Saturday Mornings.

It was an emergency, so I made an appointment. My whole world was collapsing down around me, right? You with me? I was breaking down and this was the end. This was my last shot. So I made an appointment.

I called the insurance company, made sure she was an approved physician or whatever they call it. I made sure I wasn't going to get a bill in the mail, a bill I'd never bother to open, but I made sure it wasn't coming to me all the same. I'd worked for this company for 2 years, so the least they could do is pick up the check. I mean, it's either that or instead of hauling my ass in to work on Monday, I'm drawing flies. You with me?

So, I got it all checked out in advance and I made an appointment. It was an emergency, after all.

So, I climb two flights of stairs, damning that last cigarette I sucked down in the parking lot. And I walk down the hall, mustering up the kind of courage a guy needs before bearing his soul. Before looking at a complete stranger and saying, "Look, I'm here on account of a big emergency. Here's the sitch..."

And at the end of the hall, I find a pretty unimpressive office space. Sad, really. There's a good selection of National Geographics from the past year and a collection of sanitized children's toys on a folding table in the corner. There's some plastic racks half-filled with unfriendly little tri-fold pamphlets that say shit like, "Domestic Abuse: You Are Not Alone," and "Living with Depression." And there's a couple of old chairs with tweed upholstery. Is it tweed? That's that rough, crosshatch style of fabric, right? No?

Either way, the office is empty as far as I can tell, except for the restrained weeping coming from one of the two closed doors. I can't tell which, but whoever it is, she's cutting in to my appointment.

So, I take a seat on one of those probably-not-tweed chairs and help myself to an issue of National Geographic. While I'm here, waiting for my emergency to resume, I might as well find out where the Aztecs went all those years ago. Turns out it's just more dead-ends and speculation. Disease, famine, genocide. Really, what's the difference anymore?

I'm annoyed when one of those doors opens and the crybaby comes shuffling out with a balled-up kleenex covering one of her eyes like she's trying to keep it from falling out of her head. I'm annoyed because I've got another three paragraphs to go and maybe, just maybe, the Aztecs were wiped out by an aggressive neighboring tribe. Now, I'll never know.

Behind the one-eyed crybaby is the woman I came here to see so early on a Saturday morning. Fuck! She's a midget. I think. How short do you have to be before they call you a midget? I'm sure my insurance company knows. Still, fuck. I mean, I came here to deal with my shit. Now, I gotta pretend like I don't notice that my approved physician, or whatever you call it, is a fucking midget. She's got the cane and everything. And there's a dog too. An Irish wolfhound or something. I forget. I'm not sure if it's a helper-dog, so I don't dare touch it. You're not supposed to touch helper dogs, right?

Anyway, we do the quick greetings. "Nice to meet you," and all that. We don't shake hands, but I nod and force a smile, but I keep it brief lest she take me for a heightist. Are you supposed to smile at midgets? I always smiled at the ones with lollipops and plastic hair and funny little sneers, but they were on tv and couldn't see me smiling, so I figured no harm, no foul, right?

She invites me to come in to the midget-sized office behind the closed door. I take a seat on another probably-not-tweed chair and find it to be somehow less roomy than its cousin in the lobby. She, the doctor I mean, wrestles herself in to another chair across from mine and I'm thinking she looks like she's got room to spare over there.

While she's thumbing through some papers, I take a quick survey of the office. Framed diploma? Check. Textbooks with copperplate titles embossed on the spines? Check. Plastic trash bin overflowing with the cyclops' spent tissues? Check and check. Hemp mat on the floor? Zen garden on the window sill? Holistic candles? Che- wait a damned minute. So my approved physician is a hippie as well as a midget. Fuck!

She states my name, for the record I guess, and slides a piece of paper on to a clipboard which she struggles to pass along the three foot gap between our knees.

"It's a release form," she says in a lower voice than I'd expected. I'm supposed to read the thing over, sign my name, and hand it back. All very official, but I couldn't care less what all that small print says, so I make like I'm giving it a good once-over, but really I'm too busy taking it all in to put together a good performance. I sign on the bottom line, add a date and that's that.

We stare at each other for a good long minute or two in that cramped office that's starting to smell more and more like Irish wolfhound and organic something or other. I'm not sure who's supposed to speak first. Am I supposed to come in here with some sort of gameplan? An itinerary? Is that how this kinda thing works? I don't know. This is all new to me. I saw a psychiatrist once, but that was a whole different deal altogether. He was old and stuffy. And tall. Man, was he ever tall. Must've been at least seven feet tall if she's four. It was all business with that giant. "What's the problem? Mhm. Okay. Mhm. Here's your script. Co-pay at the door."

But this a whole different deal altogether. She's strangely patient and quiet. She just stares at me from that huge chair she's sitting in.

