Part 8: to all the therapists I’ve (n)ever loved - segment two
When I meet my psychiatrist, everything is funny. He’s a middle-aged man, very serious. It’s hard to imagine him laughing, hugging his child, blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, though I try. And the heaviness of his presence alone is enough for me to invite in humour where it rarely is. There, in that sterile office that makes not even a clinic attempt at warmth, I meet his slow-blinking eyes, and tell him, in between smiles, the troubles of my life.
On that first appointment, he brings my mum in the room too, asking her questions before me. But her responses to his queries are brief, insufficient, and still to think of this moment is to taste again that betrayal. I listen as she says things like I don’t know, and I’m not quite sure, and I must press my lips together to keep myself from laughing. Not from joy, but an earnest hopelessness rising from the aloneness in my recovery being realised. The first moment of coming to see how my feelings, my experiences, will always be mottled with this; an inability of others to understand. And I am not cynical enough to see this as out of a lack of love, or care, or genuine desire for my healing, but simply an inconsequential fault of existence; that we live, always, only on the periphery of others’ true comprehension.
Here, I think of the scene from Midsommar: Dani breaking down in the commune after yet another emotional blow. Surrounded by the women of the commune, she begins to cry, releasing a wailing, a screaming, a guttural animal call of suffering. And the women, they cry with her. The sounds and breaths coming from them sync, and a chorus of grief and loss and sorrow pours forth from them as a whole, on and on, until through this Dani is able to find calm. At times I think, this is what I long for. This perfect sympathy. To be felt, fully, to not be so alone and exposed in the open plain of hurt. To be surrounded by arms, and breaths, and knowing looks that feel what I feel, and in holding me, help me move on.
When the psychiatrist turns his questions to me, he talks as I answer, and because he is a man, and older, I let him. He tells my story for me, and admittedly, it’s almost all true. I know he can sense it, my perceived nobility in suffering. And he refuses to regard me with the tenderness I expect this warrants. I am a sham in my search for wellness, he knows. I reach out only to be held, like this; a wet towel on the forehead, something sweet under my tongue. A kiss that sees my sickness as just something to be loved through. But who am I to ask the world of this? Who am I to ask this from anyone at all?
There is nothing in the psychiatrist’s tone of voice, his words, his slanted hand on his notepad, that tells me he has not heard worse before. This, too, makes me laugh. Because look: he is so far away. I am in a crisis, but he is just at work.
His solution is more medication, upping the dose, a prescription for Valium – but here, he grows serious; only when I need it.
I leave the Valium untouched for a year, not remembering, really, the first time I even take it, or why. I can’t even recall any wash of calm, but more-so a presence of fatigue, of relief. And also, the fear, of wanting it constantly. The question of: is this where it starts, where the ease of goodness becomes too tempting to ever again deny?
Because even with the meds, the panic continues, heightens. I stop being able to read, to write. I go to uni only to lie in bed after, exhausted. I leave my work untouched. I speak to my family in passing glances. I take naps as the sun sets, wake from them just to sleep again. Every interest becomes arduous, every moment of stillness torturous. With time, I stop leaving the house. I look at the sun, the street, the trees, and ache. I feel myself grow distant from the world. I forget faces, I forget feelings. I trace a finger delicately across fading memories, find myself stuck on the same moments, over and over.
The psychiatrist grows concerned. He warns me, on the phone, to stray from this line of making myself a victim. I listen, tracing the word over and over again on my leg: victim victim victim. He refers me to his colleague, a therapist…