Concrete Cover Up

"What you did is an act of sheer madness. There's no reversing the consequences. Frankly, I don't see how a garden can survive that."

My therapist is supposed to be the best. At least he charges like he is anyway.

"I have a new argument. See, I was wrong in my thinking when I paved over my garden. I thought I had to, no choice. But now I see I could have let the flowers grow, only I couldn't see that then. So, even though I'm thinking now that nothing can grow in concrete, maybe that's just me having a bad attitude again!"

"Doesn't get more specious than that. And even if you were able to persuade someone of that nonsense, would that put any actual flowers in your home?"

"No, but..."

My backyard is private. No one knows what shame I've done. It's too incredibly stupid to be believed. I need to be able to sell myself on the argument I can have flowers if I'm going to be able to sell that to everyone else. Lying is dying in the end, though.

"Just what was your rationale for that sick and perverted act of pouring concrete?"

"I couldn't trust me."

"You mean you passed judgment on yourself?"

"Yes. Now I can't stop passing judgment of everybody. I want them to be in the same hole I am. It's not even something I believe in."

"Have you at least tried to break up the concrete?"

"Yes, but I was so certain - so absolutely certain - I couldn't be trusted that I bought the unbreakable kind. No force on earth can break it. I prayed for God to break it but not even a crack yet."

"Life without flowers is an impossibility."

"Thank you! I know that! I buy seeds every year just like the normal people do. Down at the garden center I have these fake conversations about what kind of soil grows best just to put on a show. I tried putting the seeds on top but nothing grows, of course."

"You're hoping to defy the laws of Nature?"

"It's my only hope."

"Frankly, all the therapy in the world can't help. It's like getting therapy for starvation. Only food can resolve it. We can talk all you want - and I surely believe you are quite naturally miserable beyond belief - but what can I or anyone do?"

"I don't know...I was just hoping against hope. I'm beyond tired faking like I have a future. I can't make it through one single night without having nightmares. It's four AM and I'm driven out of bed screaming."

"Every deception has a price."

"I knew it was wrong when I did it. But I was so hardheaded - it seemed more real than the sun that I couldn't be trusted. I didn't want to be exposed. I declared myself a bad man who doesn't deserve a garden. That made it in my mind a moral act to put in the concrete."

"And what of your friend who planted the flowers you paved over? What does she say?"

"She won't talk to me under any circumstances. It's impossible to face her. I wanted to tell her when she planted them I wasn't someone to be trusted. I was so insanely happy those few months the flowers were there I was on top of the world. But the guilt was killing me, oppressing me day after day. How could I tell her I was not trustworthy? I was dying to come clean."

"And the concrete was your way of expressing that?"

"Yes. She'd know for sure I wasn't trustworthy then. But that wasn't really coming clean after all, was it? Just made things worse. Impossible really. I knew I'd die from it but her friendship is worth dying for."

"Did you get any indication of her reaction?"

"I'm sure I hurt her paving over the flowers and the whole garden. She thinks I rejected them when obviously (to me) I was rejecting myself. She has no idea I think of those flowers every day and how much I hate myself. I just can't approach her or face her in any way. I broke my own heart and that of person I most wanted to be best friends and family."

"Oftentimes people make hating themselves their new "morality". Has that wrongheadedness happened to you?"

"I know you're right but, man, is it hard to resist. I walk around the house yelling at myself, calling me a "moron" and "motherfucker" because I can't stop the rage building up. I call it the 'Crime of 09'. No way out. I even voted for evil in my drowning frustration."

"Yes, the President is in the same leaky boat as you. And you told me your sex fantasies include you being in a cage. Yet every spirit strives to be free regardless. Your false logic says that as a so-called "bad man" you don't deserve freedom, you point to the concrete garden as staged "proof", and therefore you're "doing the right thing" by caging yourself. But you're never going to not desire to be free no matter what kind of narrative you construct."

"That's just peachy," I replied in defeated sarcasm, falling into silence. I fixated on the Dali clock he had draped over the edge of his desk. The ticking sounds were somehow reassuring. I wondered if he did that by design or was it just in me head. "Don't you have anything for me?? Any advice at all? The whole situation seems completely impossible! I just want to die!"

"There's always the obvious, of course."

"What is that??"

"With love, anything is possible."

Debby saving me from the Factory Grind