Saturday, January 28, 2012

A Cry For Help

By Patricia Lefave, confirmed Monophrenic

Once upon a time there was a shipwrecked woman who was cast away on a tiny deserted island all alone and, needing to get off the island before she starved to death, or went completely mad, she decided to use whatever tools were available to send a distress message in the hope that someone, somewhere, would see it and end her isolation. So she picked up all the stones she could find and wrote out her message in the sand on the beach as clearly as she could. The stones read:
H.E.L.P.
She waited for what seemed a very long time but eventually a group of academics, on a pharmaceutical company sponsored luxury vacation, flew in their chartered jet right over the island and sure enough, one of the highly conscious psychiatrists on board spotted the crude sign in stones on the beach. Quickly he called to his highly educated colleagues to come look, and fascinated, as this bunch often was by normal things that were not part of their own sheltered existence and inexperience, they all leaned out to look. Then they had the pilot, hired just for them, circle the island, over and over again, so they could examine the situation better to see if they could figure out what the sign in rocks might mean.  What a challenge to their intellectual skills! Just the thing to get this convention on disease invention off to a good start by practising interpretive thought!
They assumed the objective observer stance. Some of them began to rub their beards. Some folded their arms. Some of them grunted a bit. Some said, hmmmmm....very interesting, (not unlike Siegfried on Get Smart!)
It is more than just a stance though. It is a state of mind not too different from the one astrologers use when interpreting the star charts and then putting the findings into mysterious abstract words that those not trained in such high minded things would not really be able to fully understand. They were all healers...saviours really and the whole world needed them to help everyone understand the true meaning of life. So they got right down to deciphering the rocks below them.
What do you think it means? asked one never accepting anything at face value. Well it appears to be an acronym of some sort, offered another. What might those letters stand for?
Well whoever put them there obviously does not understand that if urgency is to be conveyed an exclamation point is clearly called for.
Do you think this is a sign of urgency or just attention seeking behaviours.
I think it indicates some sort of panic attack...you know I have been getting some very good results in treating that with horse tranquilizer. It seems to calm them down and perk them up at the same time.
You don't say? Well isn't that interesting.
Do any of you see anyone down there?
(they circled again and one of them caught sight of the woman.)
Why she is not even bothering to wave. And look at the expression on her face..fly in closer  Frank... there. Clearly melancholic. Obviously bad brain chemistry as she does not seem able to appreciate her lovely surroundings at all; palm trees, a nice sandy beach, birds singing ...clearly clinical depression there.
Do we have any samples with us? We could thrown them down to her. Her message is very boring isn't it? Obviously this woman has no personality at all and not an original thought.
Well to be fair, there seems to be a stones shortage down there.[1]
Well, even so could she not have come up with something better than that?
Oh it is likely just one of those personality disorders and part of being melodramatic over nothing. You know them, they are always making a big deal out of nothing...oh look she just flopped down on the sand there.
Well don't watch her...we don't want to encourage her in these acting out behaviours. She'll never give it up if we do.
You're right of course. Tell the pilot to drop the packet of anti depressants down to the beach there and maybe she will make the decision to help herself. That is the problem with women like her. They just don't want to ask for help. They are all afraid that that there will be some stigma and that we won't understand.
They are just going to have to find the courage to make the decision to face reality and ask for the help they need.
Maybe when she wakes up from her nap on the beach there she will make the decision to accept the help we have left down there with her. For now though Frank, let's move on and get to that convention. It's the luau tonight! No point in trying to make sense of this. Who can understand the mind of one who is lost in her own little world?
The plane then stopped circling and flew off into the sunset toward the resort where all were gathered together to try to make life better for those poor souls who just did not understand what was going on all around them.



[1]  There seemed to be a stones shortage in the plane as well.

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