After our first session, my therapist, Mike, showed up the next week. I wasn't exactly surprised, but I wasn't really expecting him to, either. I was deep in my hole, which was lonely, but it allowed me to wallow in my misery without interruption and to develop a protective numbness where I didn't feel much of anything. Mike and I spent our first few sessions mostly chatting, getting to know each other, mostly Mike getting to know me. I have no real way of gauging my progress as we went along, I just know I was beginning to feel better. Studying spirituality and seeing things from a different perspective were factors. Mike's ability to reveal insights into my past and how my experiences as a child caused some of my actions and attitudes as an adult to work against me were real revelations to me. I began to see myself less as a victim and more as a person of considerable inner strength.
I was still very unhappy. In fact, I remember shouting out loud, I HATE MY LIFE!" At Mike during one of our sessions. And I did. He took it in stride, and was probably pleased that I felt comfortable enough to let it out at last.
I didn't feel any more useful, though, and writing a blog or short story, or whatever, still eluded me. I was still horribly lonely and still felt my life was empty. Even though a small window of hope had opened in the blank wall of my future, i was still stuck in a tiny half-room, lying in a bed, able now to move one leg less than an inch. But it had been like that for months and wasn't improving so that wasn't much to get excited about. Mike's and my work was definitely not done. And work it was. As he told me, "Therapy is hard. If you're having fun it's not working." Well, maybe. But I still looked forward to our sessions.
One day, epecially, he had an extra-positive effect on me. It was around the beginning of summer. We'd had our session and he'd gone, so I was surprised when his face appeared from behind the curtain that hung down the middle of the room. He was grinning while he came all the way in, holding something out in front of him, extending his hand to me. In it was a dandelion with a perfect ball of seeds on top of the stem. I was so touched. He knows that dandelions remind me of Lyra and he'd evidently seen this outside, picked it, and gone out of his way to bring it to me. I hadn't realized I'd been encasing my heart in stone until I felt some of it fall away.
In August we had a particularly rough session. I'd done a lot of crying and a lot of soul searching. I was talking about having chosen the rough,steep road that was covered with rocks to stumble over, wondering why I hadn't taken the smooth, easy road to go Home. I felt like I was this close to making some kind of breakthrough. But we were out of time. He held up one finger, said "Hold that thought and we'll pick up where we left off next week."
I was fighting off two infections at the time: a UTI (as usual) and something a lot worse; something I'd never heard of before called Cellulitis. I don't mean the lumpy fat that some people develop on their thighs. This Cellulitis is a staph infection of the skin. My entire right leg turned bright red and was burning hot to the touch. I developed a fever. I was so weak I couldn't even hold a phone conversation. I abandoned my iPad. Didn't even check my email. I did sleep a lot.
I felt a little stronger by Saturday so I fired up my iPad again. I found an email from my therapist which he had sent the previous Thursday, the day of our last session. It said, essentially, that the nursing home had told him he couldn't see his clients here anymore, not even to do a termination session. He said they gave no explanation.
My first thought was, oh great. I'm losing someone else. And I knew I'd never be able to make progress without help. I got really depressed because I assumed I'd never see him again and the thought of starting over with a dififerent therapist was exhausting.
So I found myself back at those crossroads again. Only this time it was different. More than I felt depressed, more than I felt hopeless, more than I felt despairing, I felt FURIOUS!
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