11. GROUP THERAPY: SESSION FOUR

AMELIA WAS LATE FOR THE NEXT MEETING. She had taken the right bus but she missed her stop and had to wait for the return bus, which took fifteen minutes.

When she arrived, she was happy to see Mike wedged in between Joanne and David so she sat down in between Ainsley and Angelina.

“How are you?” Ainsley asked happily as she turned toward Amelia and flashed her enormous engagement ring. “We got back together! Now I am living in fear of being mugged and having my ring stolen. I am convinced someone is going to try to steal it. I went into a McDonald’s the other day and I swear, this group of kids was looking at me, figuring out how to jump me and steal it.”

“Is it insured?” Amelia asked.

“Yes, but I don’t want my finger cut off!”

“They won’t cut your finger off,” Angelina said, dismissively. “That’s just stupid and unrealistic.”

Amelia wondered why Angelina was being so aggressive and she also wondered where Dr. Carroll was.

“Like it’s realistic that you’ll die if you get rid of the crap that fills up your house? People in glass houses and all that,” Ainsley snapped back.

“We’re here because we have issues,” Mike said, standing up. “We all know that. Attacking each other isn’t helpful.” He looked at Angelina and as if by a pre-arranged signal, she got up and they switched seats. “You can’t avoid me,” Mike whispered quietly to Amelia.

“You’ve got a girlfriend,” she hissed at him. “But that didn’t stop you from doing what you did, did it?”

“I can’t seem to help myself when I’m around you,” he said.

“Did you tell your girlfriend about me?”

Mike blushed. “No, I didn’t. I need to know if you think there’s anything between us before I do that. I love her. We’ve been together since high school and—”

“High school sweethearts, yeah, we know the story.” Amelia said, bitterly. “I’m no competition for such a pure and true love.”

“Amelia! What’s got into you?”

“Nothing. You think you know me? You think I’m nice and sweet and compliant? You think I’m going to sigh with happiness that you want me and that I’ll fall into your arms and be the perfect girlfriend? Is that what you want me to tell you, before you break up with your girlfriend? Well, I can’t say it. I have never been, nor will I ever be, the perfect girlfriend. I couldn’t be that way, even if I wanted to and believe me, there are times when I’d like nothing more.”

“You’re putting too much pressure on yourself,” Mike said and he took her hand. His hand felt so huge and warm and strong, and she wanted to cry because it felt so good. His skin was rougher than hers and she gripped his fingers, never wanting to let go.

“You see what’s between us!” Mike said, grinning, his fine facial hair scraggly and rough and she wanted to mash that soft mouth, and kiss the fine hair that would tickle her lips.

“I see what?”

“That we’ve got chemistry! We’re dynamite!”

“A solid basis for a stable relationship,” Amelia observed wryly.

“You want stable? Seriously? I thought you’d want something exciting, something new every day.”

“No, you’re wrong. I want passion, yes, and I want to be able to show you my world. I’ve got keys to the doors of worlds that no one else knows exists. I want to show you that and I want to know that I can trust you, and then the world will magically revolve around us like a carousel but I want you and me to be—”

“…The fixed centre of gravity.” He finished her thought.

“Yes. But even as I say that, I don’t know if I can do it. I want to do it but I don’t know if I can. I can’t promise you anything.”

“Except the possibility of you being the best damn thing that ever happened to me,” he replied.

They were whispering, lost in their own world, unaware of the dynamic in the room around them, when David’s loud voice jolted them back to reality.

“Where’s the doc, eh? He’s twenty minutes late. That’s not kosher.”

“Are you Jewish?” Shannon asked.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” David was aggressive.

“Nothing. I’m Jewish so I just wondered.”

“Ah. Well, yeah, I am.”

“Fucking Jews ruined my country,” Alexei growled, stretching his long legs out in front of him and cracking his knuckles.

“Don’t blame the Jews because the shiksa goddess is doing the karate champion in the washroom this week instead of you,” David countered.

Amelia and Mike sat up in shock. “What’s going on?” Mike asked.

“Whitney is more turned on by lawyer-by-day, Angelina Jolie-by-night than she is by big bad Alexei,” Ainsley explained.

