This morning I attended therapy for the first time in about eleven years. Between seventeen and thirty, I saw about six therapists. Honestly, none of it truly helped, but I’m not sure if I can blame any of them: my problems are mainly neurological in nature, so I might as well have asked them to rewire my brain.
When I was in my early twenties, I worked briefly as a teacher. First and last time I did that. A company where I’d taken a course hired me to teach. I will never forget the moment when the three workers who came for the course met me, all of them in their forties. They were disappointed by my age. “You’re our teacher?” From their perspective, I was some young know-nothing that they had to subject themselves to learning from. I don’t know whether they truly learned anything from me, and honestly, I didn’t care either. I did my best to prepare the work and to explain it, but whether or not they got anything out of it, that was their problem. The company was shady about paying me, too: they wanted to do it under the table. In retrospect, I wish I had rejected that job. I wish I hadn’t gotten involved in so many things that only linger as bad memories for my OCD to exploit.
Now, at forty-one, I found myself in the opposite situation, although I was far gentler than the shithead worker who asked me that with a disappointed face. When I entered the room where the therapy would take place, I found out that my two therapists seemed to be in their mid-twenties at the most. I’m not good at judging people’s ages, though, so I may have been mistaken, but they looked that way to me.
Until this morning, for the last year and a month that I’ve been unemployed, I hadn’t talked in person to anyone beyond my mother and cashiers. I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t have any trouble talking to them despite the usual anxiety of being an autist outside my room. I didn’t have trouble telling them any of the horrible stuff that has gone on in my life, or what goes on in my brain: my OCD-related intrusive thoughts, my terrible work experiences, ending up at the ER due to work stress, my failed relationships, my childhood trauma, my suicide attempt, my hikikomori period.
The sole moment that nearly got me to tear up was when I told them details about the best story I’ve ever written: Motocross Legend, Love of My Life. Izar Lizarraga, the central character in that story, has been burned into my heart as if I had truly known her and still mourned her, and in a way, of course, I do: she’s the incarnation of the childhood trauma that undid me, from which I will never recover. I mention this because it surprised me; I had told them so much nasty, disturbing shit about my life, and it was when I was simply trying to explain to these two young women the effect that Izar had on that story’s narrator when I had to control my speech, as I feared tearing up.
The two therapists were nice and seemed kind. I live the kind of life in which, if I want another human being to listen to my problems, I have to pay them. I was going to say that AI listens too, but that also requires paying.
One of the therapists surprised me by sharing that she also has sensory processing issues. I won’t specify much, but she understood my problems with light, noise, etc., because she’s also wired wrong that way. She explained that she uses earplugs named Loop, which I didn’t know about, to handle noise when needed. It was nice to talk to someone who also struggles with the basic reality of sensorial existence, but then again, my sensory issues are small in comparison with my inability to form emotional attachments to flesh-and-blood human beings, the daily torture of Pure O OCD, the fact that I can’t keep jobs or even be hired most of the time.
I talked about my Sissy Spacek obsession, because of course I did. I mentioned that people are remembering her, or finding out about her, because a modern reimagining of the Carrie story has become popular. The therapist with the sensory processing issues said, “Oh, so she was the original Carrie?” I felt a bit proud for Sissy then.
One of the therapists asked me how come, given that my daydreams are about hanging out with the people I’m obsessed with, I don’t form attachments to regular people. Something to that effect. Fair question. The problem is that the scenarios in my head are controlled. In person, my anxiety, the fact of my body, my guts constantly bothering because of IBS, the fact that I can’t read people’s faces or even follow a normal conversation, all of it keeps me from feeling connected. And likely, I simply can’t connect with human beings due to my fucked up neurological makeup. I’ve felt true grief, pain, etc. for characters from my stories, while I wasn’t bothered when my own mother was going through a surgery that could have killed her. It’s just what it is.
They asked me what I expected out of these sessions. I told them that I wanted to snap out of the paralysis that means I can’t even be arsed to look for a job. I’m really putting a burden on those poor women. She asked whether I was afraid of applying for jobs and being rejected. I told her no. My fear was that I’d get a job and find myself back in an office, surrounded by people for eight hours a day, not counting the commute.
I asked them to look at their own lives and imagine how they would feel if their attachments to other people disappeared; not just the relationships, but their capacity to find satisfaction in them. What truly remains to keep you in this world? Your intellectual interests, your artistic pursuits. Pure pleasures of the flesh that don’t involve other people. None of it truly enough to want to stick around, at least not for me.
It was an interesting first session. I doubt this will serve me in the long run, but I won’t deny that talking to them for as long as it lasted was compelling enough.
