Obviously I won't use her real name.

I’m going to call her Josie. She looks like a Josie to me. I never thought her name suited her. I generally form immediate opinions about other people’s names, sometimes they are 100% a Charlie, but other times they might be only 65% a Richard or a Susan.

I picked her name from a long list of psychotherapists handed to me by the guidance counselor at my high school, the day after I became an emancipated minor. I didn’t know anything other than her name when I chose her, but something told me she was who I needed at the time.

Some people have posed to me that the universe is kind and is always, generally, aiming to work in our favor if we’d just get out of the way and let it happen. I’m not sure I buy that. Maybe I just think I matter a lot more than I do. Maybe that’s why I needed a therapist in the first place. At sixteen, freshly un-parented and rapidly deteriorating into adulthood, I needed any help that the universe could offer. I guess it gave me Josie.

I wore a suit.

Because that’s the kind of person I was at sixteen. I had my file folder with my freshly minted-and-stamped emancipation papers. It probably also held my other court documents and perhaps a resume. I sat down across from her ready to present myself — but also to suss out her credentials. I immediately began to scan the walls of her office for degrees. I squinted at the contents of her bookshelf. I looked for William James, Freud, Jung—I wondered if she’d opened any of them at all since she got out of grad school.

I turned back to face her, crossing my legs and thinking myself rather cavalier. She was petite, in her early fifties and had a mane of quaggy blonde-white hair. Before she even opened her mouth I knew she was going to have a similarly plumose voice. I remember wondering if that’s part of one’s psychoanalytic training. I imagined that somewhere on a rubric there was a measure of vocal quality. Therapists-in-training would sit across from each other and say, in intentionally dulcet tones, How are you? and would receive feedback like, The timbre was rather intense that time. I thought Josie had probably been at the top of her class if that were the case.

I offered her my emancipation paperwork. On the phone with her a week earlier, when I had made the appointment, she asked me to bring it along. I reminded her of this and coolly informed her that if she had any questions about its validity, she could contact my attorney. She smiled, revealing a barely perceptible gap between her two front teeth, and flicked her eyes up at me.

“I don’t have any doubts about its validity, I just wanted to see it,” she said, handing it back to me. “I’ve never seen one before.”

She’d merely been curious. Feeling deflated, I relaxed into the chair a bit more. I liked her. Despite my best efforts, I found her slightly endearing. At least she’d been honest with me about her motives. Others had been content to gawk at me and ponder the myriad reasons why I’d “do such a thing.” At least she had been kind enough to admit her curiosity in earnest.

Almost immediately I wondered if she had children.

April 27th, 2008: I dreamed (and I never do) last night that I had my session with Josie and spent the entire time on the floor. I don’t think this is far off. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a premonition. Hell, I might just walk in and fall down. That’s really what I’ve been waiting for, that release. I want to cave in like those little dolls that have jointed legs and you thumb the bottom of their pedestal and they collapse. I want to collapse. I think I need to, it’s probably inevitable by now. I want to fall, I want to let go.

For the remainder of high school I would see her once a week, usually Tuesdays after school. I would sit in the chair just outside her door and busy myself with something—a book and, later, a cellphone, so that when she opened her door to receive me I could look up at her and act as though I hadn’t been waiting all week for my hour. I was ashamed that I found it helpful, because I thought it supported the theory that I really did need therapy. No doubt I did, as I was lurching toward a depression that, while a few years off, had already climbed the ladder of my ribs and periodically punched my heart in the face — a blatant reminder that my life was hard and don’t-you-forget-it.

Josie behaved just as she was trained. She sat quietly, listened attentively —but then, there were a few things about her that unnerved me. They were shards of who she truly was outside the office, outside of being my therapist. I read in one of many textbooks on the subject of clinical psychology that a good therapist acted as a blank canvas onto which the patient (or “client”) projects their thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc.

Most of the time, Josie served this purpose well: she was a mirror, or a blank slate, tabula rasa—but then, occasionally, her face opened up like a window and I saw peeks into her mind, her thoughts, her life. For one thing, she was barefoot a lot. It was her office so I suppose she had a right to be comfortable, but it always made me curious. Was she barefoot because she liked to feel grounded? Because she didn’t like to track dirt in from outside? Because her feet grew too hot in shoes? Her barefootedness paired with her whimsical hair, which grew longer during all the years I spent seeing her, and her feathery voice gave me this old hippie impression. She was real-life 70s nostalgia.

