So today, when Wendell says, “It has meaning,” I know that by “it,” he’s also referring to us, our time together. People often think they go to therapy for an explanation—say, why Boyfriend left, or why they’ve become depressed—but what they’re really there for is an experience, something unique that’s created between two people over time for about an hour each week. It was the meaning of this experience that allowed me to find meaning in other ways.
Months will pass before I’ll toy with the idea of turning these late-night laptop sessions into a real book, before I’ll decide to use my own experience to help others find meaning in their lives too. And once I get up the courage to expose myself in this way, that’s what it will become: the book you are reading right now.
“Wendell,” he says again, letting the name sink in. “I like it.”
But there’s one more story to tell.
“I’m ready to dance,” I said to Wendell a few weeks before, surprising not just me, but him. I’d been thinking about the comment Wendell had made months earlier after I told him that I felt betrayed by my body on the dance floor at the wedding, by my foot that had lost its strength. He had offered to dance, to show me that I could both reach out for help and take a risk, and in doing so, I realized later, he had taken a risk. Therapists take risks all the time on behalf of their patients, making split-second decisions on the presumption that these risks will do far more good than harm. Therapy isn’t a paint-by-numbers business, and sometimes the only way to move patients beyond their stuckness is by taking a risk in the room, by going out of the therapist’s own comfort zone to teach by example.
“I mean, if the offer’s still on the table,” I added. Wendell paused. I smiled. It felt like a role reversal.
“It is,” Wendell said, after the briefest of hesitations. “What would you like to dance to?”
“How about ‘Let It Be’?” I suggested. I’d been playing the Beatles tune on the piano recently and it popped into my head before I realized it wasn’t exactly a dance song. I considered changing it to something by Prince or Beyoncé, but Wendell got up and grabbed his iPhone from his desk drawer, and within a minute the room filled with those iconic opening chords. I stood, but immediately got cold feet, stalling with words, telling Wendell that we needed something more clubby and danceable, something like . . .
That’s when the song’s chorus erupted—Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be—and Wendell started rocking out like a teenager at a heavy-metal concert, exaggerating for comic effect. I watched in amazement. There was buttoned-up Wendell, doing air guitar and all.
The song went on to its quieter, poignant second verse about the brokenhearted people, but Wendell was still rocking the hell out of this, as if to say, Prince or Beyoncé be damned. Life doesn’t have to be perfect. I watched his tall, skinny frame jiving across the room, the courtyard a backdrop through the windows behind him, as I tried to get out of my head and just, well, let it be. I thought of my hairstylist Cory. Could I “just be”?
The chorus started up again and suddenly I was jiving across the room, too, laughing self-consciously at first, twirling in circles as Wendell went even crazier. But his dance training was apparent—or maybe it was less about his training and more about his sense of self. He wasn’t doing anything fancy; he just seemed wholly at home in his skin. And he was right: despite the problems with my foot, I needed to get out on the dance floor anyway.
Now we were both dancing and singing out loud together—about the light that shines in the cloudy night—belting out the verses at the top of our lungs as if we were at a karaoke bar, dancing exuberantly in the same room in which I’d fallen apart in despair.
There will be an answer, let it be
The music ended sooner than I’d expected, just as our sessions sometimes did. But rather than feeling like I needed more time, I found something satisfying about our time being up.
Not long before this, I’d told Wendell that I’d begun thinking about what it would be like to stop coming to therapy. So much had changed over the course of the year, and I was feeling not just better equipped to handle life’s challenges and uncertainties but also more peaceful inside. Wendell had smiled—it was the smile I’d seen recently that seemed to mean I’m delighted for you—then asked if we should talk about termination.
I wavered. Not yet.
Now, though, as Wendell placed his iPhone back in his drawer and returned to his spot on the couch, the time seemed right. There’s a biblical saying that translates roughly as “First you will do, then you will understand.” Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and experience something before its meaning becomes apparent. It’s one thing to talk about leaving behind a restrictive mindset. It’s another to stop being so restrictive. The transfer of words into action, the freedom of it, made me want to carry that action outside the therapy room and into my life.
And with that, I was ready to set a date to leave.
58
A Pause in the Conversation
The strangest thing about therapy is that it’s structured around an ending. It begins with the knowledge that our time together is finite, and the successful outcome is that patients reach their goals and leave. The goals are different for each person, and therapists talk to their patients about what those goals are. Experiencing less anxiety? Relationships going more smoothly? Being kinder to yourself? The endpoint depends on the patient.
In the best case, the ending feels organic. There might be more to do, but we’ve done a lot, enough. The patient feels good—more resilient, more flexible, more able to navigate daily life. We’ve helped them hear the questions they didn’t even know they were asking: Who am I? What do I want? What’s in my way?
It seems silly, though, to deny that therapy is also about forming deep attachments to people and then saying goodbye.
Sometimes therapists find out what happens afterward, if patients come back at a later point in their lives. Other times we’re left to wonder. How are they doing? Is Austin thriving after leaving his wife and coming out as a gay man in his late thirties? Is Janet’s husband with Alzheimer’s still alive? Did Stephanie stay in her marriage? There are so many stories left unfinished, so many people I think about but will never see again.
“Will you remember me?” Julie had asked, but the question wasn’t unique to her situation.
And today I’m saying goodbye to Wendell. We’ve been talking about this goodbye for weeks, but now that it’s here, I don’t know how to thank him. As an intern, I was taught that when patients thank us, it helps to remind them that they did the hard work.
It’s all you, we tend to say. I was just here to guide you. And in a sense, that’s true. The fact that they picked up the phone and decided to come to therapy and then work through things every week is something no one else could do for them.
But we’re also taught something else that we can’t really understand until we’ve done thousands of hours of sessions: We grow in connection with others. Everyone needs to hear that other person’s voice saying, I believe in you. I can see possibilities that you might not see quite yet. I imagine that something different can happen, in some form or another. In therapy we say, Let’s edit your story.