Group "Therapy"
Group therapy is poverty for the soul. The desperate, the lowest of the low, and, of course, the abundance of liars. Half the time when someone shows up suddenly after weeks or months of absence, it’s so that they can take over the entire session, the entire night for themselves in a glorified talk-therapy where everyone else has to listen to their tragedy.
The magical part of running these groups is that it’s your job to make sure that none of these individuals take over and become the voice of the group, and sometimes that involves saying the worst things imaginable.
You might say that this is making it about you, the coordinator, which is just as bad as a psychologist derailing your conversation to talk about themselves. But really, you’re just making it not about them, the thing everyone else is afraid to do, to tell the person to shut the fuck up: that 6 weeks of absence doesn’t give them the right to a dozen other people’s time for an entire night, in fact, it grants them the opposite, to sit down and catch up on whatever suffering others’ are going through.
So as a coordinator you end up telling people that you think some part of you enjoyed your rape. Telling people that you wish you’d have a flashback around your loved ones so that they recognised what happened to you was real. Telling people that one of the only times you ever feel real is when you are back in the past.
It’s like turning on the shower while standing in it. It starts off terribly, uncomfortably cold. But as it continues, there’s a familiarity, a warmth as the water heats up, a comfort to it. Sure, your muscles are still tensed in reflex against the sudden chill, but – oh – this is just the process. It’s unpleasant, then nostalgic. You lean back into it and stop shivering, you raise your head and let it wash over you. You can’t fight it, you’re in too deep now, you just have to let it happen, precisely like the act itself. And in that moment you realise what you’re doing, and you simultaneously want to throw up and scream, you want to dig your nails into your flesh as deep as you can and rake along your body, you want to rip the showerhead out of the wall and smash it into your diaphragm, because why, why am I doing this to myself, why couldn’t this happen where someone could see it, why does it always have to be alone, why is there nothing to prove to anyone it was real beyond this thing no one else is allowed to see? Why is it always when I am alone?
Then guilt. Why would I want to inflict that on the people I love? Can’t I be happy that they don’t have to see that part of me? Do I need an audience for my pain? Why do I think that would that change anything?
But that’s the whole point of group-therapy, isn’t it? It sure as hell isn’t therapy. It’s circular, masturbatory commiseration, a socially acceptable version of soggy biscuit, and I am the referee saying: “Hey now, don’t cum too fast, otherwise everyone else has to eat it, and that’s kind of rude to do after not showing up for 2 months, nobody wants to eat 2 months of cum.”
Okay, so if no one can cum, it’s just edging. And personally I feel completely numb outside of ejaculation, maybe I’m just too in my head, maybe I’m just worried about how the person is feeling too much, are they feeling good, am I even doing this right, is this just their way of making me go away, is this just a ‘gift’ from them, is this just an obligation to them and they don't actually want this, is this just pity, do they think doing this will somehow fix me, maybe I’m just thinking too much and it’s impossible for me to be in the moment and enjoy myself with someone else, and maybe that’s what’s wrong with me, not depression, not ptsd, maybe all of this is just me exporting my group therapy to the internet in a way that I knock other people down for in my job, and maybe that makes everyone reading this voyeurs who just want to watch me cum.