Monthly Archives: June 2022

I remember the first time Nadja and I talked about loss. Actually, I think it’s fair to say we talked around that aspect. I mean, she talked around it. I let her talk around it in so far as I did not call her out on talking around the matter. The matter, as I call it, was her drinking, plus the fact that it brought negative consequences, like loss. Nadja thought the Board of Behavioral Science was being unfair in denying her an intern registration because of a DUI she’d picked up a year before. That was the event that had led her to me originally, though she didn’t come clean, so to speak, about that until six months into treatment. Anyway, the matter of loss was initially—perhaps originally and perennially—swamped under a defense of rage whose pedigree felt primal. See, the board was like her mother: an aloof, terse and judgmental object, denying validation, withholding approval, love. Why can’t she/they forgive, she might as well have been saying. Why can’t she look past imperfection, say that everything—that she—is okay.

The elephant in the room was her expectation that I’d be the same. After all, why else would she wait six months to stop burying the lede. It’s a good job that I’m nothing like aloof, terse, and judgmental such that projections like these would stick to me. I sort of recall the first time she coped with loss in the transference by dissociating, which in plainspeak meant that she’d go quiet, sport a look of dazed intoxication, and then begin swaying ever so slightly. “I can’t hear you right now”, she’d say, alerting me to a phenomenon that I’d simultaneously observe. At least, I think I recognized it on about the 3^rd or 4^th occasion, mostly because it looked roughly the same each time. Ah, you’re doing that thing, I will have thought—that thing you do when I’ve constructed an insight that hits on something, speaks some truth. What a waste of time it will have seemed as she tuned me out, making me feel what it’s like to be not listened to.

Over time I learned more about Nadja’s loss experiences: about her numerous losses in the realm of romantic love—oh how I paid the price for being a heterosexual male during those sessions; about the near loss of her toddler child in a swimming misadventure ten years ago. That incident brought accusations of parental neglect against her. Mortifying. Then there was the dual loss of her parents: first, her dad, to a medical misadventure, a botched cancer surgery. Then her mother: suicide. A year later. Nadja has reason to be mad. She’s known loss, I guess I’d say. Three years ago, I invited her to lay on the couch, be my first analytic case, though I never called it—her—that. She’d cut down on the dissociative gazing, I thought, was ready to deepen upon tolerating the critical transference in our sessions. Eventually, she took responsibility for her drinking, stopped blaming the board for holding her back. At some point, they stopped holding her back: they gave her a registration; more recently—finally—her therapist license. A big achievement, of course. I’d had her back all the way, she declared gratefully. I’d believed in her, implicitly. Good job, she thought. But she never became a control case. My loss, I think, and hers. I tried. She tried, sort of, but wouldn’t commit to coming more than two times per week. Now we’re terminating. Now that she doesn’t dissociate as much as she used to, she wants to replace me with a somatic therapist, a woman—not me. Only it’s taking a long time. I don’t know. Is nine months a long time to say goodbye? Seems this thing about losing, especially losing that which has been good and truthful, is really hard.

The fog. A roadblock. The boat—as in don’t rock it. The can of worms—as in don’t open it. These are some of my—well, not my favorite metaphors, necessarily. Metaphors can be tritely employed, become unnoticed parts of verbal furniture. Don’t forget ships: they sail, and by doing so they suggest something else that’s slipped away, a calamity not prevented. Oh, and that reminds me of boulders. They block. Or they roll and crush. Don’t overthink them, said a friend once. He meant metaphors in general, not just boulders. Don’t overthink them? Don’t read into them, he clarified, forgetting himself. His favorite book was Catcher in the Rye. His second favorite was One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

I suppose I started with fog because it’s the freshest metaphor I can bring to mind. It’s an oldie but goodie, but it showed up in my office the other day, reminding me first of a patient’s depression, then shortly thereafter of a writing assignment I hadn’t gotten to yet. J. was describing his state of mind the week he first heard of his now late-wife’s cancer. These days, he may have other apt metaphors for the stuck place he’s been in since her death, but fog is what came to mind as a signifier of confusion and comfort. The wife had been in a fog also: “I feel fine,” she said, following the appointment that first spoke of the tumor. Neither of them really took in the words. A year later she wasn’t fine at all. She was in another kind of fog, having lost a third of her body weight; roughly a third of her memory, by my patient’s estimation. Almost the entirety of her will in her last days. In the end the bond between had been foggy also—the apparent result of an affair the wife had been caught having a year before the illness was discovered. J. was stuck between resentment, guilt, and a layered coming together of loss.