I was coming of age in an era of neuroticism and achievement while, no doubt, she had been my age at a time when there was almost aggressive empowerment and highly potent drugs. I sat across from her week after week and hoped she had smoked some good weed in her lifetime.

March 10th, 2011: I’m just going to write this as a screenplay because, I don’t know, it seems more apt than my normal stream of consciousness journaling. Stand by. (P.S. I am “GIRL” — but you knew that, future me.)

GIRL: My mother always tells me that I let people talk me into being emancipated. I let her believe that because it’s easier than admitting how disappointed I am in her. But the reality is, what if she’s right? What if I got conned into this because people were imposing their beliefs about what my family should be like. The only place I know how to behave, the only place I know what to do, is with my mother or grandmother. I know what they want me to be and so I do it and…I guess they’re home. They’re my family.

This admission causes GIRL to cry harder, though she hides it adeptly.

JOSIE: You’re so defined by what you think everyone else wants you to be…so what about who you are?

GIRL: That makes no sense, it isn’t even a question.

JOSIE: Who are you when you’re alone?

GIRL: … I’m not anyone. I don’t do anything. I don’t have a concept of myself.

JOSIE: Exactly. It’s exhausting, isn’t it?

GIRL: Listen, I know it’s your job to listen to this but I just keep coming here with the same problems, so, I’m sorry I’m wasting your time.

JOSIE (firmly): No, you’re not.

GIRL is silent. The camera pans out of the window to cars passing in the street, we hear them, then we hear JOSIE clear her throat. She begins to say something, but GIRL has a sense that the session is going to end soon, so she rises, her hip cracking loudly. She says “ow” and then walks slowly over to her shoes. Her ankles crack and she says “ow” again, quieter. The camera pans over to JOSIE‘s face which is somber, but her nervous hands give her away. GIRL opens the door, and she steps out.

Interior. We hear JOSIE‘s line as GIRL quietly shuts the door.

JOSIE: I’ll see you…(she doesn’t finish the sentence)

Exterior. GIRL walks along the street. The sky is gray and it’s chilly. After taking a few steps away from the building, she stops and turns around. The camera is stationary as she heads back toward the building. We watch her go inside.

Interior. JOSIE’s office. We see JOSIE collecting her notes and rising from her chair just as the door opens, GIRL enters. The camera pans to JOSIE’s face, which is surprised.

GIRL shifts nervously and shuts the door behind her. She is crying.

GIRL: I try really, really hard not to lump you into the category of everyone else.

JOSIE: Lump me into the category of…?

GIRL: Anyone, you know, anyone. I try so hard not to do it. I’ve always done this, though, so don’t think you’re fucking special. I do this to everyone and I try to stay objective here because it won’t work if I’m not. (Her crying intensifies.) Do you know how hard it is for me to sit there and resist crawling over and throwing myself at your feet, begging you to make it all go away? I know you can’t help me, and I want to stop, I don’t want to keep doing this.

JOSIE: But the relationship here is that you need to be vulnerable, that’s your job. I can’t wrap my arms around you—

GIRL: (screeching ) I fucking know that!

JOSIE: —I just provide feeble… “I understands” and “I knows”

GIRL: Maybe this isn’t going to work, maybe I should stop. This isn’t helping, it isn’t going to help. I need to stop.

JOSIE: No, what you need to do is not run away from me like you run away from everyone else. You need to keep coming. You don’t have to grovel or—

GIRL: I know when I’m supposed to leave. I don’t choose, I know when I have to go.

JOSIE: It’s just going to keep happening until–

GIRL, without looking at her, turns toward the door. She has heard someone come into the waiting room. She exits.

The camera pans up to JOSIE, who looks down.

Cut to black.

When I went to college, I figured I’d never see her again. I wrote her a nice-enough letter to thank her for her time, her insights. I assumed it was the adult way to part after such a strange ‘relationship’ as that of therapist-patient. Alas, it was not to be the end. A year or so later I ended up back in her office, thirty some-odd pounds lighter, seemingly older and more worn. She had grown older, too and she had a new office in a different town. She had changed her hair color and perhaps both of us were in the middle of a new beginning.

Fragments of her old office were in this new one — I remembered some of the artwork on the walls, the children’s toys and the books. It was odd, but perhaps necessary, to be sitting across from her, both of us looking like different people—both of us feeling like different people. Now, I was an adult even if I was too sick to be a fully realized one. Having worked through a lot of my past with her, I was now confronting a painful and often lonely present—and terrifyingly uncertain future.

