Alone E-Book

Lian Boll

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 197

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Benjamin is a diaperlover. That's what people who have a diaper fetish call themselves. He can't remember it ever being any other way. For as long as he can remember, he has been attracted to diapers. At the age of 20, he develops depression and suffers from panic attacks. He seeks psychotherapeutic treatment, but keeps the secret of his fetish to himself. His condition does not improve until he is fifty, and so he finally allows himself to think that the fetish and the illness might be related. So he decides to reveal his secret. Will he be able to finally accept himself after fifty years? Will his life improve as a result?

Leseprobe

This novel is a work of fiction. The names, people and events depicted in it are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events or places, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

„Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do is in harmony.“

(Mahatma Ghandi)

"The only thing keeping you from being happy is the belief that you are alone."

(Anna Draper in Mad Men)

Contents

Chapter 01: A START

Chapter 02: A FIRST STEP

Chapter 03: SOMETHING IS DIFFERENT

Chapter 04: GRIEF EXCLUSION

Chapter 05: A NEW FEELING

Chapter 06: ALONE

Chapter 07: EMMA

Chapter 08: I’M FINE NOW

Chapter 09: AT HOME

01

A START

"Doctor Engel’s practice, what can I do for you?"

"Good morning, I would like to do therapy with you. Do you currently have any available appointments?"

"What exactly is the issue?"

"I have been suffering from depression and anxiety for many years, and have been in treatment for it without it really getting any better. Recently, however, something has changed that I would like to talk about with someone. With someone who doesn’t knowme."

"Do you have public or private insurance?"

"Public."

"Okay, then you should know that you would have to bear the cost of the therapy yourself, since I’m not licensed by health insurance."

"How much would that cost me?"

"My hourly rate is 120 euros."

That’s a lot. Benjamin thinks. After inpatient treatment of his depression, six years ago, he has already tried once to find a therapist locally for follow-up treatment, which proved difficult. There are few therapists in the small town where he lives. Also, not every therapist is a good fit for him. After all, Benjamin is supposed to tell very private things about himself. He is also looking for a female therapist. He can open up more easily to women. A fact that could have given him the first clue years ago that his love for diapers could be part of his depression. Because men who wear diapers are not real men, and you don’t reveal something like that as a man in front of other men. Not even in front of a therapist. In any case, Benjamin came to the conclusion that there was only one way to find out if the therapist was a good fit: Therapy. There are no shortcuts.

So this time he took a sober and somewhat disillusioned approach to the search. He found a page on the Internet that lists a lot of therapists, which he can search through using various filters. The first filter he enters is the city where he wants to do therapy. Benjamin has chosen Hamburg. He doesn’t live there, but in a suburb, but because he has decided to talk about the most intimate thing he can imagine, his diaper fetish, he finds the idea of an anonymous big city quite comforting. The probability that he will meet his therapist while shopping or on the way to work, the woman to whom he will have previously told in great detail how he feels about diapers, is vanishingly small in this way. A total of 694 therapists are recorded for Hamburg.

The next criterion he chooses to filter the list is gender. The fact that the gender of the therapist is a search criterion on the site at all confirms that many people probably feel the same way he does. For their therapy they prefer a certain gender of their therapist. I wonder if men, on average, are more likely to seek a female therapist. After all, a psychological illness is still generally regarded as a weakness rather than an illness, a weakness that men first have to admit to themselves, which seems much harder to do with potential rivals than with a caring woman. And is it the other way around for women? Do they consider other women as rivals and therefore prefer to look for a man? If that were the case, Benjamin thinks, women would have it quite a bit harder, however, because the list of a total of 694 therapists decreases only slightly to 548 women.

The last criterion according to which Benjamin wants to narrow down the list is the focus of therapy. Since this time he is determined to address the diapers from the beginning, he chooses sexuality as the topic.

After that, there are still 136 therapists on the list. So how do you continue to search? It is impossible to call all 136 therapists or even to arrange a trial session with them. No, he just had to choose one, try to get an appointment and hope for the best. To get to know each other, you have to get to know each other. There’s no shortcut to that. So he skimmed the list and looked at the pictures of the therapists. The first picture that seemed appealing, he chose.

"I can offer you that we first get to know each other during an hour, which I don’t charge for. And after that we’ll see."

Thevoice of the sympathetic face brought him back from his thoughts.

"That sounds fair. When is a good time for you? I’m relatively flexible on that."

