by Julie Webb
There is something, anyway, in getting through the day without losing my mind. It is a rumination I often calm myself with, letting it stab my insides over and over until I eventually relax into it.
And now, I didn’t even care that the day wasn’t over yet, I let the rumination begin. After closing the door behind the last client, my hand gravitated to the back of my head. The familiar feeling of muscles bulging and bobbing with tension beneath the nylons of my neck and shoulders confirmed that I needed to let the words swirl through my body. Yet, what’s intriguing, but unknown to everyone else, is how the life I’ve chosen is of the substitution-of-one-crutch-for-another variety. Every evening I can feel that truth afresh, lying deep in the sinews of my muscles as I repeat, there is something in getting through the day without losing your mind, Andy.
I checked the clock: twenty-three minutes until my next client. One more appointment and I’d be done for the day.
I lay down on the couch in my office. The brown leather couch that every client thinks is reserved for them alone. I wondered what Marge would think of my lying down here where she sits, cycling through her thoughts with a droning voice that tries to rock me to sleep each Friday. My weekly meetings with Marge always left me sad, terribly sad. Although we’ve never discussed it, we both know there is nothing more I can do for her. After thirteen months in therapy, we are past sharing an understanding nod or a sympathetic look that might bring comfort. We are past the transference, the projection and the dependence.
In today’s session she had said, “I am forty-nine years old. I have been seeing psychiatrists and therapists since I was thirteen. I’ll probably never get married. I’ll never have children. I am a misfit. I am alone. I have no talents and no special skills. I will always work in a menial job and will always be poor, spending the majority of my paycheck on psychiatric care.”
She paused, looking straight into my eyes, as if daring me to challenge her. I stared back, unblinking, toying with the idea of ignoring what I was truly feeling in that moment: shame. Not shame because I was calloused toward her litany, rather, shame because I agreed with her.
I thought about Marge, the two Marge’s -- Marge the woman and Marge the idea. She often shared the idea of who she could have been and what she would have become if only her father hadn’t . . .
I shook my head, relieving it of the heavy thoughts of Marge and looked at my watch. I had seventeen minutes until my new client. A young man who sounded desperate with agony on the phone yesterday. He is of the generation who interviews prospective therapeutic relationships prior to committing. He left a message with my receptionist that he wanted to talk with the doctor before making an appointment. Even though the conversation lasted for less than ten minutes, he agreed to come and see me. Ah, the encounter. The very heart of psychotherapy. Where the deeply human meeting of two individuals results, ideally, in an authentic experience that provides some level of comfort for both. Too bad the rudimentary reality is that as I bear witness to my client’s lives, I am more likely to be constantly improvising and groping for direction and too often wobbling for balance. Regardless, I changed the mantra playing in the background of my head from getting through the day without losing my mind to a more positive one: it’s the relationship that heals, it’s the relationship that heals, it’s the relationship that heals. I truly believed this and let the words drift through me.
As I was taking in some deep breaths, I heard the outer door open and close. It was Fred, I was sure. I sat up. He was seven minutes early. That’s a good sign. Or was it?
I rose from the couch and straightened my tie, then straightened some of the paperwork on my desk, then straightened my glasses. I need to get a screen to separate my desk from the counseling area. I had thought about it numerous times, but have never acted on it. I wondered why, then went out into the waiting room to get Fred.
In the waiting area, my receptionist was shrugging on her fuzzy, white coat as Fred stood to greet me.
“Leaving early today, boss. Remember?” She asked.
“I do. Thanks, Rae. See you on Monday.”
I extended my hand to Fred and shared some pleasantries about how it was good to meet him. I locked the door behind Rae, then smiled at Fred, explaining that he was my last client of the day and I didn’t want anyone to disturb us during our time together. He remained quiet on the way to my office. I motioned for him to sit on the couch as I lowered myself into my black chair.
He unbuttoned, but didn’t remove, his coat as he positioned himself like a stick figure onto the end of the couch. Fred stared at me. His hair was perfectly trimmed around his ears and combed neatly. His plaid shirt appeared crisp beneath the heavy leather coat. It distracted me for a moment. Then, when I realized he wasn’t talking, I decided to take the lead. “So, what’s on your mind?”
“I broke up with my girlfriend last week. We were together for almost two years.” He rubbed his open palms on the top of his thighs, looking at me, perhaps waiting for a response.
“That must have been very difficult for you. Would you be willing to tell me about it? Like, what led to the breakup?”
He stared at me, then blinked and dropped his gaze to his hands and began rubbing them harder against his legs.
I waited.
“She killed our baby.” His words landed heavy on the floor between us.
Something caught inside me. “How . . . um.” I cleared my throat. “How did she do that?”
He was quiet again. I was staring at him now. Waiting.
He sniffed in a shallow breath and blurted, “She had an abortion without telling me.”
His hands went to his face then as sobs began to morph his body from stick figure to trembling gelatin.
I suddenly became aware of my heart beating in my ears and how it was muffling the sounds of his crying. I sucked in a few deep breathes, getting control of myself. I knew I couldn’t hide the entire truth of what I was feeling but hoped I could at least control its outpouring so that Fred would notice merely a trickle of the reality inside me instead of the full-blown story. This is about the client, not about me. Stay present. It’s the relationship that heals.
