.
As suspected, my dog had a pretty good handle on who I was. Totally objective. I fired my therapist after she told me my dog was a manipulative asshole. Then, I hired one who just listened.
That was her whole job, sitting in a lemon yellow Pottery Barn teen loft chair chewing on a Mont Blanc pen, listening. She was an important part of my journey. I needed to recover from being misunderstood by my family. Clearly, me and my dog were the only objective people on the planet.
This therapist laid me down gently, like frosting on a fragile warm birthday cake, onto her creamy leather bronze chaise and said, “Speak.” The word speak burned sunshine onto my soul's atrophied surface.
I can’t explain the sensation of being heard but it felt as if I were projectile vomiting truth out my mouth — but how a unicorn would vomit. My words were miraculous. I was outstanding.
I frequently expected a standing ovation and when none came, I took that as a challenge to go bigger. By the end of a year, I could have taken me to Broadway. I was a one-woman show with the occasional interruption of “hmmm” from the audience of one therapist.
I hated when she interrupted, but I’d never been happier. Unfortunately, when I went out with my friends, they had to throw beer mugs at my head to get me to stop talking. Me and my narrative were in a trance dance, not easily broken.
After our year came to a close, my therapist told me she was ready to speak to me. She placed her Mont Blanc into its display stand and whispered, “Now, I will give you my synopsis of you, to facilitate your moving along, to help you become unstuck from your story.”
I fired her and not only because adults who whisper are perverted. We’d had a good run, but I wasn’t there to listen to her opinions. She was the one getting paid. It was time for me to move on, to keep growing and changing.
That’s what brought me here — hooked up to a lie detector machine. The problem is we can’t get a baseline reading for what the truth is. When I say my name and where I live, the machine thinks I’m lying. I’m thinking I might become a therapist. I’m bored with my own story. I need some new material.