Benjamin sounds more relaxed than he actually is. After all, here he is dating someone to whom he wants to confide the only secret he has. Until today, after almost 50 years of his life, he has told no one about it, but has hidden, been ashamed and denied himself. Ms. Engel seems to flip through her calendar before answering:

"How about next Wednesday at 3:00 p.m.?"

"That’s fine"

"Good, then I’ll see you next week. Do you have the address of my office?"

"If it’s the one you listed on therapy.com, yes."

"Yes, it’s still correct."

"Great, see you next week then."

"Until then. Goodbye."

The following Wednesday, at two o’clock in the afternoon, Benjamin sets off for Hamburg to visit Ms. Engel. He is surprised at how quiet he is. It’s as if he’s going to Hamburg to see a friend and not the person to whom he’s about to reveal what he’s never revealed to anyone in his entire life before: That he loves diapers.The drive goes without a hitch. There is no traffic jam. After all, at this time of day, commuters are more likely to be on their way home than on their way to work, so they’re out of Hamburg, not in. Even the search for a parking space turns out to be pleasantly easy, which is not a matter of course. Ms. Engel’s practice is located in Winterhude, a district with many old apartments and narrow streets. In addition, there are many pubs and restaurants, so that the streets are actually always parked up with cars on both sides. There is a parking garage on the edge of the district, from which it is a five-minute walk to the practice. But Benjamin doesn’t need it. He finds a parking space on a cross street, very close to the practice.

Now he has to wait. The drive only took half an hour. He didn’t even had to use the buffer that Benjamin had provided. So he sits in the car for another half hour listening to the radio before getting out shortly before 3 p.m., locking the car and walking the short distance to the practice.

Thedoor into the building’s stairwell is locked. Benjamin rings the doorbell. After a while he hears the buzzer of the door and he can enter the building. The stairwell is cool. It smells like a cellar. A little musty and damp. The building is used by several smaller companies that have set up their offices here. There are no other doctors.The practice is on the second floor. Halfway up the stairs, he hears someone open a door to the stairwell and call out to him: "Please wait in the stairwell for a moment, I have another patient right now, but nowaiting room.When I’m ready, I’ll let you know."

Thisstarts off interesting. There’sno anteroom, no physician assistants, and no waiting room. Not very professional. Benjamin pulls out his smartphone and passes the time by reading the news. After a while, the door opens again and Benjamin hears two people saying goodbye to each other. A young woman walks past him down the stairs, then he hears the woman’s voice from just a moment ago say, "So, you can come in now."

The office consists of a single room about four feet high, all white. Out the front, facing the street, there is a large window that stretches almost the entire width of the room. On the opposite side, the room is separated from the adjacent office only by a glass partition. In front of it hangs a curtain that is so thin that Benjamin can see the outlines of working people through it. He also hears muffled noises coming from there. It seems as if this room is actually a meeting room of the office next door, which Ms. Engel rents from time to time in order to be able to welcome her patients. For a moment, the question runs through Benjamin’s mind whether he can really speak freely here or whether he will always fear being overheard in the neighboring office. In the center of the room is a light, soft carpet on an otherwise well-maintained plank floor. In front of the window are two armchairs, angled slightly into the room, with a small round table between them. And hanging over everything is an intense smell of garlic, which Ms. Engel must have enjoyed in copious amounts the night before.

"Please take a seat."

Benjamin chooses the armchair facing the door and sits down. Ms. Engel sits down opposite him on the other one.

"What can I help you with?"

So, now it’s getting serious. But how should he begin? For almost thirty years, Benjamin has been tormented by depression and panic attacks. During that time, he sees a psychiatrist regularly, four times a year, but he is essentially prescribed only two medications, one for his depression that helps calm the never-ending thoughts in his head, especially in the evenings, in order to find sleep, and an emergency medication that can get him out of a panic attack. No real therapy takes place. They just talk to each other for about ten minutes, each conversation starting with the same question: ’How are you doing today?’

After all, seven years ago he was allowed to undergo ten weeks of inpatient therapy, during which he talked intensively about his feelings for the first time in his life and learned a lot about himself. Following those ten weeks, Benjamin was downright euphoric and felt all cleared up, a state that lasted only a few weeks, however, before he fell back into old patterns of behavior.

Following the inpatient therapy, the doctors had recommended that he continues with depth psychological therapy. To do this, however, Benjamin first had to find a therapist himself, and that turned out to be not so easy. During that time, he learned why changing therapists was so difficult. Because every time hewent to anewtherapist, he had to start all over again. During the ten weeks of inpatient therapy, he had painstakingly drawn a detailed picture of himself. Piece by piece, session by session, a picture of his emotional world emerged on what was initially a completely blank sheet of paper. And in each therapy session, he was able to continue drawing at one point of the picture without having to explain the whole picture to the therapist again. But with a new therapist, that didn’t work. When he finally decided on a therapist, he sat in front of a white sheet of paper at the beginning of the first session and had to draw the whole picture again.