Alexei flushed red and he flicked his hair back from his forehead. “She was a useless fuck,” he said. “Who cares?”

“You do,” Shannon said. “But she’s not the only woman in this room, you know.”

“You?” David piped up. “You’d like to get one thrown into you by the Russian mafia bad boy?”

“Since we’re here in therapy, baring our deepest secrets, I’d say yeah, he could put his shoes under my bed any time,” Shannon said.

“I can keep my shoes on, baby,” Alexei said, grinning at her. “I just need to drop my trousers.”

Shannon was so clearly aroused by this idea that there was practically steam rising from her head. She was writhing in her chair in such a way that Amelia wondered if she was going to get up and do a lap dance on the giant Russian’s groin, but Dr. Carroll burst in, his hands held up in supplication.

“I apologize, I apologize,” he said. “Mea culpa. Nobody’s perfect. A fact which if you’d internalize, would make your own lives much more tolerable and less tormenting but then hey, I’d be out of a job and where’s the fun in that? You all carry on being neurotic and I’ll carry on trying to unscramble your tangled wiring.”

He sat down. “We lost Gino,” he said matter-of-factly. “He managed to hang himself in his private room. I wanted him in a dorm where it’s not so easy to self-harm…. I take that back. You can self-harm, but generally not to the point of self-extinction. So, sayonara Gino, and we will meditate on that for a while later. Now today—”

“Aren’t you accountable?” David interrupted, incensed. “Sayonara? That’s all you’ve got to say? How can you be so callous! You are our healer and because of you, Gino killed himself! What the fuck! Somebody has to take responsibility! Somebody has to take the blame!”

“Not so, David, not so. That’s a very antiquated way of looking at cause and effect. There are myriad causes for every event. So many, in fact, that we can’t account for them all. We can’t even find them. We can’t track down the root cause of anything because for each individual that is different. For one person it was good that his mommy tucked him in tightly at night while for his brother, it was hell. And what causes that? Genetics? Who knows anything about genetics really, except that we don’t understand it. Gino was a crockpot stew of bubbling disturbed identities. He had the misfortune of having a mother who wanted a little girl, so he never stood a chance. Throw in peer group pressure and the devastating undertow tug of loneliness, add to it the onset of adulthood — adulthood! Man! Life’s just too hard for some people.”

Dr. Carroll paused for breath, cracked open a bottle of water and drank it in a series of loud glugging swallows. “The period of adolescence,” he continued, “gets the primo attention. We have pity on the poor, suffering, hormonally-confused adolescent who is packed to the gills with the explosives of crazy rage and burning lust and incomprehensible desire. But it’s okay, we understand what’s going on, because they’re adolescents. Everybody agrees they are allowed their teenage dose of craziness. But, and here’s the biggest but of all … why, and I truly do ask why — and I ask you to consider it with the utmost seriousness that you can muster — why do people expect all that crap to suddenly vanish when we reach the age categorized as adulthood?”

He looked around with an imploring expression on his face. “What, like some magic switch is flicked and your neuroses, your unrequited love affairs, your pathetic crushes, your wars with your parents and siblings, are going to vanish, because you’re wearing a spanking shiny new adult suit? Look at you, hot off the production line, Model Adult, virgin pure, no clicks on the mileage. But that’s not true and you know it. Your gears are already stripped, your engine overheats and your accelerator cable snaps when you’re on a deserted road. You enter the Nascar race of adulthood fundamentally flawed and ruined. Your engine is shaky, your body work is weak, and yet you’re expected to be the best you’ve ever been — these are your days. Mr High School Quarterback is injured and out of play, he’s yesterday’s glory-boy but YOU, adult you, you are the hope of the future, you beautiful flawless specimen of adult imperfection.”

He paused and looked around. “And how was it for you?” he asked, stabbing a finger at the group. “How was your foray into the world of being a bright and shiny adult? Were you the conqueror of offices? Were you a king of industry, a man with a shooting star? Were you the next big thing? Tell me, how many of you rode into adulthood upon your trusty steed and found this gleaming shining fairytale to be the reality of your life, your happily-ever-after? Instead, what you got feels more like an interminable life sentence, I am sure.”

