Anticlimactic Therapy

Anticlimactic. My decision that this big and vast world is ultimately anticlimactic comes from seven years of dragging my feet through the mud and terrain of simple social interaction. My consolation prize is the comfort of my couch, accompanied by an array of daytime soap operas and talk shows, and a feast of Cheetos until my thoughts subside. From here on out, I’m planning to see my hand permanently stained with that gaudy orange by the end of next year.

As I make my way to my studio apartment in Queens, I remember my last therapy session with Dr. Eve. I can hear her stern parenting voice trying to coax me out of my unbearable mood I am now displaying to the back alleys of New York City. 

Mmm, fine, Dr. Eve, I will participate. Ok Ryan, focus, what do I feel right now?

My attempt to pull advice from my therapist out of my cynical brain resulted in a very stereotypical question that I am positive is in the Counseling for Dummies handbook. I imagine her snarled lips twitch as she tries to dissect the words that haven’t yet left my Broca’s area. 

Well, I guess I am confused, Dr. Eve. Wow lookie here, I am now feeling a brand new emotion I rarely do, so kudos to me, Dr. Eve. Am I healed? Can I be normal? Do I no longer have an oral fixation? Would Freud be elated with this progress?

I start to shutter when I imagine the scratch of my therapist's voice say how baby steps are essential to reaching our goals, whether we intend to make them or not. But, that it is still not okay to deflect with sarcasm, no matter our current feelings.

If only I could tell my therapist that the only reason I'm sarcastic is that I pay out my ass every week for therapy that I could get from a fortune cookie. But that's not true... I deflected with sarcasm long before Dr. Eve waddled into the room and displayed that inquisitive and annoyingly optimistic vibe of energy.

Oh, the most perfect and ugly trap. Therapy.

Let me give you a Ryan-original rundown to how therapy works. You gush your feelings out in order to improve yourself, your views of yourself, your vision of others, and ultimately heal any wounds long-embedded into our skin that have seeped down into our soul. Now, I am not one to think hypothetically, but I do believe that we each own a soul and that soul needs some damage to stay alive. It might be cynical and nihilistic to say, but without damage, and us maintaining that damage, that soul would fail to grow and we would have the mental acuity of toddlers and the naivety of one too. Trauma builds character. 

Despite my darkened beliefs, Dr. Eve has always continued to push her childish optimism onto me. It was her idea to get me into this mess of New Year’s resolutions. She thinks that participating in mainstream goal-setting will allow me to connect with myself and with others. I’ve been working on the same goal each year since I’ve known Dr. Eve and that’s been seven years too long in my opinion. My internal battle has been waging over this resolution since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of Dr. Eve therapy sessions.

My resolution was simple. Have a nice conversation with a stranger. Emphasis on nice. 

Dr. Eve thinks this will expand my horizons and offer me a chance to see outside my usual cardboard box of a brain. But if we are being completely honest, as one is instructed to do in therapy, I can’t imagine anything more painful or idiotic than talking to a fucking stranger. I would rather take a Razor scooter to the ankle infinite times as a form of purgatory than talk to a stranger. Not to mention, the mere possibility of becoming dismembered by a serial killer and ending belly-up in the Hudson River is increased ten-fold when talking to a stranger. I assume all individuals, no matter their appearance, are bat-shit crazy. Now don’t get me wrong, I think everyone’s crazy. But it all depends on what type of crazy they are, and personally, I don’t want to play that type of Russian Roulette just to make my therapist happy. 

Voicing these rebuttals to my newfound “resolution” to Dr. Eve’s thick skull had proven to be the most daunting challenge of my twenties. But still, if that woman is something, she is persistent. And every year, I was encouraged by Dr. Eve to pursue and resist failure. And every year, I continued to make sad attempts to talk to people on the street. Sadly, my attempts took on a form that most people interpreted as “the creepy dude approaching people in the park.” Luckily, officers were able to let me off with a warning as long as I kept an appropriate distance from others and pretty much never came to park again. As Dr. Eve put it, “well you win some, you lose some, Ryan. Don’t let that stop you. Remember, we want to focus on having a nice conversation.” 

Yes, Dr. Eve. I won’t let the fact that I got red-flagged as a stalker and pervert stop me. No problem. Better luck next time, right?

Dr. Eve knew it wouldn’t bother me, though. She knows I struggle to feel those emotions. Emotional perception and education have always been the cornerstone of my therapy sessions. I needed to feel my emotions fully to experience life fully. 

