There and Gone in 15 Minutes

I am sitting in the patient chair; it is set up as many are: with a clear path to the door in case my other set of hinges falls off and I need to take my emotions to a safer location.

But there will be no bolting from this office. I want to stay here because I feel safe, validated, and understood. To my right is a cabinet with some fidget toys on them; small bins of sand with tiny rakes and so forth.

I look at my individual outpatient therapist and then away again. I adore her care and compassion, but I can barely bring myself to look her in the eyes. I know that I am very much averse to eye contact. If I make contact with her, I reason, then she might actually see me for who I am.

As if I can hide anything.

I am not here for a full session. Those are over and I am just in the room for a minute to say goodbye. I have been in this room for a total of 8 sessions, yet I feel as if I have been in and out of here for years.

When you connect with someone in a way that brings out nothing but feelings of warmth and love and kindness, you don’t need that much time to feel as if the connection somehow, in some way, predated your meeting. This is the connection I have with my outpatient therapist; the individual one that I can really tell all of the horrible stuff too.

And would’t you just like to know what all of that is?

I cannot look at her because I am trying not to cry. I am, once again, failing miserably. I feel as if my heart is dying, and it has felt that way for several days. This is the feeling that one gets when they are certain they will never see someone again. Ever.

I look away and remember the words I had for her in the previous visit: “It seems that so many good things that come past me are there for 15 minutes. It’s not. Fucking. Fair.”

We had talked about that for a bit; the concept of fairness. The reality of things that are temporal and destined for loss, however beautiful they might be at the time. In this discussion, we went on a guided tour of my emotions, with my palms out and open, ready to hear whatever she had to tell me. A previous session like this had, I remember distinctly, ripped open my soul in the best of ways. I had felt at once flawed, vulnerable, and still worthy of love.

But that was then. Now I have to take pieces of it with me forward, and I don’t know how to do it. I pace. I distract myself. I hide in ruminating feedback loops and decide that I just might be able to store myself away forever.

Now I have to say goodbye to someone who, metaphorically speaking, has been in my life for about 15 minutes. This is someone who knows the worst things about me, and who became familiar with the tempest that is Nathan in a little over two months. This is the therapist who listened to me, validated me, diagnosed me, and helped me believe that goodness was possible.

I feel breathless. I try to tell myself that this isn’t happening. I try to dissociate away from the thought of therapy ending, but I don’t get far. At some point I explain to her that I believe that she was one step ahead of me the whole time, looking in places that might have seemed of little importance to me. As I say this, I realize what a wonderful thing it is to be open and vulnerable.

I start thinking of the situation in very borderline terms, language that screams of the fear of abandonment: she’s leaving me, she’s leaving me, she and the program are leaving me.

But I know this is nonsense. It’s just the language that I use, particularly when describing the “loss” of a person in some sense. When I look back, I imagine people as having “left,” knowing full well that life simply went on and we all had different trains to catch.

I never said I made any of this easy on myself, did I?

My therapist and I exchange a look that would only be translated as such on both ends: I am so, so sad about this, and I am going to miss this. But, we did something here, didn’t we?

At first I am angry over this: why can’t there be 8 more weeks of sessions? Why do I have to leave the outpatient program? Why do I seem to change tracks when things are going in the direction I want? Then I think, “How many people have you met far more than those, but who did not leave anything close to the impression of this person?”

My apologies, of course, to the people I have met more than 8 times who have not been on the end of such praise. There is only so much I can do in the space of a single blog. If I were selling a hardcopy of this article, I might slap a sticker on it that says, “It’s ok! I love the rest of you too! I think! But my editor, who is me, is really tired and doesn’t want to read too much copy.”

Anyhow.

Some of the best people in my life are there and gone in the space of a nightly news segment. Teachers, for example, have filled this roll many times in the past. They bond with a student for long enough for the bond to matter, but not with such strength that they hold the student down forever. Students move on to new teachers. Teachers move on to new rosters. Plus, this is not just about education or therapy. I have friends that I have only met a handful of times. I feel that these same friends have been lifelong, even when this isn’t the case.

The best people come into my life for 15 minutes at a time, and sometimes this is an amazing thing.

I tell my therapist that I am never going to forget her. On the way out of the office, she notices that the front of my shirt says “Stay.” The meaning is something like: Stay here. Stay kind. You matter.

She compliments the inscription as I walk out the door. As I step into the hallway, closer to some life as I’ve never known it (I hope), I forget to check if she’s read the BACK of my shirt:

THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

Yours Mentally,

Nathan