And now he sits here in front of Ms. Engel and sees in his inner eye again this white sheet of paper lying in front of him on the little table and feels the upcoming work of filling the sheet with life.

But this time he sees something else. Namely the fact that he does not have to paint the same picture every time. And this time it is more than clear.This time he is starting a new therapy precisely because he wants to draw a new picture, because all these years he has always sailed around an issue that he recently believes could be the central theme of his life: Diapers.

So while his previous paintings have always depicted a colorful and intricate web of a multitude of feelings, experiences and relationships, they all have always remained incomplete. All colors, all patterns always had a white spot, and Benjamin is firmly convinced that his therapists have always recognized this. Similarly, astrophysicists find distant black holes by observing stars that are in orbit, but nothing can be seen at the center. The motion of the stars tells them that there must be something at the center of the circle on whose edge they are moving.Benjamin’s therapists saw this too. His feelings, his experiences and relationships revolved around something he kept from them, which became visible in the picture only as a white, unpainted surface.

In addition, he is not talking to just anyone, but to a therapist. He doesn’t have to try to explain to her what it feels like to be depressed or stuck in a panic attack. This time he wouldn’t be putting down on paper a complicated web of feelings, pretty to look at but not very meaningful. This time he wouldn’t create a work of art that he was proud of in some perverse way. No, this time he would start directly with the black hole, right in the middle of the sheet, large and expansive. This time, the sheet of paper in front of him would represent one thing above all: A wonderful,white, soft diaper.

So within the next quarter of an hour, Benjamin flew over his previous story. He told that he suffers from depression, that he has panic attacks, has been in treatment for it for thirty years but nothing really changes, that he has been looking for what it could be for so long but can’t find anything, that he has a family with three children and all of them suffer from his feelings and that, by the way, the whole life somehow doesn’t make sense to him.

"And for some time now, I’ve had a theory that might explain all of this. And I’m here because I want to talk about it, but I’m finding it incredibly difficult."

All the while he has been talking, he has been sitting comfortably in his chair, leaning against the back of it, a pillow that had been on the chair before resting in his lap, his hands folded over it as if in prayer, his legs outstretched. But now, having reached the point of no return really, of wanting to tell another person for the first time in his life that he loves diapers, he can no longer remain motionless. His stomach tingles uncomfortably, as if he’s about to have to go on a stage, alone in the spotlight in front of thousands of spectators. He leans forward. He rests one hand on the armrest of the chair, the other on his knee. It’s just a very short sentence that he’s got down: I have a diaper fetish. But it stands for so much more. He feels he is about to give up control of something he has controlled all his life. Until now, he has controlled not only the conversation, but also the image Ms. Engel has of him. But when he says the phrase out loud, that will change abruptly. In fact, it seems much worse than that to him. He is quite uncomfortable with it all. He is ashamed of the fact that he likes to wear diapers, that it gives him nice feelings when he uses them. He thinks he knows how Ms. Engel will react. Namely, exactly how the part of him that condemns him for doing something so perverted, something so sick. It doesn’t help that his mind tells him that Ms. Engel is a therapist who will of course not condemn him, but will try to help him.

In addition, there is the finality with which the secret would be revealed. He cannot take it back once it is revealed. It will then develop a life of its own over which he is no longer in control. His pulse races. The waistband of his pants tightens in his stomach. They suddenly seem much too tight for him. Is he sweating? It seems to him as if his head is glowing. A battle rages inside him and he feels something pulling him back, away from here, away from his purpose.

"Come on, now you’ve come this far. Now I want to know too."

Ms. Engel notices that Benjamin is just facing a high threshold for him and is struggling with himself. She smiles openly at him. It seems inviting, friendly, trusting. And it seems to Benjamin as if she wants to tell him that all this is not as bad as it seems to him right now. And finally, after 50 years, he hears himself say the words, "I have a fetish. A diaper fetish."

"Oh."

For a brief moment, Ms. Engel seems surprised. But she catches herself very quickly. Her face remains friendly and inviting. She looks Benjamin straight in the eye, which he conversely finds difficult to return. His gaze wanders unsteadily back and forth.

"I’ve heard about that before, but I’ve never looked into it in detail. I need to ask you a few questions about it, may I?"

