Luke's Diary: An Unlucky Man In A Zombie Apocalypse. Entries 957 - 1157

Entry 1038: Wednesday 31st July 2019

Entry 1038
Wednesday 31st July 2019

I've just got back from the group counselling session. What a disaster! I ended up looking like a right a tw*t.

When we arrived at the community centre, a middle-aged woman called Patience greeted us. Her glasses were placed right at the end of her nose, she wore a lot of tweed and hippy styled clothes and some open toed shoes. This was Patience; the group counselling facilitator. She welcomed us and told us to help ourselves to tea, coffee and snacks. Trudy made a beeline for the buffet table and started gorging on all the food. "I'm not sure if we should be here," I said, "We didn't lose anyone in the Ryde disaster." "So?" said a blunt Trudy, "You don't come to these things to sit and talk about your feelings. You come for the free food. Mind you, this buffet looks cr*p. I've sh*t more appetising looking things out of my arse." "

Including me, Mike, TJ and Trudy there were about 12 people in the group counselling session. To be honest I expected more, and I wasn't too sure why Mike, TJ, Trudy and I even bothered going, although it was obvious Trudy wanted the free food. The 12 of us were sat on chairs in a circle, with many of us looking slightly apprehensive. Patience walked around the circle looking at us and she approached Mike. She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled. "Nervous?" she asked. Mike gave an awkward smile and nodded. "First time?" asked Patience. "No," said Mike, "I've been nervous lots of times before." "I think she's asking you when the first time you had sex was," said Trudy, "Therapists want to know all that sort of sh*t." "Maybe we should just make a start," said Patience. She then walked over to her chair, sat down and started the session. "Hello, everyone," she said, "Welcome. My name's..." "You got any more of those biscuits with the sticky bits in the middle?" Trudy asked, interrupting the counsellor. "I think there's some in that white bowl on the end of the table," said Patience. "No," said Trudy, "Those ones taste like sh*t. Drier than a Nun's chuff." "Will you shut up," I quietly said to Trudy. "Don't tell me to shut up," snapped Trudy, "I'll talk when I f*cking want." "Patience is waiting to speak." "Her name's Patience," snapped Trudy, "She'll be used to waiting." "Anyway," said Patience, "As you've heard my name is Patience, and I'm a counsellor, and today we're all here to express how we feel about the incident in Ryde where some of us may have lost loved ones." Knowing the truth behind what really happened in Ryde, Mike, Trudy and I exchanged awkward looks.

