Those who feel the breath of sadness,
Sit down next to me.
Those who find they’re touched by madness,
Sit down next to me.
Those who find themselves ridiculous,
Sit down next to me.
In love, in fear, in hate, in tears,
Sit down next to me.
—JAMES, “SIT DOWN”
It was three weeks before Christmas. I knew it was going to be my dad’s last one: his favourite day of the year, and he only had one left. I was so lost, I didn’t know if I was going to make it to the weekend, let alone the holidays.
I was never good at asking for help. Not because I never felt I needed it or could use it, but I always felt it ended with me in debt to someone. My goal was to always end my day without feeling I owed anything to anyone. Every day needed a clean ending; that was the only way I could sleep. I was relentlessly independent, cripplingly private, and I didn’t even know where to start when it came to finally asking for help.
I’ve always been susceptible to influence, so I avoided any situation, like therapy, where someone could put something weird or fucked up in my head that wasn’t there before. I’m obsessive like that. When I was a kid, my mom casually told me that she could never go to Niagara Falls because she always got the urge to jump. That’s exactly how she said it too, like it was no big deal. She couldn’t really explain it, she wasn’t suicidal, but she was drawn to the fall, to that quiet moment of nothing on the way down, to the freedom. Before my mom confessed that to me, I’d never thought about jumping off anything. But ever since, I’ve avoided the edge of everything. Even today, I always request low floors in hotels that have balconies. I’ll never take that last step to look over anything no matter how beautiful the view is. Her thing became my thing.
That’s why I was afraid of therapy. I didn’t want someone putting something in my head that I’d never be able to remove. I didn’t want anyone messing with the stuff that I’d meticulously filed away. I was afraid that if someone started pulling it all apart, I’d never be able to get it back together again. I was convinced that my feelings were far too complex and unique for anyone to understand, no matter how many diplomas they had on the wall. I knew that as soon as I started talking, saying shit out loud, then everything would become real, and there was no coming back from that. I once heard someone say that articulating your feelings is the first step to accepting them. I wasn’t ready to accept anything.
Therapy wasn’t my last option, but it sure as hell felt like it. I didn’t need a hero. But I did need help, and I was finally ready to ask for it. I called up a psychiatrist I’d booked as a guest on the show over the years. We knew each other, and he was great at what he did. In my head, therapy was a luxury that people who grew up where I did didn’t have. I’d never met anyone who had a therapist. This was some bougie and expensive shit that I didn’t know how to do. How do you do therapy? How honest do you have to be to make it work?
My appointment was set up as a one-off. My therapist was unbelievably casual about the whole thing, too. I explained a bit over the phone when I first reached out, but I didn’t get too deep as I didn’t want to overload him. I didn’t want him to know how fucked up I actually was. I didn’t want to burden him with my problems, which I knew was sort of the point, but I didn’t want to owe him. I blamed myself for everything, and in a messed-up way I needed him to tell me it was all my fault and that I needed to take responsibility. That was my plan.
Shrink sessions are usually forty-five minutes. I figure this is to give them enough time to run patients in and out in one-hour blocks. I was his 11 a.m. that day. Getting to his midtown office took about an hour. One streetcar, a few subway stops, and a long bus ride. I made a CD the night before with “Sit Down” by James, off their 1991 reissue of Gold Mother, burned over and over again. I listened to that track, on repeat, for the entire trip, while I rehearsed what I would and wouldn’t say. I prioritized what I felt I needed help with the most, and looked for ways to dumb down or totally avoid all the rest. This was a one-time deal. I had one shot.
What I didn’t know then is that therapy is hard as fuck. But it’s supposed to be. If you find it easy, find a new doctor.
I sat on that couch, in the psychiatrist’s eclectic but messy office, and told him what I thought he wanted to hear. I never wanted to burden anyone, and I hated being fussed over, so I skimmed over my feelings of failure and my own self-worth. I was the furthest thing from an open book, and even sitting there distracted by all his important junk piled everywhere, I still wasn’t ready to say most things out loud. I opened myself up a bit and let him take a look.
This is where, for me, it all went to hell. This is where I started looking for a way out. I wanted to stay in the moment, to fix the things that hurt now. I didn’t want to look back and map out every single event that got me to his couch that morning. I didn’t want to be judged because I was afraid that I’d disappoint him. It felt like an audition, like I needed to say all the right things to keep him interested. To prove I wasn’t wasting his time. I needed to come off as therapy-worthy, but not too big of a project.
I quickly explained what was killing my dad as best I could, and I touched on the guilt I had over Taylor leaving. I told him I believed the world was full of monsters, and I was incapable of seeing the good in anyone. I explained I was convinced that everyone I’d ever met was an opportunistic phony who would fuck me over in a heartbeat to gain even one inch in life.
“Yeah, you might not be wrong,” he said with a cool casualness that confused the hell out of me. I sounded paranoid and all over the place. I’d never talked about any of this before and I didn’t really know how to. I was performing for him, treating him like an audience. Even the stuff that hurt the most, I tried to say in a way that would make him laugh.
“Tell me about your mom,” he said.
“Good cook. Believes in ghosts. Taught me how to sew.” I wasn’t dragging my mother into this. She was about to lose the love her of life and was hanging on by her teeth.
“What about your brother?”
“He’s smart. Funny. A nerd, but like a cool nerd.”
I was doing a routine. I’d really only ever bonded with people over two things—sex and humour. I knew enough about myself to know these were a defence mechanism. That was my escape.
The doctor didn’t even flinch. While I told him most of what I was willing to say, he barely moved his pen across the pad propped up on his knee. At first I thought I was failing, wasting his time. What I quickly realized was there was nothing I was saying that he hadn’t heard a hundred times before. None of this was unusual, and this guy had me figured out top to bottom in the first thirty minutes, which infuriated me. The only thing worse than someone thinking you’re fucked up is someone telling you you’re normal. This was actually all good news, and I should have been relieved, but screw that guy.
I sat there in pieces as he mapped out a way to put me back together.
By the end of our session, the one-off, the favour for a friend, he told me he wanted to see me again on the following Tuesday and Thursday. Then the next Tuesday and Thursday for the foreseeable future. He knew I was holding back. In forty-five minutes I’d gone from having never done this kind of thing before to being a twice-a-week shrink patient.
I was pissed.
Realizing there’s a path to success isn’t the same as following that path. I wasn’t ready to do the work to get where I wanted to be. I had told him maybe one-tenth of what I should have, and I was already a career patient.
That was my last appointment.
I’m pretty good at giving advice, but absolute shit at taking it, although I do try to learn from my mistakes, my biggest being that I judged my individuality, the thing that separated me from everyone else, by how much hell I could go through and still carry on. I judged myself on how much pain I could mask from my friends, family, and co-workers and never ask for help. I chose to hide my scars, self-destruction, self-sabotage, tics, loss, abuse, and failure and manage to never let it show. By opening up just a little in therapy, I let the light in, and it burned like bloody murder.
I didn’t know then that individuality, the thing that actually makes us special, doesn’t come from how much we can handle. It comes from what we can offer. I had so much work to do, but instead of getting on with it, I walked away and torched the path behind me. I wasn’t ready to put every thought I had on trial or attach meaning to things I’d spent years trying to forget. I got back on the bus and managed to get the same seat I always did. I reached into my bag, pulled out my notebook, and flipped to the page with my dad’s Christmas list on it.
He had one Christmas left and I hadn’t even started shopping yet.