No One Needs Two Paper Umbrellas

I don’t care who you are

I have a lot to feel thankful for. I am sitting inside a beautiful house, listening to the tropical rain pelt the roof, in the company of a woman I once only dreamed about, who now has my last name and my whole heart. I am currently gainfully employed and my health is solid.

Also, there’s a really good chance I’m going to be buying my first house soon. If that didn’t feel like it was enough of a blessing, I have also been assured that I am welcomed to stay with my father in law for however long I wish to. That takes a lot of the pressure off the mortgage approval process.

I have always been lucky, though. Most kids who grew up with the same amount of anxiety and depression that I grew up with are either dead or in prison. Sad children tend to gravitate toward relief and most of the time it comes in the form of alcohol, drugs, food or promiscuity. Or worst of all, religion.

I just began to write this last night when my phone rang. It was the guy from my new job calling me at 8 pm and asking if I wanted to drive a half an hour to work for a few hours on my day off.

Usually, I’d feel obligated to comply with a request like that, but if I learned nothing else from my year and a half at Tesla, all you get for that is usually a “it’s not that we don’t appreciate all your hard work…” right before they fire you and stop your health insurance.

I don’t have to worry about that second part because this company doesn’t give you health insurance. Nor do they pay time and a half for overtime or any overnight differential.

From what I’ve been able to understand, Florida has great weather but there’s a price to live there and it comes in the form of one’s paycheck. That’s what makes it a very popular choice for federal recipients of social security or disability.

This segment of the population, while they are some of the most destitute in New York, are pretty much neck and neck with most of the working population in Florida.

But it’s a choice and, right now making shit money in a sunny climate with people that love me is better than making over $100,000 a year and living alone in a one bedroom with wood paneling as old as the black mold. Especially when the recipients of a significant amount of that hundred grand sat in their 24 acre estate and never so much as threw me a Turkey leg on the seven or eight Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters I spent in solitude.

Don’t, however, get the erroneous impression that I am slightly bitter about anything. This piece is not about petty grievances. This article is a testimonial for the benefits of attending therapy on a regular basis.

Without my therapist, Linda, I don’t think I’d be married to Julie. Or trying to buy a house. Or celebrating my ability to advocate for myself on all fronts. I would’ve continued to live half a life in half an apartment. I’d be living in a reality that virtual strangers decided on and every so often going overboard enough to, at least, dance with premature death.

We all deserve to be happy and we need to be able to get there without anyone else’s opinion.

Why? Because only emotionally healed people want the best for you and, lord knows, the world is not ponderous and pregnant with loving, kind and healed people. You can’t, however, swing a dead cat without smacking a miserable person in the face.

To come full circle, the very type of people who could benefit from a great therapist like Linda.

I’d love nothing more than to get back to having that sort of support every week, but the health coverage I bought from the federal government doesn’t cover therapy.

This is likely by design, though.

As soon as people began to care about themselves, predatory business owners would notice a lot less people selling their souls for “perceived security.”

This might lead to their employees eating less processed food and these poor business owners would have to settle for one less paper umbrella in their Old Fashioneds.

Personally, I like that idea so much that I plan on paying cash for a therapist even if I can only afford it once a month.

There isn’t a person on earth who needs two paper umbrellas.