He looked around. “David, that you feel such angst and personal failure and crippling fear is not your fault. You were presented with a Disney myth of the prince you were going to be. You were going to carry your princess bride off into the sunset and then what? The curtains closed and the audience rose in a standing ovation at the happy prognosis of your rosy future. Meanwhile, you trudged up a hill, leading a horse in the fading light, and in reality, your trusty steed was a stubborn hungry mule carrying a wife who wanted nothing more than a hot meal, a softly-quilted bed, and a night of uninterrupted sleep. How on earth could you not feel anxious, given the unspeakable pressures you faced of having to eternally provide? It’s hardly surprising that your behaviours became more furtive. You fears burrowed into your belly and into the arteries of your brain, and they flowed like liquid poison among the pulsating blood and they brought terror with every breath.”

Amelia noticed that the group looked stricken. They were frozen, impaled on the vitriolic spear of Dr. Carroll’s rant. She knew there had to be an upswing in the making and she was not wrong.

“But!” Dr. Carroll shouted, and he cracked open another bottle of water. “But you have the power to make the torture stop! You can be the instrument of change in your dismal present and your even more dreary future. Yeah, sure that may be your life now. It is a hundred thousand million peoples’ lives, but none of them has stopped to say hey, I don’t want this, who cares what my peers think? How happy are my buddies anyway? They’re mostly cokeheads, neurotics, potheads, and drunks. Their marriages are failing and killing them and their wives. So what do you do in order to save your own life? You do the opposite thing! You say: I choose to NOT care about what people think or say about me. I will simply do my job. I chose this job or it chose me and I will do it, but it isn’t me, it doesn’t define me. People let their jobs define them, therefore I choose the opposite. I define my own being in accordance with my truest self.”

An air of skepticism greeted his epiphany and most of the group looked disappointed and uninterested. This was not the solution they were hoping for.

“The trouble with you lot,” Dr. Carroll said, “is that, regardless of what I tell you, you’re still looking for that magic pill. And I’m not saying that this is easy but if you start slowly and you keep at it, eventually you can create utopia in your life. Mind you, I’m not going to tell you that you deserve utopia. I don’t think anybody deserves anything. Life’s not fair. There is no balance between hard work and success, input and reward. You can work twenty hours a day, work your heart out, do a great job and then, someone — he can even be your arch enemy — trumps you at the eleventh hour. Because that’s life. It’s unavoidable. So it’s not about getting what you deserve because none of us deserves anything. We get what we get and we choose our reactions from there.”

“But I want to be a big shot,” Mike spoke up. “I want to be the next Steve Jobs. There, I’ve laid it on the line, that’s what I want. Deserve it or not, that’s my dream.”

“At least you’re taking the first step towards realizing your dream,” Dr. Carroll said. “Bravo! You have realized your shortcomings and you are addressing them. You have more chance than the rest of them. But there’s sacrifice involved. Like the gods of old, success wants its virgin blood, its crucifixes, its buckets of pain and sorrow, dashed like rainwater to hallow the ground and make fallow the seeds of your desire. And that sacrifice will hurt. You, for instance, young Mike, might be called upon to break up with your high school sweetheart, the slim-hipped, large-breasted, cornflake-pure golden beauty who guided the cheerleaders in ritualistic chant and war cry as you carried the football team to unparalleled heights of success. Together you were king and queen and you reigned in glory and you both thought it would go on forever. But now, she’s a dental hygienist and you’re a wanna-be hot shot I.T. boy and she wants a house in the suburbs and babies while you want money, power, success, and blow jobs from your secretaries.”

“First,” Mike replied. “You don’t refer them secretaries any more. They’re executive assistants. And Jane is a law clerk not a dental hygienist. And doesn’t everybody want babies and a nice house?”

Jane. Miss Perfect is called Jane. Sweet Jane. How nice. And no, I don’t want babies. Amelia looked at her hands and wished she was alone so she could cry.

“You’re missing the point,” Dr. Carroll said. “And I can’t make you see it. I can’t. It’s up to you.”