Sometimes I would see her twice a week during these years and it wasn’t uncommon for weeks to pass me by and she would be the only human interaction I would have. I had so many questions — and while she didn’t particularly furnish any answers, she did provide me a safe place to explore my internal experience and for that I was deeply grateful. And human contact, even if it’s slightly impersonal and you’re paying for it, is comforting.

Therapy is like hiring a prostitute in that regard.

Josie was very skilled at her chosen professional. While, over time, she ceased to be an entirely blank slate before me, the bits of her that were splashed on the canvas were more, intentional strokes that were helping me create my external world. I have always been someone who is stuck in her head to my own detriment and through having her to validate my thoughts as they emerged, but also be cognizant of her, her reactions (however minute) and in little ways throughout the years—her story.

May 4th, 2011: I told Josie about last night, when I was in the kitchen making something to eat and I found myself chanting, I have to stop doing this, I have to stop doing this, over and over again. When I took a shower, I got naked in front of the full length mirror and forced myself to look. I could see my ribcage and my hip bones. And my reaction to this was, “Why are they so big? Look how huge they are. How can I make them smaller, please?”

She acknowledged this and said, “It’s your internal structure. The fact that you see them means you don’t have enough meat on your bones…you aren’t ever going to be one of those tiny, waif-y, petite (insert like a million other adjectives she pulled out of her ass) girls.”

God damn it, Josie, why not? Easy for her to say, Lilliputian bitch.

June 13th, 2011:

. . .At the end of our session, I kind of said something along the lines of this to Josie, and told her I’d just as well skip my twenties entirely and jump ahead to 30, which is where I rightfully belong in terms of my perspective. And she was like, “But you’ll miss all the fun.” Which implies, I guess, that your twenties are supposed to be decent. I never really thought about it as being a decade of any real value, because my parents went straight from high school to “family” and “work” and they didn’t speak of such tom foolery. What the hell will I do with myself for a whole decade? I mean, not that I was planning to settle down anyway, but being in your 30s just makes more sense to me. That seems to be when life starts, when people start being people rather than just persons-in-training.

Then, she nostalgically spouted, “I liked 28.”

And I couldn’t help but curious as to why, and she added, “Before I got married and had a lot of responsibility, and before I had kids.”

I’ve been seeing Josie for seven years.

You know how popular science has always lead us to believe that we, essentially have a whole new body every seven years because all our cells replace themselves and we have new, fresh skin? I certainly feel like that’s true to some extent. In the seven years that have elapsed, I’ve found myself in an entirely new body and new mind. So has Josie, I think. The nature of being in a room alone with another person for an hour a week, just talking in their presence, is that you notice things about them without trying. Well, perhaps she’s trying—because it’s her job.

For me, it was more by osmosis that I took in the subtleties of her appearance —and anticipated their evolution as the years passed and we both aged. She’s still barefoot in most of our sessions, that hasn’t changed. Time has thinned her face. Her hair, has remained downy (though the hue changes from time to time). She still speaks with an analytic lull, though, occasionally there is a shared moment of laughter between us.

In her presence I have found myself, lost myself, and then come to the realization that I am in constant motion — it’s not a question of whether I’m lost or found, but who’s looking? In the walls of her offices, as there have been several over the years, I have cried until I’ve nearly lost consciousness. I’ve laughed and made plans, dreamed about growing up, expressed my deepest secrets and had wonderful epiphanies. I have practiced saying, or thinking, or feeling that which has eluded me in daily life:

“No.”

“I love you.”

“I’m frightened.”

“Help me.”

I don’t know if, in another seven years, I’ll find her name in my calendar (or, as I’ve been doing discretely for years, a single initial “J”). To be honest, I don’t see myself sticking around that long; the world is a big ol’ place and I want to see a few more corners of it. Likewise, something tells me her life is moving toward unwinding into later-life, perhaps one that includes less time in the office and more time on the open sea, or doing something quaint and crafty. I don’t know if she does crafts, but she seems like the type of person who does, so I imagine if she doesn’t already she’s probably going to take it up in retirement.

All these years later I marvel at the fact that I picked her name arbitrarily off a list that was thrust in front of me like a declaration. Is it far-fetched to think it was just a stroke of good luck? Did my internalized assumptions about names have merit? Was it some trick of the subconscious? Or was it, could it have been, that the universe made it so?

Huh; fodder for discussion during our next session, I guess.