So, I say, "I think I'm a sociopath." I've seen on tv, where people go to the doctor and say, "It's strep throat, doc," and the doctor gets all cranky and territorial like they do. Doctors, I guess, get annoyed when people come in with their job already done for them. The diagnosis, I guess, is half the fun. But, fuck it. While I was researching Central American genocide in the lobby, that weepy bitch was butting in on my hour, so I figure we might as well just cut to the chase and get this thing moving along. It's an emergency, after all.

She consults one of her stacks of paper and says, "It says here you're concerned about anxiety and anger management."

Yeah. That's what it says, because that's what I've been told. That giant, old pyschiatrist, he's the one who pegged me with anxiety and fear of abandonment and wrote the script for a month's worth of Wellbutrin.

Someone else said I have anger issues on account of a few busted walls, a cracked windshield, and a bunch of gnarly scars on my knuckles.

So, yeah. That's what it says on the paper, but I came here this early on a Saturday morning for me. For the real deal. I'm here to get my shit figured out once and for all and everyone else can eat their fucking opinions and diagnoses for all I care. So, I say, "I think I'm a sociopath."

And I say this in the tone of voice of a sociopath. Not someone riddled with anxiety or prone to violent outbursts. No, I say this like I'm ordering a value meal with no pickles and a large Coke. "I think I'm a sociopath," I say.

And looking back at me with that you-want-fries-with-that? look, she says, "What makes you think you're a sociopath?"

And here's where the doctors usually get all cranky and territorial like they do. Here's where they quietly damn the internet and the information age, because while they were sitting through lecture after lecture on Early Childhood Disorders and Blood Borne Pathogens, young punks like me were self-diagnosing in ten-minutes-or-less on Wikipedia.

Yeah, I'll take a number three with no abandonment issues. And instead of anxiety, can I substitute a serious emotional disorder?

I say, "Sociopaths don't connect with people on an emotional level. They don't empathize. They don't form deep bonds with anyone. They're narcissists, right?"

She looks me over a bit and says, "Those are qualities of someone with Antisocial Personality Disorder, yes." As if I didn't know the clinical term. As if I've never heard of Wikipedia.

She says, "You don't seem like an angry person."

Jesus, is this stunted flower-child listening to anything I say? I already told her, I don't have anger issues, didn't I?

She says, "You're articulate and soft-spoken. Thoughtful."

"Okay," I say. "I guess," I say.

"Do you think you have anger issues?," she asks.

"I punch stuff sometimes," I say. "Never people," I add so she won't think I'm abusive as well as heightist. "I just get frustrated sometimes and it's gotta come out somehow."

"What do you punch?," she asks me this and scribbles on her paper as she speaks.

"Walls, mostly," I say. Sheetrock, paneling, every once in awhile I hit a stud by accident. The floor when it gets really bad or a coffee table. The worst was the windshield. Jesus, I really didn't think it would break. I was sitting in the driver's seat of my old red, Toyota truck and just reached out and it cracked in to a big supernova of laminated glass. It looked like someone dropped a cinder block on it. That brought me back quick, seeing all that shattered glass and bright, red blood. No one punches a windshield thinking it's gonna break. Those things are supposed to protect you from rocks and deer and head-on collisions. I guess they're not tempered for failed relationships or heartbreak.

"Have you tried any breathing exercises?," she asks like I've never read a book on anger management. Like I've never heard of Amazon.com.

"I've read two," I fill her in. "I read about breathing exercises and image replacement and all-or-nothing thoughts."

"It doesn't help much in the moment," I say.

"It takes practice," she says and offers to super-size it for just thirty cents more. "Tell me about your family," she says when I reject the upsell.

"What about them?" That Irish wolfhound is staring at me. Is this what a helper dog does? For a midget psychologist, I mean. It just sits there on its spot at the far end of the hemp mat and stares? How is that helping anyone?

"My mom and dad divorced when I was...four, I think. My dad came to see us on Wednesdays and we'd spend every other weekend at his trailer," I say. "My mom remarried when I was ten...or maybe eleven. We moved here and that's pretty much that."

"My deaf aunt is a paranoid schizophrenic," I offer, but I'm getting a little outside of my expertise here. I didn't diagnose her, so I can't be sure, but that's the story around the Thanksgiving table, anyway.

"My great-grandmother had Alzheimer's disease," I add. That one's a lock. No doubt about it. Every Christmas, she'd ask my name and give me a frail hug and I'd scurry off to play with the Rambo action-figure that my grandma kept in a low drawer in the kitchen. I'd come back an hour later and it's the same story. She'd ask my name, frail hug, nice to meet you Great-Grandma, Rambo stabs a ninja turtle in the face with a Bowie knife.

"Do you get along well with your family?," she asks. Now we're getting somewhere.

"See, that's why I think I'm a sociopath," I say, "I get along fine with my family, but I've never felt a real strong connection to any of them."

She's scribbling again and nodding. The dog is still giving me the stink-eye. He can smell a sociopath for sure. Maybe that's his role here. He sniffs out the real psychos. Keeps an eye on 'em.