“Enough about Mike. What about me?” David asked plaintively. “I’m trying to realize my dream but I’m going to bring it down, I’m going to destroy it.”

“And if you do, so what? You wife might hate you but that’s her issue not yours. Your peers might think you failed but what’s their definition of failure anyway, and who makes them the oracle of light and wisdom? Even if they’ve reached the pinnacle of exclusive golf clubs and private schools for their kids, you can choose to NOT let that matter. You can choose to believe the opposite thing. You can take responsibility for who you are and do what makes you happy and that might see you end up being an alfalfa farmer in the prairies.

“You have to ask yourself this: What is my dream? Am I achieving my dream? What is not achieving my dream costing me? What would I lose if I changed my dream? And, does losing those things truly matter to me?

“Anyway, enough of that,” Dr. Carroll said, and he changed the subject abruptly. “There was a lot of violence in this room last week…. But wait, where are Whitney and Joanne?”

“Having sex in the toilet,” Alexei said, morosely. “I was nothing to her. I was just a fuck that meant nothing. And look at her, a fat housewife, and me, I have such beauty.” He growled to show his manhood and his displeasure.

“They’re still in there?” Dr. Carroll looked at his watch. “Who’s going to go and get them this time?”

“I will,” Alexei jumped to his feet but Dr. Carroll leapt up and blocked his path.

“Not a good idea,” he said. “Time for you to do the opposite thing. I am sure you want to hit them—”

“I want to kill them!”

“So you are going to do the opposite thing. You are going to sit down and forgive them and love them and wish them happiness. Look at it like this: you’re a spectacular specimen of manhood. You could get any girl you want, why get hung up on a middle-aged neurotic woman?”

“Because I love her! And she loves me! I thought she would leave her husband and be with me and we would fuck each other six times a day and have babies and be happy.”

“You can be as happy with somebody else,” Dr. Carroll insisted.

“Six times a day,” Shannon murmured, and she sat up straighter in her chair.

“The only trouble is,” Alexei said pointedly to Shannon, “I like blondes. Be a blonde next week and maybe we can try.”

Shannon looked like she was ready to leave right then and there to go to the nearest hairdresser’s.

“Sit down, Shannon,” Dr. Carroll said tiredly. “I’ll go and get them. Please, everyone, sit still and wait, preferably in silence.”

Mike took hold of Amelia’s hand again and they sat there, contentedly silent.

Alexei gave a few low growls now and then while Ainsley told Persephone about how worried she was that someone would cut off her finger in a McDonald’s in order to steal her ring.

“Any luck with the hoarding?” Shannon asked Angelina who sighed.

“I tried to gather a tiny bag — just one little plastic bag and fill it with junk and throw it out. It took me two days to get the bag filled. And then I couldn’t throw it away. I put it in a corner of my bedroom and left it there.”

“It’s good that you tried.”

“That’s nice of you to say so, honey, but it’s not the truth. I’ve done that before and in fact, even better. I can package the stuff up but I can’t give it away.”

“What do you think will happen if you do give it away?”

“I feel like I will go crazy unless I get it back.”

“Angelina, we don’t use the expression ‘go crazy’,” Dr. Carroll said, returning to the room with Whitney and Joanne in tow. “We say ‘experience a psychotic break’.”

“Yeah, that’s got a much more sympathetic ring to it,” Persephone said. “Certainly reassures me.”

“Deconstruct the term ‘go crazy.’” Dr. Carroll said. “What do you think it means? It means that your psyche loses touch with reality. In other words, your psyche experiences a breakdown. Going crazy is such a loose phrase. It can encompass so many of the mild and ordinary sins of daily life.

“Now,” he said, “I do want to check in with all of you, but first I’d like us to meditate. We need to lower the anger level and lower the testosterone in the room. We need try to dispel the feelings of blame and self-hatred. To this end, we shall empty our minds and hearts and we shall focus upon a lowly piece of fruit. We will engage our energies in studying this mild-mannered unsung hero: the crone of the vineyards, the wrinkled doyen of the magisterial court; behold, the raisin!”

“I hate raisins,” Mike spoke up, and was soon supported by David, Shannon, and Persephone.