"Yes."

"You’re saying that diapers excite you sexually?"

"Yes."

"And what exactly? Is it the sight of diapers? Or do you wear them, too?"

It’s strange to hear Ms. Engel talk about this. She talks as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, not even noticing that just the sound of the word triggers feelings in Benjamin.

"Everything. I like to look at them, I like to feel them very much. Everything."

"Do you use them too?"

"Yes."

Benjamin lowers his eyes. He suddenly has a lump in his throat. He wants to cry, but doesn’t even know why. There are so many emotions in him all at once. He feels relieved that he has done what he had firmly set out to do. At the same time, he still feels the tension that has been building up for days. And there is something else. He begins to realize what is happening here. There is a woman sitting in front of him talking to him about diapers and the passion he feels for them. And she doesn’t turn away from him, doesn’t showdisgust or horror. Instead, she seems understanding. It is still a very tender feeling that has just touched his consciousness. Yet he can perceive it.

"Does your wife know about this?"

"No. Nobody knows about it. I said it out loud for the first time today."

With each word, Benjamin struggles with his lump in his throat. He definitely doesn’t want to cry in front of Ms. Engel. He doesn’t want her image of him to become even more effeminate. He definitely wants to be perceived as a man, strong and determined, who takes his fate into his own hands. A man wearing diapers doesn’t fit into the picture at all anyway. But to break down in tears now? No, that would be too much.

"For as long as I can remember. My earliest memories of liking that go back to my early childhood, when I was like four or five years old."

He says "that" instead of "diapers." He can’t say the word out loud. Not again. True, he has just told Ms. Engel that he has a diaper fetish, but at the same time he has tried to keep his distance from the feelings involved. He tries to objectify the conversation as a protection from his feelings, afraid he would suddenly turn into someone else, into a monster who feels sexual arousal for diapers. Talking about it is one thing, but he certainly doesn’t want to show it to Ms. Engel. He has to keep control of his feelings. Ms. Engel doesn’t say anything back. She just sits there, looking at Benjamin and waiting for him to continue.

"Yes. I feel like it’s always been there. I never chose it and I can’t just choose not to now. I’ve tried, but it just plain doesn’t work."

"A fetish is not a bad thing to begin with. You should know that. As long as no one suffers from it, it’s perfectly fine to have one. You find diapers pleasurable and you tell me you can’t do without them. But then why are you with me?What am I supposed to help you with?"

"Well, I have a theory about how my depression and panic attacks might be related to my fetish. To put it very briefly I don’t think there is one event that is the cause of my depression. I simply cannot find such an event, even though I have been looking for it for many years. Instead, I believe that there is rather a small imbalance inmy emotional world, very small only, yet large enough that it pulls me a little way out of balance. And if this pull in one direction, this unbalance, can pull a little bit every day, every hour, and every minute for many years, then in the end what comes out is just a pretty big deviation of my emotional world from my center, from the state in which I would function normally, so to speak. And that imbalance is my fetish."

"But that sounds very cerebral. Besides, you do say that diapers are good for you. Then it should be a positive development, right?"

"No, because it’s not the fetish itself that is this unbalance. It’s my interaction with it. I’m ashamed of it. I’m afraid every day of being discovered. But I can’t do anything about the fetish, I can’t fight it, because it’s obviously a part of me, a part that I just can’t accept."

Again, Ms. Engel says nothing. She just lets the silence in the room stand and waits for Benjamin to continue.

"It’s so exhausting to always be on guard. When I’m shopping at the grocery store and I walk past the shelves of diapers, I always feel like no matter what I do, everyone can tell I like diapers. Either I look too long in that direction or I pay way too obvious no attention to them.When I’m around people talking about diapers, and believe me,this happens more often than you’d think, when someone tells a joke that involves diapers, I always try to react in a very deliberate and controlled way so as not to blow my cover. And even if I have some time for myself,which I can spend with diapers, after my climax I am immediately afraid that someone could come into the room and catch me. I am so tired. I just want to have my peace and quiet."

Benjamin’s eyes well up with tears. His lump in his throat is so big it hurts. But he doesn’t want to cry, he doesn’t want to seem weak.

"I don’t believe in God. I think every person makes his own ideas about the time after death. Or rather, after life. The Christian faith summarizes the beautiful idea of what may come there under the concept of paradise. In my wife’s paradise, for example, we all meet again. The whole family, all friends are reunited for eternity. This is also often described in films and stories. But do you know what my paradise is?"

"No."