Time Will Tell
Posted on June 17, 2008
Filed Under marriage, milestones, bat-ass crazy, My Better Half, Anxiety, challenges, therapy |
Now that I’m spending ridiculous amounts of time with various therapists, hired guns intent on fixing the inner turmoil, I’m learning that there are certain things that generally define a therapy experience. First there is the noise machine that fills the waiting room with crashing waves, chirping crickets, the strains of Tchaikovsky. It is an over compensation, this deliberate cacophony meant to give a person the assurance that their words, their tearful confessions, their angry cursing behind closed but flimsy doors, will not be over heard by the receptionist or the 10:30 appointment patiently waiting their turn to vex and keen while reading Women’s Day or People magazine in one of two leather arm chairs.
The hushed quiet of the private therapy room, free of the canned sounds of reception, is breathless and cool. Though it is dark, it is not dreary and there is some comfort in the fact that there is a Kleenex box and asian art work and a bowl of hard candies, butterscotch or peppermint, sickly sweet confections in a bowl, an oral diversion meant to ease the complexity of discussions about “relationship hygene” and the purpose of sexual encounters “to engage feelings of vulnerability and aggression which we have come to think of as taboo emotions and regularly suppress such frailties in most non-sexual human interactions.”
One can tell that much thought has been given to the arrangement of furniture in these therapy spaces. My personal therapist likes to sit in a straight backed chair pulled up to her desk while inviting me to take the seat that is directly adjacent to that desk. She can swivel to face me and put her feet up on the file cabinet. There is a window behind her and the filtered light illuminates the wisps of her short hair, glowing gold in the darkness of the room. Her visage is cast in shadow, completing the effect of deliberate anonymity. She is faceless, haloed even, playing the angel of benevolence whose expression I cannot read for the corona that surrounds her.
And our marriage therapist has his own contrived arrangement. He prefers a deep arm chair that faces a wide leather couch. There are two other arm chairs beside this couch. To sit one of these chairs would be to face the wall rather than the professionally dressed man who has greeted us gently, quiet but stern, paternally ushering us through the door. So we both sink into opposite corners of the long couch. We prefer to meet his gaze than that of one another, having shared a chilly car ride, a week of reserved hostility and patient withholding.
I get the feeling that he is making note of our seat selection. That our choice to sit together on the couch, however far apart, my habit of holding the throw pillow in my lap, hugging it to my chest as if for protection, tells him something about us as a couple, about the state of the connubial union. I only wish I could see the note he’s made next to “seat selection” - hopeless, helpless, hopeful, fucked. He must play a little game with himself. Upon first meeting a troubled couple, he must try to predict the outcome ahead of time, tagging the duo with some sort of premature prediction. He is, perhaps, keeping score of his ability to predetermine a couple’s destiny based solely on the place they choose to sit when first entering the inner sanctum.
But I have to believe we are learning things beyond where to place our fannies. Conversely, I fear that the learning, the progress, is supposed to be more efficient in its development, neatly packaged within the 50 minute therapy window, reaching its weekly conclusion by the end of each billable hour, when, in fact, we’ve both just managed to open a vein and are in the midst of a full soulful bleed on the oriental carpet when our fifty minutes have elapsed.
Almost as if there is an audible chime, a programmed alarm bell, we are ejected into the harsh glare of day, into the parking lot of our lives without the benefit of soft sounds and cushioned chairs and hard candies. We bleed and ooze a collective flow of unhappiness upon the pavement. And all the way home we wish for the mediator, the third party to help us frame and present our individual view points in a more palatable and digestible manner. I have thought to ask him how much it would cost to take him home with us for the week where he might spend some real time dissecting our likenesses, our differences, where he might really get a feel for the state of the union and can say, after seven short days, hopeless, helpless, hopeful, fucked with some measure of authority. That would be easier somehow than this slow burn that is perhaps progress and perhaps not and only time and countless seating arrangements will tell.
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