I had been seeing a therapist for nearly two years. During that time, Carol had become a part of me, a part of my identity. She represented the hope in me when I was languishing in life and career. She offered a safe, semi-biased outlet for me; someone I could vent to about Isis when she would lecture me about the way I would place the dishes in the Asian drying rack, or when I’d get steamrolled in any argument because I’m horrible at thinking of witty comebacks until a day or two later – at which point I would regale Carol with a story of the situation and we would discuss what I had thought up a day later, after I had already lost the argument. She was never going to meet Isis, so it was a way for me to verbalize my thoughts and opinions and to analyze them with a third party, who only got to see my side of the story.
Carol was also there to listen to my insecurities, my imposter syndrome, my sheer illogical insanity so I could spare Isis from having to deal with my shit when she already has so much other shit to deal with. And despite what Carol would tell me (that she could drop me like a warm turd at a moment’s notice), in my mind, she couldn’t do anything but sit there and help me process my fears, my quelled emotions, my verbal stream of consciousness – kind of like you.
The fortunate thing was that because of my job’s benefits, it wasn’t too expensive. Twenty dollars would get me a friend for fifty minutes every week.
My friend, Tim, didn’t understand why I would want to talk to a therapist.
“You just need to go to a strip club,” he’d tell me.
That was how Tim would mentally realign. During his bachelor party in Las Vegas, Tim ended up spending nearly three thousand dollars on a stripper at the ‘Rhino. It didn’t cost that much because he was getting lap dances from the stripper, instead, he had spent several hours talking to her, about life, his fiancé, and his worries for the future. They had gone to an exclusive room in the club, one that cost several hundred just to get into. I suspect he would have spent a few thousand extra had I not paid to get access to that room (with a stripper I didn’t even get a lap dance from), just so I could stop him. We had spent so much that night that the owner of the club gave us his card with his personal cell phone number scrawled on the card and a limo ride back to our hotel.
This last week though, Carol told me that she was leaving the therapy group that I had been using, and because of that, she would no longer be my therapist. She was moving on to another therapy group, something that better fit her schedule and lifestyle – and probably paid more.
I stared blankly at the computer screen, as all sessions were virtual. I didn’t know what to say. I had always thought that as the client, I had all the say in when my therapy would end. I imagined that one session in the future, Carol would finally get irritated with my inane ramblings and say something in the heat of the moment that would piss me off to the point where I’d say “Well, I think you’ve cured my depression because I’m just angry now!” I’d then cancel my therapy sessions, thinking it as a symbolic Fuck you to her when in reality I was just sabotaging myself.
But she took that away from me by thinking about herself and her career. How selfish is that?!
I hadn’t realized how important Carol had become. I looked forward to therapy because I could bitch and moan and complain and she would have to listen; and she had the decency to be judgmental behind my back – probably when her therapist cohort would meet – or to her husband, who was just a faceless apparition to me. It was the relationship I needed. I had Isis, but her role was to keep me grounded in a reality that made sense for the family, so it often consisted of her telling me that my ideas were terrible and that I was an idiot.
But Carol, she provided the validation that I craved.
“You want to quit your job and take something that pays only half what you currently make? If you believe it will improve your mental health, that is a perfectly valid reason to make the change.”
“You want to hide away in the bathroom and sit on the toilet for an hour every day? If you need it to mentally prepare yourself for the day, you’ll probably want to incorporate that into your daily routine.”
“You want to flip the bird to ever Tesla driver you encounter? If it’s an alternative to destroying their cars – which I completely agree are ugly – it might be something you want to consider.”
On our last session together, Carol stated that we have had 59 sessions together. I told her I was sad that we didn’t have one more session because I wanted to get the 60-session badge.
I had Carol listen to the song Tidal by Noah Kahan as I thought it encapsulated our time together very well, though I had to ask her not to read into every lyric of the song.
At the end of the session, I thanked Carol for all her help and mentioned that in another version of life, I bet we would have been friends, which is why it made this parting so much more difficult for me. It’s difficult for me to come by friends, so difficult that I had to pay to get one here.
Carol told me while I was one of her many clients (apparently less than sixty because that’s the number I guessed and she indicated that sixty would be a crazy number to have), I was one of her favorites – I bet she tells all her clients that.
One of the recurring themes in my therapy sessions was balancing the tension or dichotomy of opposing forces – such as satisfying the needs of the self vs those of society. She closed the session similarly, asking me to listen Coastline by Hollow Coves, a song she felt provided a contrast to Noah Kahan’s Tidal. We ended with a “See you on the other side” and as I closed the Zoom window, I looked out the window to my left and stared blankly at the dwarf Meyer lemon tree standing in the corner of my yard; its leaves and branches half yellow, half green, somewhere in between thriving and struggling. The tree shuddered as Moxie walked past, not even acknowledging the thorns digging into her fur as she sniffed around the tree, squatted, then let out a stream of foul-smelling, yellowish-brown liquid diarrhea.
I couldn’t help but wish that Carol had delayed her last day for another week. I really wanted that 60-session badge.