“Come now,” Dr. Carroll raised his eyebrows. “Are you not open to new experiences albeit it with old partners? Do not make the mistake in life that each encounter with an individual will be the same. Give your friendships with food and men and women more credence than that. Each time you meet a person, or a dish of food, or even a book you’ve read many times before, say: ‘Hello new friend, what lessons can you teach me today?’”

Alexei gave a snort. “I sure was surprised last week,” he said, glaring at Whitney. “She gutted me like a fish, no mercy, no care. That was a new surprise. You got that right.”

“Let’s move on,” Dr. Carroll said. “One day, Alexei, you will thank Whitney for what she did. You embraced sex rather than anger and that was good. But then you got too attached to the specific host of the sexual experience as opposed to discovering that the sexual experience is a transcendent act that unites the yin and yang of our human selves. You need to let go of attachment and find the opposite of that, and the opposite of attachment is love and forgiveness. Both of which are the opposite of hate, anger, and violence. You see how everything is leading you away from anger and hate?”

“You talk so much!” Alexei moaned, his head in his hands. “I can’t listen to so many words, you’re killing me!”

“No more talking, at least for a while,” Dr. Carroll assured him. “Time to meditate and find new meaning in old things. Everybody, hold out your hands.” They did and they received, into the palms of their outstretched hands, three tiny raisins.

“I heard that a raisin is a worried grape,” Ainsley laughed. “Are we going to cure these guys and turn them back into their former plump juicy unworried selves?”

“You are in much better spirits,” Dr. Carroll commented. “Group, before we meditate with our raisins, let’s check in with Ainsley. What’s up, cheerful chickie?”

“What’s up is that I totally ignored you and went back to my fiancé. I told him I was sorry I’d let some nutcase screw with my mind and I asked him if he would take me back. He said yes, that he’d realized this was just some messed up part of your therapy, and that he had to be patient and let it pass.”

“But you are happier now than you were before, yes?”

“I didn’t know how much he meant to me before. If that’s what you mean, then yes, so what? Every relationship has wake-up calls.”

“But your panics are less, yes?”

“I wouldn’t ascribe that to you.”

“I would. I would state that you have realized a sense of autonomy within the relationship, an autonomy that you never had before. You now have confidence in knowing that you truly love this man and that you are with him because you love him, not because your parents or his parents or even he, expect you to be there. This time, you are there for you.”

Ainsley shrugged. “Whatever rocks your boat, Doc,” she said.

Dr. Carroll looked disappointed. “It does lessen my joy when there is resistance to the internalization of the self-realization,” he said. “Oh well. Moving on to raisins.”

“Which are getting pretty sticky,” Mike said. “We’ve been holding them for a while now.”

“Raisins,” Dr. Carroll said, dreamily. “Now I will not be doing this exercise along with you because personally I hate the puckered up little prunes, but let that not detract from your experience. The key to this meditation is to totally let go of all that has come before in our sessions: the gun wielding, the weeping, the sex, the anger. And how do we let go? We meditate. I am going to guide you through a meditation and I want you to follow my lead. Okay, here we go.

“Ding! Bring the raisin close up to your face, and study the raisin. See the colours, the textures, the folds in the tiny dehydrated skin. Look at the areas of dustiness along the surface, look at the ridges, the valleys, the pillows and sheet-like folds of this tiny ball. Can you see a face in your raisin? What does it look like to you other than a raisin?

“Now, smell your raisin. What does the raisin remind you of? Summer days, raisin bran breakfast cereal, fights with your brothers? Could it be sex with a neighbour when you were little and experimenting and looking at one another’s tiny genitals?”

Mike and Amelia looked at each other and shook with silent laughter.

“Focus people, do not lose concentration! Now, close your eyes. Take the raisin and rub it against your lips. Don’t eat it but feel what it feels like. Is it rough, or soft, or how does it feel?”

Amelia took her raisin and carefully ran it against Mike’s beautiful, full soft lower lip. He half-closed his eyes and he started to lick the raisin with the tip of his tongue. Amelia took the raisin in her mouth, in between her teeth and he licked it, then he licked her teeth, and they both sat there clutching the other raisins in the sticky palms of their hands, not letting themselves eat the raisin that they were sharing, just licking it and one another.

