Do you want the red pill or the blue pill?

Let’s continue this theme of keeping things real about mental health:

Even though the appointments with my new psychologist (I like to call her “Karin The Phsyco…therapist”) are going great, we’re all in agreement that I could really benefit from medication. So yesterday I had my first appointment with my new psychiatrist. We’ll call her “Marie” because that’s her name and I can’t come up with anything sassy to call her yet.

My first appointment with Marie went well, considering that it’s a bit unsettling to unload the “Readers Digest” version of your life to someone you just met. I ended up using that last of her kleenex¹ and we joked about how she should charge by the kleenex for her sessions. Just as I thought I had this appointment under control she said:

“If I could give you a pill, right now, that could do anything for you…what would it do?”

And that question took my breathe away.  

I mean, I *know* that I’m in her office to get medication to help with my depression, but the frankness of the question really threw me off.

Because it sounded like a dangerous question.

Marie wasn’t asking me if I’d take a pill to bring about world peace or end poverty. She was asking me what that pill would do for ME. If she could give me a pill, right now, that would do ANYTHING FOR ME, what would it be?

After a bit of silence, she added that there wasn’t a wrong answer and that I could take my time. I’m pretty sure she lied about the first part. There had to be a right answer. And I know she lied about the last part. My insurance company wouldn’t pay her for hours upon hours as I sat there and figured out the right thing to say. After a few moments of my brain racing to try to figure out the right answer, this is all I could come up with:

“It would make me enjoy life again?”

I mean I should’ve probably said something like; “Make me smarter, sexier, thinner, richer, more popular”…but no, I spouted out “enjoy life again?” And yeah, I said it like it was a question. The appointment ended shortly after that. She sent my prescription² to Target and I left her office feeling unsettled, but ready for whatever help was to come.

¹I didn’t really take her last kleenex. She had a whole stash of Kirkland brand tissues behind her desk.

²Turns out my pills are neither red or blue, they’re kind of a brownish-yellowish-puke color. I guess we’ll find out in a few weeks if I answered the question right?

 

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