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I was uneasy about it for several reasons. Partly my semi-celebrity status. Recordings were more damning than notes. And also because it made it all too real.
She looked as if she might protest, but then her lips met in a firm line and she nodded, placing it back in the desk before retrieving a yellow legal pad.
“Very well then.”
She arched a brow at me as if questioning whether I would now take issue with her making notes.
I had intended to sit on the couch, but I laid down on it instead, pulling my feet up with me. On the outside I’m sure this behavior indicated some willingness on my part to surrender to the therapy process, but it was really a way to hide. Lying down, I could look up at the ceiling and not meet her eyes.
“Shall we begin?” she asked.
“Actually, I just thought maybe you could give me something; write me a prescription. Valium, Zoloft, Prozac, anything.” I wanted something to numb me out, make things blur around the edges a bit, but I didn’t say that.
“Emily, now you know that’s not how I operate.”
Then I was going to have to find someone who did. With all the outcry at shrinks who doled out prescriptions like legal and politically-correct drug dealers, surely I could find someone to give me my fix of normal.
She sat patiently waiting, her pen poised, her attention rapt. I laid there for several minutes, the silence stretching between us. I kept waiting for her to say something. She kept waiting for me to say something. It was a battle of wills. I glanced occasionally at the clock on the wall as the minutes dragged on much more slowly than they ever had, even in the bad cell.
I wondered if I could use up my entire session like this. A complete hour of blissful silence. There was a time the prospect would have been deeply uncomfortable to me. I wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge, the need, to fill the silent spaces with words.
Finally I did speak, but it wasn’t because of discomfort with silence. I don’t know what it was. It was the office, her patience, the comfortable couch, and the almost hypnotic lulling of the ticking of the wall clock. It was as if a trance had come over me, some sort of psychological possession that made me intent to spill, if not my secrets, then my feelings about them.
“I don’t fit anymore,” I began. “I don’t know where to go from here. There is my life before, and my life now, and there’s no bridge between the two. There is no way for me to go back to who I was.”
“What about your life when you were where you were?” She avoided words likecaptiveandimprisoned.
I stared up at the ceiling. I’m sure another five minutes passed before I spoke. “I can’t tell you about that. It’s private.”
“What can you tell me about?”
I shrugged.
She decided to switch to a more direct question and answer approach, something easier and requiring less explanation on my part.
“How many people had you?”
“One.”
“Male or female?”
“Male.”
“You want to go back to him.”
It wasn’t a question. I bolted up from the couch and stared at her. Despite understandings of the victim/tormentor relationship, most people refused to accept someone wanting to go back after they were free.
“Yes,” I said.
“Emily, you’ve got your masters in psychology. You know what this is. You know it’s not real.”
Was that true? It was one thing to pontificate about nameless strangers, it was another to experience it. It was difficult to imagine that in my position Dr. Blake would see things in the same way she saw them right now.
Of what use was it to struggle to keep everything the same? People changed. Did the catalyst matter? I shrugged again.
“Can you tell me anything of what happened while you were with him?”
I shook my head. No, I couldn’t talk about that. It felt like betrayal. And I hated she knew that was why I couldn’t talk about it. I could feel her pity from across the room.