It didn’t seem to matter what I told myself, instead of focusing on Fred as he sat mumbling and grieving into his hands, I clutched at this time, as if it were my own, in order to tend to my own issues of pushing away the memories of Paula and the tears that wet her face. I was trying to shove closed the file in my mind of that day over eleven years ago when she . . .
“Doc?” Fred had regained control of himself and was blinking at me.
“Yes.” I straightened in my chair and tried to put on the “I’ve been in deep thought regarding your grief” mask.
“Could I have a tissue?” He pointed at the empty box on the side table.
“Of course.” I sprung from my chair and grabbed the box from my desk, handing it to him.
He said thank you and filled both fists with several tissues. “She didn’t talk to me about it. I didn’t even know she was pregnant. We weren’t trying to have a baby or anything and, well, really we never talked about having children. We’re both still in school and responsibilities like that, like children, well, that’s for later, for sometime down the road. I mean, sure, our relationship was serious and all and I certainly agree that we are not . . .” He looked down at the carpeting, “. . . we were not ready for next steps like marriage or children. But that didn’t give her any right to kill my child without even talking to me. Without even letting me know?”
Fred was rocking slightly side to side, his dialogue keeping pace with the movement.
As he continued, I nodded periodically at him allowing visions of Paula to flash between us. Paula wiping her tears with the back of one hand and taking my hand with her other. Paula’s words bouncing toward me: Andy, please understand. I had to do this. Paula’s face twisting at my response: It was my baby too. You had no right to make a decision like that on your own.
“But we aren’t married. That’s what she kept saying. We aren’t married, Fred, we aren’t married. This wasn’t a joint decision. And she kept insisting that it was her body and her choice. And all I could think was, how could she do this?” Fred shoved all of his tissues into one hand now and was rubbing the other hand on the top of his leg again. “I never thought she was the type of person who would do something like that. We were together for two years for Christ’s sake. I thought I knew her.”
Inside I could feel the persistent march of past images turning to thought then tugging and trying to twist themselves into language, into some logical form that would allow me to get a hold of my inner world. But the rich, fleecy texture of Paula’s presence filling my mind, even with all its flexibility and nostalgic hues, refused to be crammed into a language I could grasp.
I recalled then something my own therapist had told me, all those years ago when I was sitting where Fred is right now. He said, “One reason we can never fully know another person is that we are selective about what we choose to disclose.”
“So, are you saying that if I had disclosed more about myself to Clarissa she might of talked to me about the abortion first?” Fred asked.
“What?” I fumbled with my pen and paper and re-crossed my legs.
“You said that we never really know somebody else because we’re selective about what we share with that person.”
“I said that?”
“Are you okay?” Fred asked, his eyebrows pressing against themselves.
“Sure,” I nodded. “I guess what I was trying to share with you is that perhaps it is our ideas of a person that we recognize when we see them and not really them at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe, Clarissa . . . is that her name?” I asked.
Fred nodded.
“You asked, how can she do this? And you stated that you thought you knew her. Well, perhaps Clarissa only revealed to you portions of herself, pieces of who she really is. It would be something like watching a movie with several portions clipped out. You’d still be able to follow along with the characters but the plot would be a little tricky to put together.”
“But I thought I knew her.” Fred mumbled.
I thought I knew you, Paula had spat at me. I thought you would understand. I thought you would be on my side. My mind received the images of her anger, her final look, her leaving. I remember sitting there for a long time after she left, letting my mind reverse the sequence of explanations she had offered, scripting her excuses into images that my brain could process. But the translation never took. The loss was too great. The loss of my child and of Paula all in one moment.
“You’re right. I don’t think I ever did know her. Not really. I must have packed her full of attributes of my own choosing.” Fred was sitting on the edge of the couch, his left foot tapping a rhythm only he could hear, his head shaking with realization.
“We’re all guilty, Fred.”
“How so?” His quizzical look suddenly grounded me, halting Paula’s storyline.
“We’ve all endowed someone with our own desires, our own ideals and then gone on to fall in love with them. It happens.”
“And it hurts.” Fred said, sitting up straight and tapping his foot.
Fred was bright. He was sharp. Something inside me knew that eventually he would be okay. At the end of the session he shook my hand and asked if he could return next week to continue processing his grief. I had to constrain my initial reaction: a resistance that stretched out into the future entwined with a fear of being found out. Regardless, I set another appointment with Fred and released him into the world.
And then, closing the door behind him, my fingers reached again to the back of my neck, pressing against the prisms of pain sliding in circles beneath the surface of my skin. I returned to my office and dropped onto the couch while flashes of Fred’s tears heaved at my mind like the remnants of the final hours of the flu.
So much blocks the knowing of another person. How had I ever thought I could do this without losing myself? And after all these years, how is it that I am still questioning?
The image of two minds pressed tightly together, directly exchanging thoughts and images filled me. Before the stethoscope was invented, a physician would listen to the sounds of a patient’s heart and intestines with an ear pressed against the patient’s rib cage and abdomen. This perfect union of immediate and direct transfusion of thought seemed idealistic and sophomoric.
I chuckled and reminded myself: There is something, anyway, in getting through the day without losing your mind.
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