The Head Nodders

She watches his body language through the camera, his neck taut, hands gesturing widely at the empty space in front of him. Ray is her last client of the day and has spent the last half hour waving around a cigarette – unlit, as if he is waiting for someone to light it for him.

“I told them all they needed to do was make me a list,” he says, “and I would go to the store for them. Or I’d have it delivered.”

In her work as a licensed therapist, she has found that most issues start with the banal things, the mundane. The dishes that remained unwashed, someone’s husband sneezing too loudly, TV shows no one can agree on watching. Today, it’s Ray, fighting with his parents because they had the audacity to go to the grocery store in the middle of a pandemic. They are, after all – old – according to the CDC.

“The thing is, they told me they wouldn’t go, and they went anyway,” he says.

And there it is, she thinks – the cold, dark thing underneath the innocuousness of everyday life.

The distrust behind the words.

The lack of respect buried under the unwashed dishes.

The thoughtlessness.

The powerlessness in a world where we put freedom and individuality on a pedestal.

Ray spends another ten minutes harping on the dangers of exposure from closed, indoor spaces. All he wants is for them to be safe, he continues, and now their relationship is fragile, broken. “I just...I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know.”

I don’t know either, she wants to tell him. She wants to tell him it will be okay, that life goes on as it always does, but how can she know that for sure? Instead, she quietly assesses him, waits for him to dig through his guts so he can tell her why it is he is really here.

I’m scared, I’m terrified.

“And have you spoken to your parents since then?” she asks him.

Ray looks down, his hands steepled like a gun against his chin. He shakes his head. “They don’t want to listen to me. I tell them to stay at home, and they just nod their heads.”

We are all head nodders, she thinks. We all nod our heads in tacit agreement without thinking about what we are committing ourselves to. We nod our heads and say yes even though our insides are full of shadows and cobwebs. We have become complicit in the head nodding and small talk and telling everyone that we are fine. We look so put together on zoom with our hair brushed and just enough make-up, when in reality half the people on the screen are probably not wearing pants.

Like Cynthia, another client who insists she is fine. Cynthia was recently laid off from her job in the airline industry, has two kids, a dog, and a Netflix subscription. “That pretty much sums up my life right now,” she says.

She spends her days homeschooling her kids, walking her dog, consuming news on protests, election news, and where the latest outbreak is. “But I’m fine,” she says, nodding her head. “At least we still have a roof over our heads, unemployment, everyone’s healthy,” she says as if marking off a mental checklist.

“I finally have all this free time, but I’m just too tired to do anything.” She smiles wearily into the camera and continues to tell her about all the ways they are the lucky ones. How she tries to stay positive despite her dwindling bank account funds, the kids in constant orbit. She is fine, and grateful, and staying positive, she repeats like a mantra.  

As if she needs to justify being “fine” at a time like this. As if being more okay than others meant slamming the door on any sense of loss and pain she was allowed to feel. As if gratitude should be the sole response to rise above and conquer. Because someone, somewhere, always has it worse.

She waits for Cynthia to say more, gauging more from the silence than anything else. There is a stillness in the air, as if even the wind is too lethargic to move. Despite her restless energy to go out and meet in public forums, Cynthia seems sluggish, stagnant. Despite being in tune with the news and social media, she doesn’t know when life starts and ends, what day it is, or when she last showered.

Jonathan, another client, was all rage, rage at the president for not handling things properly, rage at the lady this morning who wasn’t wearing a mask as she walked right next to him on the trail this morning, rage at the protestors who immersed themselves in crowds despite them being in a “qua-ran-tine,” he gestures using air quotes.

“And then I’m hiking on this narrow trail, and this lady passes right next to me, no mask, probably panting all over me,” he winces.

She sees client after client, and there is so much rage, fear, and sadness, and after talking all day, listening to other people’s issues, she should be exhausted. But the truth is, she is exhilarated. It’s as if she feeds off their stress, anxiety, cries for help, and while it saddens her, she has never felt more needed.

This is what she doesn’t tell anyone, not to her friends, not to her family, not even to her colleagues, themselves therapists. She thinks of her life – pre-pandemic – the coffee she would share with a friend. They’d talk about mindless things - the weather, their latest binge watch, who was dating whom and who was divorcing whom.

But here, she was making a real difference! She never speaks of her own fears, her own selfish fears, that when the new normal went away, when the promised vaccine would finally come, they would all leave her, no longer needing the solace she provided.

They would all throw their masks into the fire, throw caution to the wind by congregating in groups larger than ten, and they would shake hands and kiss cheek to cheek and high five like they did not just bury millions of people from this terrible disease.

They would reminisce on the days of toilet paper hoarding and constant hand sanitizing, and she would, once again, find herself to be a part of nothing. She would once again meet her friends for coffee and small talk, and she would smile like she meant it, glad for the vaccine that would miraculously cure the world.

Sadly, she thinks, it took a worldwide pandemic to feel a part of something, a part of this world. What kind of person was she to hope for normal to not find its way back so soon? We’re all in this together, she thinks sarcastically.

Ray is in tears now, his lower lip trembling in frustration. “It’s this damn pandemic,” he says, cigarette practically wilting between his fingers. “I just need it to go away so life can go back to normal.”

She stares at him, and nods in agreement.