How Therapy is Going
“We’re almost done with our session. Anything else you want to talk about?” My therapist asks me this at 4:44 and my first response with less than a minute left is “I dunno, I guess the war in Ukraine is pretty wild.”
Leave it up to me to wrap up an otherwise cathartic therapy sesh by dropping a literal bomb right at the buzzer. What was I expecting to get out of that in thirty seconds or less? My therapist must have felt how every waitress feels when someone orders the prime rib right before closing. Like she needs a raise, a shot of whiskey, and maybe to put a limit on the amount of mentally insane people she has to deal with on a daily basis.
I had already poured my heart out about my existential dread of 2019 and how it was amplified by my unresolved faith crisis of 2013, and how the catalyst for all of it was losing a dear friend to a sudden overdose. (Hence, therapy. Hey-oh!) I think it’s safe to say that I had already reached peak trauma purging for the day, and anything beyond that, especially of the world war 3 variety, would just be extra credit anyway.
My therapist did ask if I was still having a hard time with the death of that friend (she would), and I couldn’t even finish my sentence without bursting into tears. But surely everyone has a loss or two that even just thinking about makes them do the Kim Kardashian ugly cry face? Or is it just me?
I don’t experience prolonged sadness, though I do get microbursts of the sads. I consider them more of an emotional fart because it comes flying out when I least expect it. Just call me grandpa at the dinner table.
Sometimes I feel like I have enough trauma that if it were tangible I’d be on an episode of Hoarders, trying my best to look surprised and confused about how I inherited all of it while tucking the receipts under a nearby box of plastic flamingoes.
But here’s my hot take on trauma. Or at least, my trauma. Which is not going to be anyone else’s brand of trauma, so your mileage may vary. All those bad times probably had good times too. And even those okay times start looking better and better when you’re about 10 years away from it and your memory isn’t as sharp because you’re 34 now and forget to take your vitamins. Oh wait, that’s me.
I’ve got a box in my closet full of old photos and memories, and not all of them are happy times, but they’re important pieces of my story. My story is raw, messy, and beautiful. My photo box is old and about to burst because I am bursting at the seams with all the love I’ve ever felt.
In the end, it’s all really about love anyway. And I may not be able to fix the wars around us or the trauma inside us or the fact that I really make my therapist work for it but I can be a vessel for love, and that’s a start.