He doesn’t dwell much upon the elements of fog. In that respect, he’s like my friend, incuriously using words, then moving on. For J., the metaphor of fog denotes a hateful condition that thwarts efficiency or focused energy. It’s something that keeps coming back. It’s unwelcome, something he and I should be working on, or something he should get medication for, not learn something from. Therefore, the reverie on foggy details is mine: I think of creeping white air of the type that hovers about my valley home on wintry days. Where I live fog is a rarity. It appears as if on schedule, heralding the height of a season, and a stilled, ritual presence. Its texture is moist but not sticky; its temperature is cool, which enables feeling cool; one can wade through it, seeing just a few feet ahead, which is all you need really if you move through life carefully, at a slow and sensible pace. You don’t have to get lost in a fog, not if you relax. I got lost in a fog—in the word fog, and with my indulgent conjuring. And as I waded sightless through the hour I lost touch with my patient, who had moved on to other words, but not moved on from his state of mind. But I think he saw me looking away, past his shoulder to some indefinite spot on a wall. His eyes seemed glazed, half registering my distraction but not speaking to it; not really noticing something important, that I was not paying attention. I looked back at him, seeking to recapture something, hide the sin of my disappearance. I’m sorry, I wanted to say. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry I went away, but I’m back now. And I’m not going anywhere.

Okay, lemme see…what do I want to talk about? Uh, not that…maybe…near the end. But I wish…I wish we were on the phone, not that I don’t like to see Mr. D. He’s waiting for me now. He’s looking at me. I think he can see into me sometimes, like he can see my thoughts. I hope he didn’t see what I was thinking just a while ago. Anyway, I’d better say something: “Okay, where to start. Well, business first. I put the check in the mail for this month and next month, so that should have us covered”. That’s what I say. There. That should please him. Big smile. That’s right: give him a big smile, stretch this out. He’s not saying anything. Did he? Maybe he uttered something, but I barely heard it. That didn’t take long—not nearly as long as I thought it would. I guess I gotta come up with something. I don’t think he did say anything; I think he just nodded about the money thing.

“So, Mr. D I don’t…I don’t think I’m doing too good. I know you’re going to think less of me when I say that I let you down. I fell off the wagon, as people say—let you down, let down the big guy. That’s the most important thing, of course”. Also, I could’ve said I let father Larry down, too. I feel bad. I haven’t spoken to him in a while. I’ll confess to him later. Well, right now it’s Mr. D that I’m confessing to. It’s not the same, not as cozy as confessional. Not as spiritual. Mr. D: he’s the mental side of things. He’s looking at me weird again, like he does sometimes. I wish I knew what to say. I wish we could spread these meetings out, not come as often. I think I’d have more to report. Tonight, I feel like I’m spread thin. Ugh! What’s he thinking? He must think I’m a hopeless case, coming here every time, or nearly every time, talking about my sad stories, my slips and other failures.  I’m gonna start talking about….no, I need to tell him about Luce, even though I’m not proud of that. I don’t quite know what he’ll say but I should take that chance. He’ll probably disapprove, though he never really says it like that. I don’t understand all that he says sometimes, like that thing he says about—what was it—something about not wanting to say no to women, about waiting for them to make the first move so that I can think it’s their idea, not mine. I kinda get what he’s saying, something about it not feeling like my fault or responsibility. Anyway, I don’t know but I always feel better after I come here, for a little while anyway—like, until I start my car and drive away. Ha, that’s funny. But now I sound pathetic. It’s the same when I leave father Larry, or when I’m talking to the big guy. I feel good for a while and then…I just have to remember what father Larry says and what Mr. D kinda agrees with: I’m never really alone.

