Dancing

During the session, the therapist got a faraway look and started typing when I was confessing a difficult moment. It is my nature that if I do not feel someone is acknowledging me, I will stop speaking. He gets a notification ding and tends to that. I cannot help but feel his focus might be elsewhere, like maybe he is answering other clients during my session. None of his answers seem quite on point, but I have not seen him for two weeks. I wrote a message with a few reminders and updates because I could not trust him to remember otherwise.

Amber suggests this is the way of corporate online platforms. They are only trained to say a certain number of things reliably and are not conditioned to go much deeper. I could be better served by an AI, who would at least not be divided by anyone else existing in the universe. At least, I am not well served in a paradigm with more in common with fast food than psychotherapy. The sort of therapy I want doesn't exist much outside of fiction or wealth. Instead, I am given cookie-cutter aphorisms and mild notice to statements I think should bear more than an "Mm, that's interesting."

"Hey, so I enter into mild dissociative states where I am effortlessly performing social tasks but am not actually willing them," I say. "I am facing an Eriksonian crisis, so much so that I can ruin my month being reminded. I have emotional breakdowns such that I sob inconsolably--though fewer than I used to. Does any of that seem, as you put it, interesting?"

I come with a puzzle. Some of the pieces are already together. I need someone to help sort through the loose ones and figure out the last of the edge pieces. Instead, this therapist asks about metaphorical Parcheesi, and I must remind him this is not what I want. Or he looks at the parts I have assembled already without seeing them because they are different from the pictures he was taught to see in his psych classes. He leaves ten minutes early--not that I mind--but he has done nothing to help me with the puzzle. I have carefully taken all the pieces out of the box, at least the one I have found. All he did was jostle the coffee table and leave, so I have to put them back in the box, a process that takes hours to do right, during all of which I am oversensitive and resentful. Discussing this can make me crumble, so making myself vulnerable had better be worthwhile.

He ends the session by thanking me for talking, but that sounds hollow. I want someone who actually understood me better at the end than at the beginning.

I feel myself pulling away from Amber because of fear, which I acknowledge is not a reaction that makes much sense, as I want to be as close to Amber as I can. I am scared our relationship will erode because I cannot give them everything they want, which isn't healthy. They thank me for trying. I half-joke that I am doing it all for them, but I am actually doing this because I am miserable. Amber may occasionally be sad, but this doesn't hurt them like it does me.

Therapy has opened a wound in me without offering a bandage. I don't see the purpose in it if I dread every session for abrading me and doing nothing else. I may be unable to open up to another person when I do not feel sure they are going to honor that. I do not lack for rejection sensitivity. This therapist once spent weeks not responding to a message I sent, even to acknowledge I had sent it, which may have been when I started questioning if he was the right one. I do not need thorough responses--that is the point of sessions--but I do want the therapist to validate my feelings and support me.

I want badly to keep Amber in my life. They say they love me because I am a great partner for them, and I want to believe that. I am in many ways, and perfection is an impossibility. I cannot imagine someone who would affirm me as much as they do. It is not flawless. We are healing people and may always be. We trip over things that hurt the other person, but I know we never mean to.

Amber has lately taken to cleaning our apartment as a compulsion. It was rarely particularly messy, though there was some clutteredness when they were immersed in their classes and spread an areole of papers around their end of the sofa, which I was forbidden to touch, as they had them exactly where they wanted them. Amber scours the kitchen every night, meaning they no longer go to bed with me. They sometimes wake me up when they do come to bed, which is not salubrious to my mental health. Sleep has become one of the most crucial parts of my day, as it wraps that myelin sheath around my nerves for the coming day. A bad night's sleep can result in my mental health becoming markedly worse in a way that several good days cannot fully fix because I can become triggered.

They lingeringly hug me and then ask if listening to music would help. I am shaky, but I say it would. They pop one of their earbuds into my ear. The song, a lightly crooning woman, features the lyrics "Don't leave me" and talks about wanting to be consumed by the other person. I squeeze Amber to me and feel a lack of the humorous cushion we spend so much of our lives immersed in because it would be too like exposure to spend our days with our skin bare to the elements. I hold them through the remainder of the song, their shaggier hair against my cheek, and I believe more that we will be okay.

"I may be slightly avoidant," I say to Amber, to which they agree, "but I do not think that is the whole of it. I don't know what the whole of it is."

I thank Amber for the dance, as that was what I needed in that moment.

last watched: Adventure Time
reading: Luda