Saturday, March 25, 2006

Miracle Cure and Droves of Unavailable Partners

On Friday after work I went to see my fabulous acupuncturist. I’m pleased to report that after two sessions (now three), my shoulder feels as if it never was injured to begin with (and this is after two years of pain, much of it excruciating, two cortisone shots and the threat of surgery), and my eyes are about 90 percent less drippy!

I had never really pictured myself telling the intimate details of certain symptoms to a fabulously attractive man (yes, I have a little crush on my acupuncturist), but I forced myself to do it, though I could feel that my face was tomato-red. However, he makes everything very easy. Whatever I say, he acts like it’s great news, absolutely to be expected, nothing odd in the slightest. He is an unusually warm and open person. I asked if I can go there for the rest of my life even if there’s nothing wrong with me. While I was lying in the dark room with the needles in, I could hear him out in the waiting room telling someone a story about being in a flood and his truck sinking and having to spend the night in a tree.

I figured I’d better force myself to describe my symptoms, even if some of them are embarrassing, because I already have a therapist I refuse to discuss my feelings with; it would be going a bit far to add a doctor to whom I won’t say what of my corporeal self needs attention.

When I began seeing my long-suffering mental health professional, I was in my early 20s (that would be 20 years ago) and depressed out of my mind. I poured my heart out without reservation and she fixed me: I never felt profoundly or persistently depressed again. After that, I saw her just now and then. About six years ago, I went back after I started a new job and found myself feeling a bit gloomy. That cleared up instantly, and since then we’ve been working on the core issue, the oft-mentioned fear of intimacy, which has involved many missed appointments, temper tantrums, and periods where I stop seeing her.

I read in the most recent Newsweek that only four percent of the population is in therapy, which made me feel like stopping, because it made me feel like a freak. Let me say in a spirit of defensiveness that I’d be absolutely fine if I didn’t see her; we agree on that. (She has graciously termed what we’re doing “fine-tuning.”) The reason I keep going is that I tend to fixate romantically on one unavailable person after the other: acupuncturists, doctors, teachers, married people. Obviously this is an excellent strategy for avoiding intimacy, by which I mean simply being seen as I am. I always want that, not this.

After seeing this therapist for so long, it’s definitely a whole lot of this, and so, just as in relationships, I spend much time thinking, “I don’t want to see this person anymore. There’s probably someone better out there. I don’t need to be here. This, that and the other is wrong with her. She’ll never understand me because of X, Y and Z.” Etc.

Our conversations are thus largely characterized by me saying, “That’s a bit personal, isn’t it?” “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” “I couldn’t possibly discuss here any of the things that are truly most important to me, but I will tell you a funny thing Sir Dave said this week.”

(One time as Sir Dave and I were parting after a walk, I asked, “Is your bus coming?” and he said, with an air of great ennui, “Inevitably.” He doesn’t say that many funny things, but when he does, they are gems. I think he’s delightful.)

Once I asked her, “Would you say that to a complete stranger on the street?” She said, “I’ve known you for 20 years. We’re not complete strangers.” A couple of years ago, I took a stand-up comedy class and incorporated some of these exchanges into my routine. When I performed it, I invited her. She loved it. The reason I keep going there is that it’s practice in doing what I least want to do: be seen by the same old person day after day.

After I left acupuncture yesterday, I saw three Geary St. buses go by right before I got to the bus stop, and then I had to wait half an hour for another to come. On the 22 Fillmore subsequently, a woman got on via the back door lost her balance and stepped right on my foot. It hurt. I said, “Ouch, god damn it.” She apologized, but I found that I was still brooding, so I stated my view of the matter. “You stepped right on my foot with the heel of your shoe.” She was wearing pointy little heels. She apologized again, profusely, though she also said it was Muni’s fault. I refrained from saying, “How is it Muni’s fault you didn’t hold the railing?”

She happened to get off at my stop and walk up my street at almost precisely my pace, just in front of me. I don’t think she noticed me behind her, which is just as well, because she might have assumed I meant to punch her out, which of course I did not. I’d probably be nervous if I mashed someone’s foot on the bus with my pointy heel and then noticed they were following me up a dark street. (There was no one following me. I checked.)

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