Ding!

Amelia pulled back and Mike swallowed the raisin.

“To review,” Dr. Carroll said and he sounded aggrieved. “Alexei ground his raisins underfoot. David threw his away. Persephone ate hers. Amelia and Mike engaged in sex play. Joanne and Whitney also seemed to think this was some kind of sex game, and Angelina put hers in her pocket.”

“I studied mine,” Ainsley said and she sounded saintly and wronged. “If you ask me, Doctor, my life is like a raisin, puckered and dehydrated and prunish and dead. I need to find a way to make my life expand and bloom and be filled with nourishment and moisture again. But it’s hard. I broke my back playing soccer four years ago and, without warning, I dropped like a stone, and then I’m incapacitated by pain for weeks. I can’t hold down a job. I can’t have any kind of regular life because I could fall down at any second.”

“Have you seen a physician?” Dr. Carroll asked.

“Yes. I can have an operation but there’s a fifty-fifty chance I could end up paralyzed. And then I’d be even more like this stupid raisin. Puckered-up like an old lady before I’m thirty.”

“Wow. Thank you for sharing, Ainsley.” Dr. Carroll sounded deflated, as if his raisin exercise hadn’t had quite the desired results.

“That’s all you can say? Thank you for sharing? You’re not very helpful,” Ainsley was angry.

“I can’t exactly say go and play soccer if it might paralyze you, can I? But you could take up art, or knitting, or crocheting, or pottery. You are thinking in very limited terms, Ainsley, and that’s hardly my fault. The opposite of being a raisin is not being a soccer player and if you can’t see that for yourself, you need to stretch the muscles of your imagination. Come on now! What else are you good at? What else do you enjoy?”

“I do enjoy baking. And making clothes for dogs. And teaching kids to paint.”

“There you go then.”

“I also love acting in amateur theatre and making costumes for them, and I like making hats and quilting and—”

“Yes, we get the idea,” Dr. Carroll interrupted her. “So, can you see there’s more to life than your being a tiny dried-up raisin?”

“Yes. I can.”

“Good. Now, Alexei, you crushed them under your boot.”

“I was trying to make wine,” Alexei said, with a lopsided smile.

“Others may believe you but I don’t. You’re angry, Alexei. Are you going to be okay this week, out there in the world?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“You don’t sound too certain. I think we need to find some tools for you to put in your toolbox.”

“I’ve already got every kind of tool there is,” Alexei looked confused.

“Emotional tools, Alexei, not real tools. For example, let’s say someone enrages you on the construction site. Let’s say they call your mother a whoring pig.”

“I will kill him,” Alexei said instantly.

“Now that’s the kind of thing I’m trying to help you avoid,” Dr. Carroll said. “Remember with D.T.O.T., you want to do the opposite thing, okay? What would be the opposite thing?”

“Buy him a coffee,” David offered helpfully.

“I’m supposed to listen to advice from the guy who can’t even leave his desk in case he cries or loses control?” Alexei was scathing.

“Alexei, be gentle now. David is only trying to help. We’re all trying to help. What if you ignored the man who insulted you?”

“He would think I was a pussy.”

“What if you said look, I could fight you and win but I’m not into that today, so pick on someone else.”

“He would think I was a pussy.”

“And so what if he does? What do you care what some moron thinks?”

“It’s my reputation at stake, that’s what.”

“But Alexei, take the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Do you think he feels he has to fight every punk who insults him or his mother? You need to pick the fights that matter.”

“Like the one with Gino. That fight mattered and I didn’t pick it and now look.” Alexei scowled at Joanne and Whitney.

“You feel betrayed by Whitney,” Dr. Carroll said. “But Alexei, what Whitney felt for you wasn’t personal. She just liked the excitement. Her life has been so terrifyingly bland that she could hardly breathe and then you came along, offering danger and excitement but just about the time she was getting bored of being with you — not because she was bored of you but because the danger was lessening — then along came Joanne. Whitney is an addict of misery and of excitement. She thinks she’s cured now, because she’s with Joanne, but pretty soon she’ll need a new fix or all her anxiety symptoms will return.”

