Joyous Johnson #5

She sighed as she walked toward the door. A psychic? Really? She hadn’t told anyone where she was going – she told her boss it was a doctor’s appointment, she told her friends it was a lunch date – but, really, no one could have mocked her nearly so much as she was inwardly mocking herself at the moment. What was she doing?
She paused momentarily but eventually decided to steel herself and knock on the door.
An old man with kind eyes answered, “Yes?”
She looked at him. “I’m here . . . I have an appointment?” She ended what should have been a declaration with a question. Amazing. Not only was she seeing a psychic, but in a matter of minutes, she had gone to someone with a graduate education to some sort of a Valley Girl.
He looked at her. “Why?”
“Well . . . it’s just . . . I need to know what’s going to happen.”
“Why would you want to know a thing like that?”
“There’s this weight. Well, no, not a weight. More of a constant preoccupation. I’m tired of waiting for my life to start, so I’ve started to convince myself that it’s ending instead. I’m convinced that every day is my last, that every moment is just one step closer to a gloomy and impending doom. I can’t sleep. I don’t eat. Every minor ache and pain convinces me that, somehow, I have a mysterious illness that I just haven’t discovered yet. I just . . . I need to know what’s going to happen so that I can stop worrying constantly.” She looked at him, expectantly. The eyes she had moments before seen as kind now just looked bored. He looked disappointed in her, as if he was expecting some sort of a better reason.
She was confused. He started to close the door. “Wait, no, don’t do that,” she pleaded with more desperation in her voice than before. “You don’t understand. I’ve gotta know. The only way that I can remotely enjoy the present is to know that there’s a future, and know that there’s some good there – that it’s not just a bleak road to impending death. I can’t do this anymore, I can’t, I really, really, can’t. I’ve always been impatient, and I know that. I know that you have to work some in life before you really get to live, but what if that’s it? What if we’re all just working, putting living off another day, until someone takes that other day away? What if I never get to do all the things I’m planning for? What if life is really just working my crappy job, telling myself that I don’t even have time to date, and doting on my cats? Is this it? Am I ever going to find someone? Am I ever going to see the world? Am I going to do something so that the world will be a better place than it was when I found it?” She took a breath. “Look. I don’t care if you believe me, or if you want to help me, or if you think I’m crazy. Just tell me, ok? Tell me so that I can get back to everything and forget that I was ever here.”
He looked her in the eyes as if he was trying to call her bluff. Finally, after what seemed like years of silence, he quietly said, “Look, if you calm down, you’ll be happy. If you don’t, you won’t. So go home, calm down, and enjoy it. If you don’t stop to do that, life will never be more than a journey toward death.” With that, he closed the door, and she was left as she began, standing lonely and confused on a front porch off the side of the highway.