Two weeks before my father died last June, I wrote to my old psychotherapist, L.P.
We’d exchanged a few brief emails, but we hadn’t spoken in 15 years. I hoped she would be willing to see me.
L.P., who asked that I use her initials to maintain her privacy, was surprised to hear from me and suggested we meet a few times to see how it felt. Maybe she was simply treating me like a new client, but I wondered if I was being put on probation. I kept thinking about the self-absorbed 20-something who used to visit her office. I could appreciate why she might proceed with caution.
I rode the subway to our first appointment, full of questions: What was she like now? Would we still work well together? What if we didn’t?
L.P. greeted me in the reception area, and her smile quelled my anxieties. We took in the sight of each other: At 53, my hair was speckled with gray, my face a little drawn. L.P., who’s almost 20 years older than me, was impeccably dressed in summer layers, her warm brown eyes alert behind tortoiseshell glasses. I was certain she had her portrait aging in the attic.
We settled into her office and discovered we’d both developed a little hearing loss. So we leaned in closer as we chatted.
She remembered a lot, so it was a relief not to have to rehash the mishigas that came with managing my father’s health care. But I’d also withheld a lot from her when I was younger. I’d been concerned she’d judge me for some of my ill-advised choices. At the time, I’d seen her as an authority figure, the only adult in the room.
I wasn’t prepared for the memories her office brought up. Our time was unfolding differently than I’d expected: I was rambling on about our early sessions, seemingly without an agenda.
Finally, L.P. asked softly but pointedly, “Why are you really here?”
***
I was 24 when I lost one of my closest friends, Lisa, to suicide. I didn’t know how to process any of it: her profound pain, seeing her dead at the hospital and later in an open casket, her parents’ loss. Realizing how easy it was to die, I became unmoored.
Grief brought me to L.P.’s office, but we soon moved on to other topics: I was diagnosed with depression just before college, and moved to New York, far from everyone I knew. The city allowed me to build my queer life on my terms; I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
But I couldn’t figure out how to turn my affairs with unavailable women and my dead-end publishing jobs into something more. And I couldn’t stop obsessively parsing my interactions at work, on dates, at parties. I was convinced people perceived me as vapid, irritating. I often felt very alone. I didn’t want to want to kill myself. But I wanted to die.
L.P. did a lot of listening, guiding our sessions with thoughtful questions that helped me draw my own insights. Her reserve and firm boundaries made her a tabula rasa onto which I could project anything, but they also rendered her mysterious. If not for the canceled checks, I thought she could have been a figment of my imagination.
I assumed I wasn’t to ask L.P. personal questions. Instead, I made snarky assumptions. I labeled the midcentury modern furniture in her office “Design Out of Reach,” quipping that she must have a rich husband to afford it on a therapist’s salary.
Why, she’d asked, do you assume I am straight?
Over more than a decade of working together, I got better. My self-critical thoughts faded. I stopped dissecting every conversation. I was in a healthy relationship with a woman I loved and planning a family with her. I was surrounded by good friends. I’d found a way to make peace with Lisa’s death. I was more functional, productive, even happy.
Which told me there was little else for me and L.P. to do together in therapy. I became increasingly agitated by the thought of a long goodbye. So I chose a short goodbye instead and ended treatment — effective immediately.
L.P. seemed taken aback but offered to leave her door open.
“Thanks,” I said, “but I don’t think I’ll need to take you up on that.”
And for 15 years, I believed it.
***
One Friday evening, a year before my father’s death, I saw a man from my neighborhood having a breakdown. He was crying in the middle of the street, beckoning cars to hit him. I managed to lure him onto the sidewalk to talk. He told me that he’d lost his daughter, and that she’d been a new parent.
The encounter shook me. It awakened memories of Lisa, of her late parents, of other friends’ deaths.
Soon after, personal crises rolled into my life as if on a conveyor belt: I got diagnosed with cancer, and my father’s Parkinson’s entered its final stages, made worse by his denial that it was happening.
I didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to deal with my feelings. I was crying all the time when I wasn’t blowing up at friends and family. I was self-eviscerating again. And I couldn’t shake the memory of that man on the street from my mind.
It wasn’t until the death fantasies resurfaced that I realized my depression had returned. They weighed more heavily on my middle-aged mind. How could I harbor suicidal thoughts when my father was fighting for his life? When so many friends had lost their battles for theirs? When I had a wife and a son, and family and friends who loved me?
That’s how I found myself writing to L.P. late one June afternoon, wondering whether her offer still stood. I hoped she hadn’t written off the brat who used to judge her.
But she hadn’t. She’s a therapist, after all.
When I brought up my old antics, L.P. seemed unfazed, chalking them up to youth. She remembered me not as petulant but as someone eager to do “the work.” She saw me trying to figure out why I was drawn to unhealthy situations.
It was a kind of muscle memory that led me back here: L.P. understood my depression better than anyone in my life. She was the person who helped me climb out all those years ago.
So when she asked me why I was really in her office, I suspect she already knew.
It took me some time before I saw that I’d been reminiscing with purpose: not to stall or atone or absolve myself for the person I once was — but to figure out how to get better again. My younger self had suffered and, with L.P.’s help, recovered. I had to re-experience being that person, and being her in front of L.P., to remember how I found my way out of my depression.
It was effective. I’ve finally stopped mining our earlier chapters for answers. We are both older, and our dynamic has changed: In some ways, we’ve become different people. L.P. even confessed that she’d been too rigid about her boundaries when we’d worked together before.
Nowadays, I even find myself occasionally disagreeing with her take on things, which I don’t mind. Engaging in a dialogue is helpful, too. I have more experience — in therapy, in life — so I am less intimidated.
In fact, we are coming up on a year, and recently I have emerged from my black hole. But does that mean our work is complete?
I don’t know, to be honest.
We won’t be in this office forever. But until she tells me otherwise, I’m in no rush to leave.
Kera Bolonik is the editor in chief of DAME Magazine.
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