My new therapist has an office at her home, with a separate entrance.
Behind the orange door is this waiting area. There's a clock on the wall, as you can see, and a small set up for making tea and coffee.
I usually try to arrive ten minutes early so that I can use the bathroom and make a cup of decaf. I always take something to drink into the session because taking a drink of something can buy me time when I don't want to talk or it can forestall the tightening of my throat that happens when I'm going to cry. I hate crying, but I seem to do it a lot in therapy.
My new therapist's name is Roberta.
That is not her. That is a stuffed orangutan that sits in the waiting room among the back issues of The New Yorker and some newsletter that seems to be associated with Dr. Andrew Weil.
I did not take a picture of Roberta (she is in her late 60's I would guess, and kind of a pragmatic, nerdy hippie), nor did I take a picture of her office, which is very large, larger than the Casita probably. I sit on a green couch. She sits across from me on a wicker chair. Between us is a large coffee table. Behind her and to the left is a desk. Directly behind her is a large window. On the right there's a set of shelves and a small, unobtrusive clock that faces me. I'm sure there's a larger clock on the bookshelves behind me. Therapists are always very aware of time, I find.
Today we talked about school. I've recently been doing some spring cleaning and I came across my biology notes from the late '90s and early '00s. I wondered if I should throw them out or keep them. (I kept them.) But while organizing them, I began to think about my time at university.
True, I was depressed for much of that time. I've written before about how I used to bargain with myself at the start of each day, talking myself out of bed by counting the number of hours until I could get back into bed. I slept constantly. I went to lectures and sometimes even to work in the lab in my pajamas. I never studied except to cram. The Brain didn't want to hold onto information so the hands had to do all the work. I crammed for--and aced--exams. I had a perfect 4.0 GPA. I didn't have to pay for school because I had grants and scholarships. I was doing independent research in a biochem lab, working while taking classes. I sat in on extra classes for no credit so I could learn all of Shakespeare's plays, read more Milton, expand my knowledge of modern American literature. I graduated summa cum laude with a double major in English and biology. But all that time, every single day, I was numb with a deep depression that nothing could touch.
I honestly don't know how I made it through. Touching those biology notes, turning pages on things I once knew and no longer know, reminded me of that time. How did I make it through semesters of biology and physics and calculus? How did I make it through Paradise Lost? How did I make it to work and through experiment after experiment? How did any of that happen? I think The Brain had something to do with it, but where was I in all of that?
It was during that time that I spent a year on antidepressants that did nothing for me, but which I took diligently, daily, as some women take birth-control pills. I wasn't in therapy then, I just slogged through on my own. Though I had been journaling all my life on paper, it was about this time that I began to journal online. Many of those days are preserved, a catalogue of spectacular failures and lesser successes, or so I thought.
Was I wrong about that, too?
Roberta and I spend one hour together once a week. Today we talked about all of that and about the bridge that I want to build.
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