2005-02-25
I know it's been forever, but here I am.
Today is the last day of my two week vacation. My own personal vacation--B has been working and Clay has been going to daycare--because I've been between jobs. Yes, at long last something better came along. Or so it seems, we'll see. It all happened very quickly. I applied a year or two ago and a position opened up and we went from interview to offer in a week. I have a friend who works there, so I know a bit about the place, a non-profit research organization. My job will be mostly editing, which I've always enjoyed, found easy and fun and satisfying. I think I'll like doing a lot of it. The content--social science, mostly--should be a lot more inherently interesting than what I've been working with. I've never had the slightest excitement about technology. I also expect that the people I'll be working with will be a little more my style. So, that's all good. I don't know how good it will be; my expectations about jobs have always been on the low side, kind of "How not-bad is it?" I suppose it's possible that I'll actually like this. I'll find out soon enough.
These weeks have flown by as I suspected they would. I had all these great plans to organize the perpetual clutter, and I've done a bit of that but nothing like what I'd envisioned. I've done plenty of thrift shopping (I need to ratchet my wardrobe up a notch for this new job, blue jeans, I sense, not being appropriate). I've watched a few good movies. I've had a number of therapy appointments.
This afternoon is my final appointment with my beloved old therapist. She's ending her practice forever. It was only in sessions with other prospective new therapists that the enormity of this loss became clear to me. I'd been protecting myself so effectively that I was really acting--and feeling--blithe about the whole thing. No longer. This experience is evoking many feelings from my mother's death seven years ago: regret over having taken her for granted, expecting her always to be there for me despite my not putting her at the center of anything myself; sadness that she won't be available for me in the future during times of crisis and--more painful--that she won't be able to witness the joys and successes. (My mother never met B, never met Clay!) Different from my mother, with Erica's decision I lose one of the very few people I've ever known by whom I feel completely understood. In some ways it's more difficult than an actual death, for she will exist, she will be out there, one town over. There will always be the possibility of our running into each other. It's hard, hard, hard.
I have met another therapist I feel good about and predict I will work with. (I met two others I also liked but this one edged the others out.) She's a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and I consider the possibility of doing analysis, though not immediately. I know that seems terribly old fashioned--I'm sure many would be surprised to learn anyone even does it anymore--but I have a strong suspicion that is a route--if not the route--to my freedom. If there is one thing that the past six months working with Erica has clarified it is that I am definitely not free. And after all, this is my one life.
I've watched two very good movies: Garden State and Lost in Translation. In fact, I watched both of them twice. I think I cried all four times. Similar themes of existential weariness alleviated by a human connection that is romantic but much more than. I'm not really sure what else to say except to recommend them highly.
It's interesting timing, how Erica and I agreed to wrap things up by March first and then this job fell from the sky and we figured out a good start date would be February 28. So I'm on the verge of a transition, and I'm feeling pretty hopeful about it all. Sad about the loss of Erica but also, I realized yesterday when talking to the prospective new shrink, relieved that this day has finally arrived.
I guess I'll see you on the other side.
ADDENDUM
Sometimes I am a little slow.
After posting the paragraphs above, I took the dogs out for a walk. I kept reviewing in my head, as I've been doing for days now, the final scene of Lost in Translation. The two main characters, who've shared a remarkable connection, say goodbye. It's probably forever, though you don't know for sure. Something very big has happened between them, but it can't really continue, and they both know that. And there's a mixture of sadness and loss and also joy that it happened in the first place.
Yes, it has taken me this long to realize what I've been crying about.
When I first started working with Erica twelve years ago, one of my greatest longings was that she could be my friend. I knew she couldn't be, because then she could never again be my therapist. Since I learned, last summer, that there was a limited number of months during which she could continue to be my therapist, I let myself fantasize that perhaps, finally, she could be my friend. I kept this fantasy a secret until a couple of weeks ago. It was very hard, I felt so vulnerable, to voice the question. When she answered, when she said she didn't think it could work, I knew she was right.
�
