“I’m so sorry.” Amelia couldn’t believe she’d forgotten to switch off her phone. The Darlinghurst Darlings’ WhatsApp group was always buzzing with gifs and inside jokes—hardly ever with any actual soccer-related messages.
“It’s okay. Clients forget all the time,” Jill said.
As she switched her phone to silent, Amelia noticed that the latest message was a private one from Sophia. It wasn’t the first one Amelia had received. She heaved a sigh. “There’s this woman on the team. She’s coming on a bit strong. It’s been bugging me.”
“Is she flirting with you?”
“Any chance she gets.”
“That must be flattering.”
Amelia frowned. “Sure. I mean, she’s perfectly lovely, but…” Oh. Had she just inadvertently come out to her therapist? She’d probably done so already when she’d told Jill about the soccer team. But still. This warranted closer scrutiny of Jill’s face. Not that Amelia expected a hyper-educated psychiatrist to have a problem with that. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention it during our previous session. I’m gay. I just… I don’t know. I guess I was waiting to see how our first session went and then it didn’t really come up again.”
“That’s perfectly fine. You can’t tell me everything about yourself in one session.” Jill’s smile remained as friendly and warm as before.
“It’s not very relevant to what I’m going through, so…”
“Tell me about this woman who texted you… Do you like her?”
Amelia could only assume Jill had a good therapeutic reason to inquire further. “Her name’s Sophia. She’s an excellent soccer player. Midfield. Great on possession. A real asset to the team.”
Jill nodded, a benign smile on her face. Oh, right. She probably wasn’t asking about Sophia’s position on the pitch. “She’s in her twenties. Late twenties, but still. Either way, I’m just not up to dating anyone right now. If anything, I feel like I should date myself, you know? Work on the self-love and self-care and all that.”
“Of course. Tell me about your week.”
“We lost our game on Saturday. I let in two goals. One of which could have been easily avoided—” Amelia caught Jill’s glance.
“You sure do love soccer.”
“I’m sorry. It’s kind of all I have going on at the moment. Taking a loss is extra hard these days. Even though our league is just for fun. There’s no relegation or promotion. Just the same old six teams playing against each other every week, year in, year out.”
“You can talk about soccer all you want, but never assume I know all that much about it.” Jill held up her hand. “That doesn’t mean I’m not interested, however.”
“I’m not coming here to talk about soccer, though, am I?” Amelia tried a grin.
Jill ran a hand through her hair. She was definitely attractive. Maybe it was her warmth that made Amelia think that, as she barely noticed women in that way these days.
“So, soccer was lousy and you have no interest in dating.” Jill pursed her lips while she made a quick note. “Did anything else happen this week? How did you feel after our first session?”
“Um…” Amelia paused while she thought. “Maybe… as though there’s hope for me yet.”
Jill didn’t respond. A silence fell.
“I mean, um, I felt relieved that I had come and that the first session was over.” Amelia considered what Dawn had asked her after practice the other day, about she and her therapist ‘clicking’. She had given it some thought and had concluded that she and Jill were a match. She smiled ruefully at her choice of word. “I guess I was also relieved that we seem to get along. From what I’ve heard from other people, it’s not always a given.”
“Correct. Not everyone would feel comfortable with me as their therapist.”
“Do you ever not feel comfortable with a client?” Amelia couldn’t help but ask. She was interested in that sort of stuff—in what happened behind the scenes.
“It has happened, but this is my job. Part of that is getting past any uncomfortable feelings.”
“One of the reasons it took me so long to take this step—to seek professional help for my mental health—is that therapy is something very hard for me to get my head around. Take any screening for a personality disorder, for instance. There’s so much subjectivity at play. As in that it matters who is doing the evaluation. It can never be entirely objective because of the human factor, and therefore never truly scientific, unless there are actual brain scans involved.”
“And yet I consider my job to be very scientific. So much research has been done. I could spend every single weekend reading up on the latest studies in the field and I would still only get through a fraction of them.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second, but it’s not the same as putting a cell under a microscope to study. It’s not a hard science.”
“You’re right. It’s not exactly the same, but it doesn’t have to be the same to be effective—or true.”
“I’m sorry. I was getting on my high horse again. I do that sometimes.”
“I’m not that easy to offend, Amelia. In fact, I welcome your view. I like to be challenged. But… maybe we should get back to you now. Back to how you’ve been feeling. Earlier, you mentioned ‘dating yourself’. It’s a concept I like very much. Have you been able to do anything this week that would count as going on a date with yourself?”
“Being single, every time I go out to eat alone is like going on a date with myself.”
“Is that something you do often? Go out by yourself?”
“I used to, but I tend to stay in more these days. Until I find the walls are closing in and then I need to get out. My best friend Dawn and her wife have been great. They drag me out of the house at least once a week. I’m godmother to their eldest. Too many times, however, I’ve been absolute shit company to them. It’s like…” Amelia didn’t have to try hard to recall the feeling, but it was hard to put into words. “Something’s been taken from me in here.” She put her hand on her chest. “That spark. Whatever it is that makes you get up in the morning and look forward to the day. It’s gone and I don’t know how to get it back.”
Jill uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “That’s your body telling you that you’ve pushed it too far, that it can only take so much.”
“I’ve been off work for weeks now and I still feel the same.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Amelia. This will take time. It took years and years for your body to give out. For that panic attack to build and then to recur. Something like that can’t be undone in a few weeks.” Jill paused. “But it’s not only that you pushed yourself too hard at work. It’s more complex than that. Human beings always are.” She painted on a small smile. “On top of not giving yourself enough time to recharge your batteries, and completely draining them, you also started to question the meaning of your work. I’d like to address that, if you think you’re up for it.”
“I kind of fell out of love with the job. It’s not my job or my industry that has changed. It’s me.”
“What do you think brought about that change?”
“I don’t know. It happened over time. Little things, I guess. Things that added up to an utter disdain for the ‘pill industry’, which is what I sometimes call it now. The times we live in as well, of course. Because times do change.” Amelia paused to take a breath. “You have to understand that I’ve always believed that the medicine we developed would fundamentally help people. And it’s not as though I was this naive young thing when I started. I already knew money was the biggest motivator of companies. But maybe my view on money and how it affects people and the world at large, has changed.”
“How does it affect people?”
“That’s another thing that’s been niggling at me…” Looking around Jill’s office, taking in her furniture and all the art on the walls, Amelia guessed that Jill enjoyed many of the same privileges that she did. “Who am I to disparage money? Is it even my place to get depressed about the role it plays in our life? I have plenty, while there are so many people who have to scrape to get by. But that is part of the problem, of course. I can get so lost in these infinite tangents. It starts with a simple enough premise: Big Pharma is all about big profit. But once you really start to think about it, it’s not as simple as that. It’s complex. And I try and try to uncomplicate it, because that’s what I do.”
Amelia paused to catch her breath.
“But it goes on and on. The thing is that I used to enjoy a good old discussion about money and inequality and all the things that go wrong in this world—because don’t they all start with money? But lately, it just makes me feel utterly discouraged. Empty. Asking myself what the point of it all even is?”
“For the record,” Jill said, “just now, you didn’t sound discouraged at all. You very much sounded as though you care a great deal.”
“But what does it matter if I care?”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter to you right now, but it matters in the grand scheme of things.”
Amelia shook her head. Maybe Jill didn’t exactly get what she was trying to say. Even having this conversation was tiring. Another extended silence descended. Amelia was too exhausted to fill it.
“Have you considered a change of career?” Jill asked after a while.
“Of course. In the end, it might be the only solution.”
“Which direction are you thinking about heading into?”
“Women’s soccer manager,” Amelia joked, because she really needed some lightness right now.
Jill didn’t seem to get the joke. Her facial expression remained the same. “Maybe it’s too early to think about a new professional direction, but… whenever you mention the word soccer, your eyes light up. Maybe you should set yourself a little project as a hobby. Try to get your 40+ league off the ground. Or something else, as long as it’s soccer-related. Take it from there.”
“Maybe.” Amelia assumed her 40+ league would never happen because it was nothing more than a pipe dream. Something she liked to cling to because she simply didn’t have that much else going on in her life. “Maybe I should start with a team instead of a league. Maybe I can find a way to make the team good enough to compete in the current league.”
“There you go,” Jill said. “Run with it. Take the challenge. What have you got to lose?” Jill sounded more enthused now than Amelia.
She would give it some serious thought, however. She didn’t have anything else to fill her days with.