So far, I’m not feeling that kind of good tonight. Mr. D just said something else that sounds familiar and I kinda get it but not really. I blanked out for a moment there, was thinking about Luce again, darn it! My mind is…what? What am I thinking about? Where is my head at? What am I doing here if I can’t even concentrate for just one hour, or even just a few minutes? Who am I doing this for? Wait, that was a weird question. Is that me? Sounded like something Mr. D would ask, making a point about how I don’t do things for me. Okay, he’s talking some more now, the pressure’s off me for a minute. Actually, I think I like what he’s saying now—it’s interesting—but I wish he’d tell me more. I mean, I wish he’d give me some tools for how to use what we’re talking about. I have no idea. Wait, that’s what he’s saying now—that’s super-weird—it’s like one of those times he’s seeing into my head, maybe. He’s saying I have no ideas, and he sounds…I don’t know, is he angry with me? That’s…I don’t know. Hey, I just had a thought: I don’t like this idea about how I don’t have ideas. I should say that. I should say, you know what, I’m not sure this was a good idea after all.

There’s nothing I can say in my defense so I won’t bother defending this thing I’m about to write. From the first moment to the last, the video was wretched, just one aural atrocity after another; one rabid sports fan after another spewing bile and gutter witticisms—the most absurd, hateful language anyone should have to endure, all because a team was letting them down. Letting me down also, I should add. I was no different. I was laughing my head off afterwards, thinking the vitriol was inspired. Burning my ears? Not exactly. That center forward: yeah, my grandmother could kick a ball better than he can. As for that goalie, I wouldn’t trust him to sit the right way on a toilet. He’s a disgrace. Has no business putting on the shirt, never mind kissing the badge of the tribe. Actually, now that I look at it—now that I say it out loud—I think I’m a disgrace. Acting like this, really? Barking at a television at six o’clock in the morning, then binging on post-game you tube commentary like a hypnotized adolescent. I don’t feel good about myself. It’s like I’ve sat up too late, slept in until noon, eaten too much sugar, not cleaned my teeth or brushed my hair. I feel all of that, earnestly, unhypocritically, impressively, for almost a minute. I’m into the freaks next, letting them carry my ball. The internet trolls: they’re much worse than me, I figure. They’re shameless, though they feel nothing but shame, have less to live for. They can’t possibly feel shame properly, looking and acting like they do; not as they film themselves frothing at the mouth, purging everything that hurts, contorting their faces, willing to get ugly for theirs and my evacuative pleasure. They’re doin’ it for me with this undressing they do. I’m living vicariously and I can match their deflation, if not their intensity.

And I can’t tear myself away from them. It’s over an hour now since the match finished and still I’m bathing in this aftermath of self-loathing and flagellation, just zoning out on chipped memories, how I wish things were like they used to be. The internet freaks are speaking for me, and not. I’m rolling with their mood swings, gazing back at their broken faces, just voyeuring their loss now. I’m starting to bristle at the unfairness, though. Through them I’m acting out some fantasy of unedited speech, unfettered rage—the license that lives far away from polite company, in an underground space during off hours. But one guy, the funniest one, is getting on my nerves calling out the right winger. Yes, the guy shouldn’t have been chosen to take that penalty. The number 9 should’ve taken it, no doubt. But spitting out that he should be sold the next morning, that we should never have signed him; that we should put him on a boat back to Brazil ASAP—that’s all a bit harsh. I’m glad I don’t play this game anymore. Glad I just watch, not that that’s much less toxic or exhausting. After all, it’s 9am and I’ve already ruined my Saturday with this bilious ritual. Soon I’ll be tired, need to go back to bed, feeling like I did as a kid, when it was time to stop playing and actually wanted to stop but couldn’t, or wouldn’t mostly because someone else wanted me to stop, needed me to stop. These days I can leave my toys on the playground, leave a mess that I can clean up later cuz there’s no one to step up and turn off my TV, that wretched monitor, and point me elsewhere to go do something worthwhile like reading a Bion paper for something like the 50^th time. Still, it’s a good thing no one will see me like this. It’s a good job no one will know.