Hello, My Name is Compassion
New York, USA
November 25, 2008
I’m nervous. The bag of peanuts crunches in my coat pocket, and I stick my hand in it, just to feel the oily, salty texture of the snack. I want to eat one, but maybe I shouldn’t. I eat one anyway, and now I feel bad. I’m not supposed to be doing this anymore. I’m twisting uncomfortably in the straight-backed, standard waiting room chair.
The room is dimly lit; the warm beige colored carpet blends in smoothly with the softly lit smoky colored walls. There are relaxing water sculptures and a myriad of self-help and feel better about yourself magazines on the black cherry wood table in the center. It smells like health in here, but not the bleached sterile smell of a hospital, more of a warm grandma’s house, big hug kind of smell. I stare at the magazines on the table, and I contemplate picking one up, just to have something to do with my hands. They all have those articles about how to boost your self-esteem, how to be a better person, how to be strong, and healthy, and balanced and blah blah blah.
I don’t want to be here, but I am desperate. I need to be here, and I finally know it. Water is welling up inside my throat, but I’m not sure which tube it’s coming from. I think I’m choking. I pull my sweatshirt and my coat tighter around me. It’s really not that cold outside yet, but I’ve wrapped four layers around me. I pull my hood over my head too, maybe I can blend in with the chair and I won’t have to go to this appointment.
The muffled footsteps on the carpet announce that my newest, and up to date, fifth therapist within the past two years is approaching the bamboo screen that separates the waiting room from the rest of the clinic. My fists are clenched so tightly that my nails are digging wedges into the palm of my hand, but I can’t actually feel them. I’m holding my breath as she turns the corner and faces me, offering me a bright smile that lights up her face from below her chin right into the roots of her silver speckled hair. Her eyes are happy and welcoming, and they also seem to sparkle behind her dark, heavy rimmed glasses. I stand up clumsily from the chair, dropping the scarf that was in my lap, and she extends a hand towards me from under her black and white knit poncho,
“Hi Yali, it’s nice to meet you, I’m Joy.”
I take her hand, and she wraps it with both of hers in a firm and momentarily reassuring grip. When I bring myself to really look at her, I feel as though I’m looking at what my sister would look like, if she were 20 years older. The thought of Danielle sends a wave of heat through my upper body, and I relax. I listen to Joy as she’s talking about how the colder weather has caught her by surprise.
I find that she’s surprisingly normal and easy to talk to. In fact she seems to me like she would be more at ease in a classroom full of kids eager to snatch up their paintbrushes and colorful modeling clay. I follow around the row of offices; this place boasts a comprehensive approach to healthcare. If the services were listed on a restaurant take out menu, they could satisfy all tastes: western, eastern, homeopathic, psychiatric, psychological, nutritional and acupunctural. Most of the doors are closed, which I guess means that they are in session, but some of them are open and I can see the examination beds with the white tissue paper lying in wait for some vulnerable person to lay on them.
She leads me into her office nestled in a little alcove at the back of the clinic. It looks like almost every other therapist’s office that I’ve been in. There’s a couch, and it’s facing a chair where every therapist has sat and asked me to spill my life, whilst they take notes or nodded, or doodled, or possibly even slept with their eyes open. Except that this chair isn’t the same chair that the other doctors had; it’s a rocking chair, not too different, in fact, from the one that my grandma Lea sits in when she’s watching TV.
“Do you want to hang up your coat?”
I’m sitting on the couch with my coat wrapped awkwardly around my torso, hugging myself as if to complete the illusion of a cocoon.
“No. I’m fine.”
Joy leans back on her chair and looks kindly at me through her glasses. This is the first time I’m here to see her, and I’m silently begging that she is finally the one who will understand me. She interlocks her fingers across her lap and I think that the first session is just as hard for the doctor as it is for the patient.
“So, I know you filled out forms during the intake session last week, but I haven’t looked at them.”
My heart sinks. I thought I would be coming here and she would know why I was here. I don’t want to explain it again. Why couldn’t she just read the paper?
“So…you have no idea what you’re getting into?”
She laughs at what she thinks is an attempt at humor, but actually, I am quite serious. My life has become worse than unmanageable - it has shattered, and some of the pieces have turned to dust, impossible to piece back together. Her eyes are still smiling at me as she continues.
“Well, why don’t you tell me what brought you here today? What made you call me on Monday?”
A vice grip tightens around my heart, and I cannot hold the tears inside. I launch into the story that I have, within my life, entitled the final wake-up call. I ramble, skipping from subject to subject, condensing years into seconds as I tell her about my disorder, how so many people have tried to help, and I have lied to them. How I lied to doctors, my parents, friends; how it isn’t the first time that it has happened, and how alone and depressed I feel and how I’m at the end of my rope, and that I can’t take it anymore.
At some point, I manage to stop my tears, and when I do, the flow of my story falters. Suddenly, the last words in my head are dancing in front of my face and I’m angry; furious at myself and the peanuts in my pocket.
Joy barely flinches; she nods as if all of the garbled mess I’m throwing at her makes some sort of sense.
“And how do you feel now?”
I take the time to look around the office; there are framed collages everywhere, colorful prints depicting metamorphosis, and positive evolution. In here, I feel warm. I don’t want to leave the office. It feels too nice. Out there, it’s cold and I feel small enough to fall between the cracks in the sidewalk.
“I feel like a monster.”
She leans forward, a slight frown clouds her kind features.
“I don’t think you’re a monster, Yali.”
Now I do laugh, because this is truly funny.
“Well, you don’t even know me.”
She smiles, and the light is back in her face.
“Well, let me tell you what I see. I see someone who is sick, and who wants to get better. I see a young lady in a lot of pain, I don’t see a monster.”
Maybe you need to get new glasses. The thought jumps into my head before my brain has a chance to hold it back. I wince at the fact that even though I have brought myself here willingly, I am still pitching wild curve balls, aiming to disarm and defend myself. Anger surges within me and rises as a deep wave of bile in my throat. Anger at myself for rebuking Joy in my head, anger at Joy for making me feel like I’m not a monster, and anger at where I am, and how I got here.
I feel hot. The temperature of the room must have suddenly spiked, because I can feel the sweat gliding off my collarbone. The bag of nuts is pulsating in my pocket; it is begging me to not think. I force myself to ignore it; I can’t eat it right now anyway.
“No, the things I’ve done are unforgivable. I’m a monster. I am poison to other peoples’ lives.”
Joy is smiling at me and I wonder what in the world could be so funny.
“Did you wake up any morning during this time and think; today I am going to hurt the ones who love me?”
OF COURSE NOT!
I’m surprised by my outburst.
“I just…didn’t know. I was so…lost. God, it sounds so lame. I’m twenty-three, and I cling to my disease like a child. I wish I could just grow up.”
The clear empathy in Joy’s eyes stings me below my ears, and I twitch, impulsively. I’m uncomfortable in the silence and I push myself to continue,
“I mean…what…how am I supposed to look at myself? After all I’ve done? After everything?”
Joy looks at me in mild amusement, the answer is obvious in her posture, relaxed and attentive, and when she says it, it wraps me in a thick comforter on a frigid winter’s night.
“With Compassion.”
Oh.
A hazy puddle of blue light filters through my brain;
Compassion.
I say it out loud.
It looks like a blueberry, and it leaves a bittersweet aftertaste in my mouth.
No comments:
Post a Comment