We all ended up introducing ourselves and this was more complicated than it needed to be. "I'm Luke," I said, "And I live in Sandown with my son and girlfriend." "I thought you dumped her?" said TJ. "Everything he just said is a load of b*llocks," said Trudy, "His name's Elizabeth, not Luke, "He currently lives with us in Cowes, and he's just chucked his mental girlfriend." "Mental isn't a word that we like to rely on," said Patience. "Yeah, well this f*cking chair is not one that I want to sit on, so I guess we're both sh*t out of luck," said Trudy. "No one has chucked anyone," I said, "We're just figuring a few things out." "Yeah," said TJ, "I bet she's figuring out which plate to throw at your head next." "Can we please not do this in front of these people?" I quietly snapped. "Why don't we carry on with the introductions?" said Patience. "I'm Mike," said Mike. "Hello, Mike," said Patience, "Why don't you tell us something interesting about yourself?" asked Patience. "Oh God," I quietly said under my breath, closing my eyes and wondering what he was going to come out with. "Well," said Mike, "I've got a big knob that goes everywhere with me. Do you want to see it?" The group gasped. "No," I said, leaning forward from my chair, "He means his doorknob. The knob to his bedroom. God, Mike, can you please start saying doorknob." "What about something else?" asked Patience, "Something else interesting." "I killed my Chemistry teacher when I was in High School," Mike said casually. "No," I said, trying to ease the obviously tense situation, "He's just making a joke. He's got a really dark sense of humour. Why don't we move on?" "No," said Mike, "I killed him. He made me do these lines on the blackboard, so I got this Bunsen burner..." "ANYWAY!" I loudly said, interrupting Mike, "Why don't we move on. Trudy?" "I'm Trudy," said Trudy, "And my blood is special. I can get bitten by an infected and as a long as it's not a lethal bite, I won't die." "She can make their heads explode too," said Mike. "She could make people's head explode with her f*cking constant jibber-jabber before all this sh*t started," said TJ. "I'll give you some sh*t if you don't shut up," snapped Trudy. "I'll go next," said TJ, "My name is TJ Hughes. Yes, like the shop, so no funny jokes cos I've heard them all before. I could sit here all day and tell you lots of interesting stuff about me. First of all, I have the biggest penis in regard to height, width, depth, girth and circumference than any other man on the planet. It's certainly bigger than Elizabeth's. His is no bigger than a grain of salt. I've shagged Elizabeth's Mum, shagged this chav-tastic tw*t next to me, wrestled a shark and one Christmas I f*cked Halle Berry AND Mary Berry. It was a very, merry, Berry Christmas." "God, you're full of it," I said. "It's true," said TJ with a smug grin, "The Christmas after I f*cked Reece Witherspoon, with a spoon. She was into all that kinky sh*t." "Ignore him," I said to Patience, "He just lies. He thinks he's funny." "You're just jealous," said TJ, "The only clunge action you get is from that nutter Nikki." "Perhaps we should move on," said Patience, "Now, we all know what recently happened in Ryde and it's affected us all in different ways. Now today, we're going to have an opportunity to express our feelings, but I also think we need to get to grips with what we call the core conditions of counselling, so we can use these counselling skills to support each other. Now there are three of these core conditions." "Are these bail conditions or something?" said Trudy. "No," said Patience, "They're a set of qualities. The first one is empathy. It's where we understand a person's situation from their point of view, rather than ours. The second is acceptance, which means we accept how someone feels and what they think without judging, and the third one is congruence." "Con – what?" said Trudy. "Congruence," said Patience, "So, incongruence is when you're keeping something inside that is really bothering you, and you're not letting it out." "A bit like when you're at a funeral and you're holding in a loud smelly fart?" said Trudy, "Is that incongru-what'sit?" "Well..." said Patience, clearly not knowing what to say. "I think Patience is talking about your feelings," I said. "Exactly," said Trudy, "So if I am feeling like my arsehole is going to explode because I'm holding in a fart, inside my body is saying, just let it go, but outside I'm holding it in. That's incongruence. If I just let it rip, then I'm being congruent? Is that right?" "I've just realised that 'therapist' can be split into two words; The rapist," said Mike, "Are you a rapist?" "Oh my God, are you rapist?" gasped Trudy. "No," said Patience, ironically struggling to maintain her patience, "Of course I'm not a rapist." "Well, it's a bit f*cking weird that 'therapist' can become 'the rapist'," said Trudy, "You better not have drugged our tea so you can knock us out, drag us behind the bins and bugger us senseless." "I'm OK, if you want to do that to me," said TJ with a cheeky grin. "Why don't you refer to me as a psychotherapist, ran than therapist," said Patience. "That's worse!" exclaimed Mike, "You're Psycho The Rapist." "Well, how about Counsellor?" said Patience. "That's too much like a city councillor," said Trudy, "I'll end up talking to you about getting the bins emptied, not about my childhood." "Why don't you just call me by my name?" asked Patience. "My name?" said Mike. "No, her name," said TJ. "Whose name?" asked Trudy. "Call her, 'My Name'," said Mike. "Call her Mike?" said Trudy, "That's a man's name." "Are you a man?" asked Mike. "She looks like a man," said Trudy. "Patience!" the counsellor snapped. "Patients?" said Mike, "Is she a nurse or something?" "Is she a SHE?" said Trudy. "PATIENCE, NOT PATIENTS!" the counsellor snapped. "Will you three f*cking shut up?" I snapped, "Let some other people speak." "OK," said Patience, taking a deep breath, "Let's just take a breath, calm ourselves down and maybe we can put the core conditions to one side and take things in a different direction. Does anyone want to say anything. Does anyone want to talk about someone they lost." A middle-aged woman raised her hand. "My name is Mary," she said, "Mary Fireman. My husband Sam was in Ryde helping out some GRID soldiers with some supplies. You see, he used to be a fireman and he would help them out every now and then. From what I can gather a stray flame landed on his head. Somehow – I don't know, his foot got stuck and the flame engulfed his head and... Oh... I'm sorry. I can't, I just can't." Mary started to cry. "Sorry, but are you taking the p*ss?" asked a blunt Trudy. "I beg your pardon"? said Mary. "You had a husband called Sam Fireman who was a fireman. You were married to Fire Man Sam." "Trudy, that's really rude," I snapped, "Just shut up. Sorry, Mary. Trudy can get really hot-headed." Mary looked unimpressed with my last comment. "Oh God!" I gasped, "Mary, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that." "Would someone else like to say anything?" asked Patience, "Does anyone feel really sad? Really scared? Really angry? It doesn't necessarily have to be associated with what happened in Ryde? If anyone has any emotions that they'd like to express, this is a safe space to do that. No Judgement." "No judgement at all?" asked Mike. "None at all," said Patience, "Like I said; this is a safe space where all thoughts and feelings are accepted." "OK," said Mike. Overcome with a sense of dread, I closed my eyes, thinking that Mike was going to say something really inappropriate. I was right. "Well," said Mike, "When I was thirteen, I gave my friend an abortion." "Oh God," I quietly said, as I noticed the uncomfortable looks on the faces of the other group participants. "Anyway," said Mike, "Her name was Sally-Anne, she was thirteen too and she wanted an abortion, but couldn't go to the abortion clinic because her parents were dead against abortion, and the abortion clinic had funny opening hours and there wasn't another abortion clinic for miles, and even though she really wanted an abortion, she was worried that her parents would find out about the abortion, and the abortion is the last thing her parents would have wanted." "Mike, please stop saying abortion," I said. "Anyway," said Mike, "Sally-Anne asked if I could help her. I think she meant go with her to the Doctors, or lie to her parents about where she was going, but I thought she meant help her with the abortion, so one lunch time I pressed the fire alarm and got everyone out of the school. That's when me and Sally-Anne went into the school kitchen. There were all these sharp knives and tongs in there, so I thought they'd come in useful. Anyway, I put on all this plastic apron stuff and some goggles I'd nicked from the science lab and Sally-Anne laid on the floor and opened her legs." "Mike, please stop," I said. "She kept getting nervous and closing her legs, so I found these clothes pegs and stuck some elastic bands to them. I clipped the clothes pegs to the inside of Sally-Anne's flaps and pulled the elastic bands and wedged them under a chair making Sally-Anne's vagina open wide. It hurt her a bit, but I gave her a wooden door stop to bite down on. Anyway, I put on some marigolds and grabbed a pair of tongs and..." "Mike, stop," I firmly said, "Please stop." Mike looked around the room and noticed the looks of horror plastered across everyone's face. "What's up?" asked Mike, "I washed he tongs afterwards with fairy liquid." I know Mike rarely has a filter, but I was really surprised at just how unaware he was of how inappropriate this conversation was.