sometimes i wanna rip psychology’s head off

you there, in the faux lab coat with the overly large ego. you’ve got a flair for the dramatics, don’t you? spare me the excuses, you crawl into the crevices of others’ lives and call it an observation. you track tragedies from a distance and call it an experiment. do you know when to stop? when to let go? when does scientific curiousity amount to intrusion, a part of ourselves stolen and placed under a microscope? i get the fascination, the duty to understand the human mind in the name of science. but your disciples come to you as clean slates and leave with violence-coloured glasses, so desensitised to the brutality of human nature that i question why anyone’s ever drawn to you in the first place. to fix something in ourselves? we straddle the worlds of the conscious and unconscious, but a slight toe out of line and it’s a freefall descent into the lawless pits of the psyche.

you may say it’s my fault for letting you in, well how was i supposed to know you wouldn’t leave? you plant your roots between my eyes and take the reins on my cognition - that is to say, i see you everywhere: in this oscar-winning movie i wanna sink my mind into without psychoanalysing; in my relatives when they ask me to therapize my father; in myself when my inability to form attachments scream out at me from within the pages of my textbook. you live in my mind and pay rent in life lessons i never asked for. yet i always find your little presents hidden in all the nooks and crannies of our mind. your gift of empathy is a privilege i’ve never taken lightly. i’ve no object permanence when it comes to love, but i’m starting to understand that just because i can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. 

maybe this blend of bitterness and anger towards you is my own form of imaginary audience and personal fable. my amygdala controls far more than i’d like to admit; these unregulated feelings stemming from my adolescent brain like to pretend they know what they’re doing. sometimes i think i’ve got our future figured out, sometimes i wanna rip your head off. i tread lightly with the people in my life, more cautious than ever of the intricacies of human behaviour. when my friend’s mental illness is mentioned in class, i listen more attentively than ever. as much as i reject you, as much as i never saw my life heading towards your direction, i find comfort in your presence, in the way you settle in my mind.

so where do we go from here?