Emotions were hard to come by. Of course, that was until I saw a woman. 

I was sitting outside a little coffee shop off Northern Boulevard in June sipping lemon water. I was preoccupied with ignoring my waiter who exhibited excessive pit stains. You would think he’d use a clinical strength deodorant if he was handling people’s food, but that’s just my two cents. To my knowledge, he was also preoccupied with losing his patience over my failure to choose “just one goddamn menu item,” as he put it to the stout outdoor hostess sweating in the heat and fanning her chest with a cocktail menu. 

The muggy air of car exhaust and people’s body odor lingered in the air as it does every summer in New York. But out of the blue, for once it did not bother me. It felt more like a security blanket for this one slow-motion moment. That blanket sent a warm wave over my skin that continued to sit on the surface when she walked into the outdoor dining nook of the cafe. I was so caught up in my one sense of sight, I forgot all the others. I failed to notice I had spilled my lemon water over the side of the table, causing the pit-stained waiter to mumble a few choice words under his breath as he approached me. My eyes were glued to this woman. 

She was average in every way possible. Her brown hair was tousled and uneven bangs hid the upper creases of her deep brown eyes, but you could still see the glistening as the sun reflected off them. As I continued to observe, I started to worry about her light skin that could easily sunburn in this cloudless afternoon. It seemed soft but malleable as it was dotted with freckles along her forearms. 

All of her features could be found on a million bodies in the world, but it was the way she carried herself so silently confident that I couldn’t seem to comprehend. She had a beautiful demeanor, a beautiful aura as one would say. She was such an average woman, but she held this poise that most women never achieve, something that can never be fixed with great posture, a smile, or cosmetic surgery. I felt a weird stir in my soul, almost like a churning stomach after eating spicy food that you can’t just brush aside. I felt like I needed Tums. I felt like I needed to know her. I felt like I needed to have a conversation with her, with this enigmatic stranger. 

For once, I was thankful for Dr. Eve for the challenge, knowing that my purpose for today, for this year, and for the seven years I have tried, was to converse with this woman. In a moment of pure courage, I stood up from the uneven, rocking cafe table, loudly pushing out my metal chair as it scraped against the cement. 

Deep breath, Ryan. You’re going to have an actual conversation with this woman. Be normal, be real, be kind. 

I mosey over to her corner table, wedged between conjoined black metal fencing speckled with chewing gum, eyeballing the sunglasses she continues to twirl in her hand as she peers over the city traffic zooming by. She is entranced by the incessant honking and crackles of trash beneath the tires that New York has to offer her. 

Ten more steps, Ryan. Keep calm. Dr. Eve might finally be right about something. 

The woman sees me approaching. I freeze slightly into the hot cement, like quicksand, not knowing whether to pursue. But as if God gives me reassurance, she catches my eye gaze when she turns her head away from the bustling street. She smiles faintly and I continue my jaunt to her table. 

“Hello, uh, miss. I was..maybe wondering if I could sit in this seat. You know, the one right next to you, and uh…” I stumble over my words pathetically. “Have a conversation?” 

She processes my speech intently, deeply focusing on my mouth moving as if she’s reading a book. Finally, she parts her rosy pink lips. The wait to hear her voice feels extended, taunting me with the background noise of the city’s loud people and streets. 

“You the… waiter?” She stumbles in broken English. A heavy European accent drips from her lips. As if she sensed my confusion and bafflement, she began to motion frantically and bark out. “No English, sorry, only speak French.” 

She lets out a sigh, a shrug, and an apologetic smile, clearly pushing me out of her space with her non-verbal signals. I slide my feet to back up slowly, feeling heavy and unable to wrap my brain around the moment. And with another step, I begin my journey to get the hell out of that anticlimactic, disappointing attempt at conversation. 

As I grab my bag of Cheetos and hit the power button on the remote, I notice that my mind is still spiraling, still processing the interaction with this woman over and over again as if there is an hour of conversation to dissect when only it was second. Out of my usual element, I begin to look for positives. 

She didn’t run. She didn’t seem scared. Sure, she was a little confused. But really the only barriers we had was her thinking I was the waiter, which is a bit of a disappointment seeing the usual demeanor of the waiters at that cafe, and the fact that I don’t speak French nor her English. 

I steady my thoughts enough to grab my phone. 

Well, Ryan, we have a new resolution. Learn French.