"When I was a kid, my other friends would give their moms big hugs and kisses. Freely," I say as if I've just described an exotic trait from an extinct culture in Central America.

"I just don't feel anything all that strongly," I say.

"I wonder if my dad died, I wonder if it'd affect me at all," I confess. And I'm making my case and she's got to be seeing the symptoms now.

I'm sure she's writing something definitive about my Antisocial Personality Disorder on that secret paper of hers. She's writing, "Class A Sociopath. Handle with extreme caution."

"You have a daughter," she says and looks up from the paper.

"Yeah," I tell her. "That's mostly why I'm here," I say. "I can't play with her anymore," I confess and between that admission and the one about my dear, old, not-yet-dead dad, I'm starting to feel like "sociopath" isn't gonna quite cover it.

"I want to play with her. I do. But, I just don't have the energy," I'm justifying or at least explaining. "I want to have fun. I want to play outside or play house or school or dolls, but I just can't seem to find that energy. And it makes me feel terrible. Like I'm a bad father."

"Do you think you're depressed?," she's asking my opinion now. She's asking for me to self-diagnose and I take a harder look at the diploma on the wall to make sure it's legit.

"I don't think that's it," I say with all the authority of an approved physician. "I don't spend weeks at a time in bed or contemplate suicide with any real conviction. I've cut up my arms pretty good," I say, "but it was never intended to do any damage. I just liked the feeling. That's a control thing, I've read. Control the pain and you've at least got control over something."

She's scribbling again, for fuck's sake. I'm thinking all that shit she smoked in the '60s must have severely damaged her short-term memory.

"And how about mom? Where is she at?"

I turn my head a little, looking for some help from the dog, but it curled up on the mat and dozed off a few minutes ago.

"We still live together, but we haven't slept together for...two years? Maybe three? Pretty much since the baby was born, maybe before. And I'm not talking about sex, like 'sleeping together', I mean we haven't slept in the same bed for that long." We haven't had sex either though, if that matters.

She asks me where I've been sleeping. I tell her I've got a pretty big couch in the basement. Big enough to stretch out on and still have room to point your toes like you're trying to reach the bottom of the pool in the way deep end.

There's a big, long story that follows that. It's a tragedy of sorts that starts with a couple dumb kids and ends with me sucking down a cigarette in the parking lot.

I tell her how you can't really call a pregnancy "unexpected" when you've been fucking for two years straight without birth control. I tell her how two people who have a baby at 21 years old and stick together for that sole purpose end up hurting each other a lot along the way. I tell her how when you do all your growing up, that fast, with one person, I tell her you're bound to make mistakes. You're destined to hurt each other pretty badly. I tell her I'm trying to make things right.

What I don't tell her is that's why I'm here. I don't tell her that I'm only here because it's a last-ditch attempt to save a relationship that was lost for good a long time ago. I don't tell her that that's why I made the appointment, but now that I'm here, it actually feels kind of good to have someone listen.

It feels good to have someone listen to what you have to say and you know that person isn't thinking about how it will affect them personally. How you could tell them anything and when the appointment is over in fifteen minutes, they won't be walking out the door because they hate you, but because you only paid for the hour.

It feels good to know you can say anything, even though there's still some stuff you're gonna keep to yourself. Stuff you still can't bear to admit to anyone, no matter how professional or impartial their role. It feels good to talk to someone who just scribbles it all down without a pained expression or a breaking heart.

If you had the balls, you could tell her that you fell out of love a long time ago. You could tell her that your heart had moved on and you're just sticking around because you're too fucking scared to go to sleep alone at night in a house by yourself. That even sleeping alone on a couch is bearable as long as there's someone else in the house. As long as you're not one-hundred percent alone.

If you had the balls, you could tell her that you're not a sociopath. You do have feelings, just not for her. Not anymore. You could tell her that those feelings went away a long time ago, with the relationship you're selfishly trying to keep on life-support just a little while longer, hoping that one day you'll wake up and you won't be scared of going to sleep in an empty house.

You could tell her that you miss the friends that you gave up for her. You could tell her that you miss the girl who stole your heart last summer when all this shit blew up in the first place.

You could come clean about it all, if you just had the courage. You could say that the feelings you had for her faded and they found a someone new and if you really had the balls, you could tell her that you fell in love again, just not with her.

You could tell her all that if you weren't such a scared little boy who still doesn't understand where it all went wrong in the first place and forgot that he was trying to figure it out before he got sidetracked with everything else.

And maybe eventually you'd get there, but you look at the clock and your hour is up. The appointment is over. The emergency will have to wait until next week.

Until then, you promise to practice the breathing exercises and keep taking the Wellbutrin twice a day.

And you're feeling good, or at least better, until you shuffle out the door, down two flights of stairs, and you light a cigarette and you realize that there's still a lot of Saturday left this morning and you've got to go back home. Back to the place where no one's impartial. Where feelings are hurt every second. Where everything's a lie. Where you don't have the balls to say one honest thing.

And all of a sudden, you've got a new emergency.