waspy aversion to introspection

Meanwhile, Dr. Feel Alright was examining my neurosis.

“I’ve been looking at a lot of internet porn lately,” I said.

“I thought you were weaning yourself from all that,” Dr. Feel Alright said.

I shrugged.

“The more you immerse yourself in it, the harder it will be for you to become intimate with a woman… It’s been three years since you’ve been in a relationship.  It lasted how long?”

“A few months…”

“What happened again?”

“She was too clingy.  She needed to be held all the time and constantly reassured of how much I loved her, which I didn’t.  She was… I don’t know, I guess you’d call her co-dependent…”

“I’d call her insecure.”

“That too…”

“And there’s been no one since?”

I stared at the floor.

“Why is that?”

I thought for a moment.  “I’m too set in my ways…”

“What does that mean?”

The question unnerved me.  “It means I’m not looking for anybody to change me.”

“Change you?  Or challenge you?”

My eyebrows twitched.

“Seems to me,” Dr. Feel Aright continued.  “That what you’re most concerned about is somebody coming into your life and forcing you to actually be with another human being.”

“Don’t follow you,” I said.

“Well, you’ve kept yourself pretty isolated over the years.  You don’t trust other people’s motives and don’t like the politics of interacting with others.  You’ve said this to me repeatedly.  You don’t like having to engage in the politics at work.  Don’t like the politics of dating. You don’t even vote because you don’t like politics.  This, to me, is like blaming your fear of the dark on the boogeyman.  The boogeyman didn’t create the dark.  We’re not even sure the boogeyman exists.  But it’s easier to blame the boogeyman, just as it’s easier for you to blame politics, as opposed to trying to figure out why people create so much anxiety in you.”

I was getting bored.  I wanted to know how much time I had left in my session, but I was afraid to look at my watch because I knew she would see it as a sign of deception and avoidance,  so I focused my eyes instead on a portrait of her family hanging on the wall.  Her husband resembled Fred MacMurray but only had a beard and black horn-rimmed glasses that made his eyes look like raisins. He appeared as if he’d just leaned over to his wife just before the picture was taken and whispered, “Okay, let’s hurry up and take this damn thing so I can get back to the office.” 

The children were fourteen-year-old fraternal twins.  Her son’s eyes looked a lot like mine.  Unfocused.  Cloudy.  Dilated.  They were the eyes of a real stoner.  And her daughter’s jaws were tensed; I imagined her pitching a major psychotic rage over being forced to participate in such an insane family ritual.  Even from that corny portrait, I could tell how miserable those children were.  They didn’t even look like they belonged there.  They looked like they were either adopted or kidnapped.  But it was my therapist who had the most curious expression.  It was as if she had just been given some devastating news before the photographer snapped the picture, and she was desperately trying to mask her emotions.  It was an expression she had probably acquired over years of enduring patients like me.

“So, what are your thoughts?” Dr. Feel Alright said.

I paused.  “I miss my childhood,” I said.

“Well, I think it’s entirely normal and healthy to revisit the past in your mind. We appreciate where you’ve been and enjoy the prior scenery.  But I think it should be a short visit.  Not a day trip.  A kind of a, drop in on your aunt on your way to see your grandmother kind of a trip.  I believe the goal of us all, every day and always, is to try and live in the present moment.  Thoreau said it best. ‘Only that day dawns, which we are awake.’  I think you live too much in the past.  I think we each have our sensibility about how much reminiscing is too much. Still, I believe the more you enjoy the moment, the more you will appreciate your new surroundings and the more eagerly you will strive to explore the wonderful new places right out your front door.”

I digested that.  “Interesting,” I said.

The alarm on her watch sounded.  “We’ll pick up on this in our next session… in the meantime…”  Dr. Feel Alright handed me a sheet of paper.  “I’ve got a homework assignment for you.  Would like you to answer these questions and be prepared to discuss them next week.”

I read the questions:

Who are you?

What do you want?

What was your father like?

Do you believe in God?

Who do you love?

I nodded.

“Questions?” Dr. Feel Alright said.

I shook my head.

“Getting a lot of non-verbals from you today.”

I fidgeted in my chair a bit.  “I’m fine.”

She watched me closely.  “See you next week?”

I waited before answering her.  “That’s fine,” I said, feeling my thyroid cartilage jumping everywhere.

As I left Dr. Feel Alright’s office, I couldn’t stop thinking about that family portrait and how coincidental the photographer had used a polarizing filter over the camera lens.