I was supposed to meet this girl at 7pm for dinner. I showed up right at 7pm. 7:05 came and went… 7:10… 7:15… Finally, at 7:20, I said to myself, “If she doesn’t show up in 5 minutes, I’m going home. I’m hungry.” Naturally, she showed up at 7:23, begging forgiveness for being late because she had a really good excuse. “I recently stopped taking my antidepressants, and one of the side effects is that it makes me tired,” she said. “And so I slept through my first appointment with my new therapist, and she said that if I couldn’t make the first appointment, we couldn’t have a good working relationship at all so I should find a new therapist, and I was really upset because she was supposed to be really good, so I had to go out and go shopping.”
I should’ve just bailed out there. But you know how in sitcoms when people are just bowled over with information and they can’t process it, so it’s like their brain just kind of skips over it and stores it away to process later? “I’m pregnant!” “Ooookay, what do you want for dinner?” Yeah, like that. I was hungry, so my brain skipped over all that and “oookay, let’s go eat!” came out of my mouth.
Over dinner, I found out the myriad and sordid reasons why she’d been taking antidepressants in the first place. It turns out that (a) her father, who was president of their congregation, was having a public affair with one of his congregants, which in turn made (b) her mother into an alcoholic, which in turn made (c) her sister… well, she really thinks it was more of a cry for help rather than a full-on attempt because she only took half the bottle of aspirin. Yeah.
After dinner, I said my goodbyes and started walking home, and she began walking fast to keep up with me, asking if I was tired and did I want to hang out more — it looked like I lived close by since I was walking home. Yeah, I was tired… of her. I got the distinct impression she was trying to invite herself back to my place for some lovin’, but there would be no joy in Mudville that night.
Submitted by Keith, Age 30, Los Angeles