Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,…
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
—“A Dream Within a Dream” by Edgar Allen Poe
DEAR MADELINE:
There is a woman in a room. The room is her room, lit by laptop and dust-obscured lamplight. The woman is typing her diary entry for the day, a task that takes up most of the day. Her eyes fix on each letter as she types it, acknowledging neither the blankness ahead nor the serifed line behind. Her room is a disgusting room, all unfinished Lean Cuisine, empty bottles, and mildewed paper. The woman fits well in her room. Perhaps this is why she pulls the blackout flush with the window frame, why she turns the mirrors back upon themselves, and why her eyes never stray from the glow of the open .docx as she writes:
“It was the dicks that did it,” I said.
The sexagenarian or especially well-preserved septuagenarian man sitting across from me did not seem to know what to make of my sudden pronouncement and so settled for steepled fingers and an “Ah?”
“As if I don’t get enough randos off Tindr who feel compelled to describe their dicks to me, they write to me about them at work, too. ‘—Smallish’ was the sixth dick letter in one week, and I just had it. Seriously, six!”
“Six?” He drummed one set of fingers against his leg and looked past me in apparent contemplation. “Funny, I’d heard that was about average.”
I stared at Dr. —Not Too Old for Dick Jokes like I used to stare at my reflection whenever I suspected it’d moved without my permission, but I couldn’t look long. His peach-colored corduroy suit created an absurd relief on the deep green of his paisley-upholstered armchair.
“Counselors can have senses of humor, you know,” the shrink said, his upturned lips emphasizing the wrinkles around his squint. “Sorry. You just had it?”
“Right. So I took all the letters and shredded them.”
“All the letters? Surely not all were about dicks.”
“No, the rest were just written by them. Seriously, you would not believe the mind-numbing inanity of the things people write to an advice columnist about. Well, okay, you might. But really, if I’d had to read one more letter asking how to politely tell the neighbors their landscaping is shit, I’d have lost my shit. People just don’t get that their lives are only interesting to them. Friends, family, whoever’s patient enough to listen to you drone about relationship troubles or the crazy thing that happened at work the other day are only pretending, and they only do that much because they want something from you. Sex, a promotion, the chance to receive the reciprocal illusion of someone giving a shit. Of course, most people don’t even get that much. They have nothing to offer anyone so no one is willing to listen, so they find a shrink, an addiction, or, if they’re too poor for either of those options, they write to me.”
Throughout my rant, Dr. —In Need of Wig had performed his best impression of giving a shit, which, I had to admit, could have been worse. Now, he leaned back and placed his hands under his thighs, mirroring my posture, and said, “So, you feel people’s problems are depressingly trivial. Do you feel that way about your own problems?”
“Well, that’s the thing, my problem is that people’s problems are depressingly trivial. Or it was, before I shredded them all. Now I don’t have any problems. They are in pieces, and I am at peace.”
The shrink slid his finger up the bridge of his nose as if to adjust his glasses, then blinked when he discovered he wasn’t wearing any. “Will the lack of letters not cause its own problems?”
“It shouldn’t. You see, the shredding, though performed thoughtlessly, got me thinking. Why do I need to read and reply to everyone’s bullshit? Fine, it’s my job, but why do I need to. Nobody knows who they’re from, and I never answer anything I don’t publish. So, if I decided to do something like…write my own, who’d be the wiser?”
“So, your solution is…to create new problems?”
“They’re not problems, they’re imaginary. I’m bullshitting bullshit and answering with more bullshit bullshit. It’s poetic, a closed loop.” I withdrew several folded pages from my purse. “See? This will be the first question in Monday’s “Dear Madeline”. Here.”
The shrink took the paper and squinted at it. “Ah, I’m very sorry, but I’m having a bit of trouble reading this. I seem to have forgotten my glasses. Could you? Thank you.”
I eyed him until he stopped shaking his head, then read:
“DEAR MADELINE:
I am 17 and my long-time boyfriend, Isaiah, proposed to me on our six-month! I was so thrilled but when I said yes, he fell to the ground and began flopping about in the most horrid fashion! I was so scared and when I took him to the hospital, the doctors said he would be okay but that he has serotonin syndrome and that being engaged to me filled him with so much joy he seized! If we stay together, he could die! But I saw him and just before he seized again, he told me I was worth it! I am distraught. What should I do?
—To Die For?”
“Well? What do you think?”
Dr. —Useless Without My Glasses, who had been staring at the palms of his hands, looked up and raised his eyebrows. “That’s quite the conundrum you’ve thought up. How do you answer it?”
“Easy. Well, I haven’t actually written it yet, but I imagine I’ll say something along the lines of ‘To Die For, dear, you have stumbled upon a fundamental truth of life: It is absurd. When you cannot achieve happiness, aim for irony.’” I angled my face and gave my best faux-polite “eat shit” smile.
The shrink’s head drifted from side to side, as if he were either weighing his words or trying to charm a snake. “I must say, that answer does not seem wholly satisfying,” he said.
“As my mother used to say, ‘Such is life.’”
“What will your readers think?”
“Eh,” I said, swatting the question aside.
I simply wanted to know whether you thought it was better than the usual advice column crap. As far as ‘fabricating the truth’, I think it’s thrilling, probably what a politician feels like. I am excited, not guilty. There are no ripped bits of unanswered prayers haunting my dreams.My life can only be better unencumbered by others’ nuisance-ridden realities. Now, I’ll read you another and this time I’d like you to tell me what you think of it:
“DEAR MADELINE:
I’ve had the most horrific shock of my life. I was with my therapist, telling him how heavily the burden of the knowledge that my next-door neighbor Laura’s husband Robert secretly mows over the weeds in their flowerbed instead of pulling them up by the roots was weighing on me, when all of a sudden he flew into a terrible rage. He called me “A venomous boar [sic] who would sell her firstborn for a juicy cut of gossip,” and all but threw me out of his office! As you might imagine, this was terribly frightful, and I arrived home quite upset. I told my daughter what happened, and do you know what she did? She laughed in my face! My own daughter, laughed in my face! And after I’d had such a fright! So I hit her. But she kept laughing at me! So I hit her again and still she laughed, and the harder I hit her the harder she laughed, and the whole ordeal was so dreadfully awful. So my question is: Are my daughter and my therapist possessed by devils?
—Stunned Speechless”
While I read, the shrink underwent a bizarre procedure of checking and rechecking his jacket and pants pockets. I observed him with increasing incredulity until he noticed my look and hurriedly began straightening his clothes, “Sorry, sorry. Do you have an answer to this one?”
“Not yet, but I have the gist. I’ll tell her that not only are her daughter and therapist not possessed but that her daughter will consider this her proudest moment for years to come.”
“How…autobiographical,” said Dr. —Squirmy, rubbing his thumb around the tip of his index finger in slow circles.
“Well, if I can’t help myself while I help others, what’s the point?”
“Help others whom you made up to help yourself?” […]
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Devin Guthrie is a disabled, genderqueer, asexual completing a PhD in Existential Psychology at Texas A&M University. In addition to academic works on eco-anxiety and narrative psychology, their poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction has appeared in PRISM International, The Notre Dame Review, Confrontation, Hubbub, TheAdirondack Review, and others.