“Come in,” says the podiatrist, “What’s the problem?”
The moth drops down into the nearest chair and says, “What’s the problem? I don’t even know where to start!
First of all, my boss is a vicious tyrant who gets off on the petty torments he puts me through day in and day out, and I’m too spineless to stand up to him, so I just take it and I’ve gradually come to hate myself for it.
Also, every morning I wake up to the same prune-face old crone to whom I pledged my vows so many years ago. I used to love her, but that love has become like some sun-festering beached whale trying to die. We lost our daughter last year to one of the bitterest, coldest winters we’ve ever had to face in this region.
Isn’t it funny, doc, how all the prayer circles and charity drives in the world amount to pretty much nothing in the face of that cold, impartial face of winter, that bleak, pounding, harsh fist of a callous environment, carrying on with its machinations without regard to our lives, loves, hopes and dreams? Isn’t that hysterical, Doc?
Oh and then there’s my son. Doc, I don’t love him anymore. I don’t know what it is but I look in his eyes and I see that same harried look of gutless cowardice that I see when I stare at my own face in the mirror. If I wasn’t such a coward, Doc, I know I’d be able to scrape together enough pride to grab that cocked and loaded shotgun I keep by the bedside table, and just run amok and put an end to this grim facade once and for all. I’d start with the wife, then the boy of course before putting the barrel in my own mouth. Believe you me, Doc, I’d be doing the world a favor. I have nothing to look forward to but a continuation of this spiraling black hole that is my life, this existential cesspool that is the perpetuation of my lingering skid-mark on society.
I despise people yet I crave their approval. I’m judgemental yet I care about nothing. I’m bitter, hateful and afraid. I’m alive yet I feel like the walking dead.
This is it, Doc: I am a living, breathing, disease.”
The doctor stares at him for a while then finally says “Jeez, Moth, you definitely have some problems. But I’m a podiatrist. You need a psychiatrist. Why’d you come in here?”
The moth says, “Your light was on.”