“That’s utter nonsense!” Whitney shouted and the group could tell she was searching for a stronger phrase but her adherence to social niceties kept her language scrubbed. “Doctor, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Actually I do. I was delighted when you and Alexei hooked up. I thought you were D.T.O.T.ing but now you’re repeating yourself and D.T.O.T. means doing the opposite constantly, in order to keep things even and balanced, while you’re just doing more of the same.”

“So we’re supposed to swing between behaviours as if we have some kind of psychosis?” Mike spoke up. “One week I should be king of public speaking and the next I should avoid people?”

“No. One week phone them, the next week email them, then meet them for coffee. Make a list of fear-inducing situations and rotate them. Whitney has come up with one solution for tranquillizing her anxiety, and that’s sex. She needs to find other things. Whitney, have you had any kind of honest conversation with your daughter?”

“About what?”

“About her anxiety?”

“No, I’ve been too happy. I didn’t want to get depressed.”

“Nice,” David commented. “She’s the reason you came here and now the only thing you can think about is who you can roll in the hay with next.”

“That’s not true!” Whitney flushed. “I really like Joanne. I mean I liked Alexei too but it was just sex, sorry Alexei. But with Joanne, I don’t know … I can be myself.”

“Be myself,” Doctor Carroll mused. “Such a bandied-about phrase and what does it mean? This would be a good time for us to look at values. I know it’s been a longer session than usual, but we are making great strides here. So, our actions and behaviours are largely influenced by our values. What does each of you value? Take out a piece of paper and write down five values.”

“I don’t have any,” Alexei said.

“Of course you do,” Dr. Carroll said. “You value your masculinity and you value being respected for that. You value being liked for your body.”

“I mean I don’t have any paper,” Alexei elaborated. “I do have values. I value my mother and my brothers and sisters. And loyalty to family is everything.”

“I don’t have real values,” Angelina said. “I value my stuff over everything, at the expense of everyone and everything.”

“I value helping people,” Shannon said, looking at Alexei with a helpful expression.

“I value family,” Persephone said.

“I value money and family and success and love,” Mike said.

“I value harmony, peace and tranquility,” David said.

“I value excitement,” Joanne said.

“I value me,” Whitney said, “and I’d like to increase my knowledge of the values that make me happy.”

“Amelia?”

She was quiet. She wanted to say that she valued being part of society, that she valued being a contributor to the world, being a good daughter and granddaughter. She valued being a girlfriend, even though she’d never been one. But she couldn’t say any of those things and so she simply lifted in shoulders in a hapless gesture. “I value the potential of having values,” she said. “That’s all I’ve got.”

“Ainsley?”

“I value love, marriage, babies, and family. Being part of a community.”

“Wait.” Amelia piped up. “I want to contribute something to the world. I’d value that. I value the courage of people who do bold things in life, people who save other people’s lives or stand up for a cause even if it means putting their own lives at risk.”

“Very noble. Well, group. We did a lot and we achieved a lot. For your homework this week, I’d like you to meditate upon the foods you eat. Eat slowly, with deliberation. Taste the food, every bite. The saltiness, the sweetness, the texture, the temperature. And drink water, really taste the water.”

“Angelina,” Dr. Carroll asked abruptly, “can you stay back? I’ve found someone who might be able to help you with your hoarding.”

A look of fear crossed Angelina’s face. “But I’ve decided that I don’t think I’m ready to change,” she said, her chins quivering.

“Don’t worry, it’s okay, the therapist I’ve found for you is very nice, she won’t rush you. Will you just sit and chat with me a bit about it? You can always say no, once I’ve told you about her.”

Angelina sat down with the enthusiasm of someone going to the electric chair while the rest of the group left the room.

“See you next week,” Dr. Carroll cried out as they left, “and don’t forget: D.T.O.T.! D.T.O.T. till the cows come home!”

As Amelia prepared to make her great escape, Mike grabbed her by the arm. “No, you don’t,” he said. “Not this time. This time, you’re coming with me.”