I was asked by the new group facilitator to go away and write an essay on why I am resisting therapy. That’s my homework. And why resisting therapy is dysfunctional behaviour. I am supposed to bring it to the group next week. So I went away and wrote an essay called ‘My life as a highly specialized parasite’. Are parasites dysfunctional? Hardly! They are on the contrary very highly adapted to their environment, as am I. That’s a sign of intelligence, isn’t it – to be adapted to one’s environment? Isn’t that the basic test of intelligence? Kind of like what life’s all about really, I imagine…

I am a psychic parasite of course – I don’t live in peoples’ colons or anything like that! I am not a nematode. I’m not a shit-sucker! Although in another, more metaphorical kind of way I suppose I am. I suppose I do my share of shit sucking. I remember thinking once that that would be a great name for a band. Nathan and the Nematodes. Yeah – it’s got that ring. The ring you need. I find ‘nematode’ an oddly soothing word. I used to repeat it to myself over and over again when I was a teenager. When I was going through a hard time. Which was a lot of the time. Funny the things you remember isn’t it. Some words soothe, others don’t. Some abrade. Some words are abrasive in their nature – they wear you away. They wear you down. Some words have an awful rough edge to them. Rough rough rough. What did the dog say when he…. Oh never mind. That’s a bad joke.

Obviously I’m not a physical parasite. In my view it’s the therapy group that I am attending that is dysfunctional not me. The world is full of dysfunctional therapy groups. It surely is. There’s nothing worse than a dysfunctional therapy group, is there? Can you imagine anything worse? Only they’re good for me because I feed on them. I’m adapted to them – I feed on their twisted negative dysfunctional energy. Or have I got it the wrong way around? Perhaps the group – and that twat of a therapist Aaron – are feeding on me. That would explain a lot. It would explain why he always looks so smug. It would explain why nothing ever ruffles his feathers. It would also explain why I am always feeling so tired. So uncannily tired. Pathologically tired. I’m so tired that I’m actually distressed. I’m too tired to be able to rest any more. I’m so tired that I don’t know how to carry on existing…

Random thoughts are playing somewhere in some long-forgotten corner of my mind.  Ghostly thoughts – thoughts that whisper away in the background; thoughts that are so faint that you can’t quite hear what they are saying. Almost but not quite. A miss is as good as a mile. They’re whispering away secretively to each other. Only I know they’ve nothing to say. Not really. It’s just force of habit that’s making them talk. It’s the entropy that’s in them. It’s just dead momentum, nothing else. That’s the only reason for it. They’re running down. They’re running on habit-energy. They’re rustling drily in the background like dry rustling things. Like the wind stirring fallen leaves. Recycling stuff that’s been said before. Spinning around like an old rusty wheel. Spinning like the wheels on a broken old go-kart after it’s crashed into the bushes and turned over. The thoughts have got nothing to say but they say it anyway.  They say it anyway. They’re feeding off my psychic energy. Like the well-adapted parasites they are.