« In Which Life Is So Content And Complete From Where We're Sitting »

Therapy

by MEREDITH HIGHT

My freshman year in high school, I worked so hard. I wanted to make all As and be pretty and be good. I wanted to be friends, make friends. I wanted to move on from middle school, start over. Be a new person, be my own person.

Everything was going OK until things started the next year, the sophomore year. I got my braces off. I got pretty. Boys were calling, and I didn’t really understand why or what they wanted. It made me feel strange, why they would call my house and want to talk to me, my mom was always in the next room.

I met geometry and chemistry. I don’t understand these subjects now, I didn’t then. All of a sudden I was getting C’s and D’s. I was supposed to be good, I was supposed to be so smart. before I was smart, now I wasn’t.

Before, being smart was the only thing I was ever really good at. reading, and knowing things, and understanding things and being smart. I couldn’t do sports all that well, or dance or gymnastics or even girl scouts. I was always bored by those things.

I just wanted to stay home and read.

But the boys kept calling and the classes kept coming and there wasn’t a plan anymore, I was just making it up as I went along, I didn’t know how to do this.

I made out with boys but I didn’t know anything about sex and I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. I thought making out was bad. I was lost. my parents were worried. I read and loved books like The Bell Jar and Go Ask Alice and Life Without Friends.

In short I loved books about depressed girls who wanted to kill themselves.

After a while I went to a therapist. Depression was not then what it is now, you know, like alcoholism or anorexia. I didn’t know what depression was. I just knew I felt heavy sometimes, dead. Maybe my parents understood, I don’t know, they just wanted me to be happy. That is all good parents who love you want, is for you to be happy.

I wish I could give them this.

The therapist was in his late thirties or early forties. He was kind, but I do not think he knew what to do with me. He was a blonde redhead, balding just a little bit. He was probably attracted to me, and I made him uncomfortable.

This is not a judgment, just the truth.

I don’t say that because of how I look or anything special about me. I say that because sometimes it just comes down to man and woman and it is that simple. You can’t take it personally. The instinct, at least. It's what you do with that instinct, really, that counts.

I failed some test, geometry maybe. My geometry teacher tried so hard to help me understand, but I just couldn’t understand. He knew how much it upset me, he could tell I was trying so hard.

Sometimes in class I would fantasize that actually I was some sort of savant and I actually just grasped math on a different level than everyone else but no one understood it yet.

That was not the case.

My geometry teacher wrote me a nice note though, at the end of the year. I think I finished with a C, maybe. I knew that that combined with my ineptitude with chemistry and science meant that I would not get one of those amazing scholarships, that I would not be the overachiever I had always hoped to be. But this note meant a lot. It was so thoughtful, this note. He just wrote that he knew I tried so hard and maybe something about going easier on myself, or something.

Before all that, I was supposed to be at a pep rally or something in the gym but instead I was in the bathroom, crying. The last time I was in the bathroom at school like that I had gotten my period for the first time. My stomach had hurt all morning and then it happened and I was so confused, I didn’t understand my body, or what it was doing,

Even though I had read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

It was after the crying in the bathroom, after the test, that I was sent to this therapist. He was a nice man. but I didn’t know how to relate to him or what to say, I just mostly stared at the clock and watched the hands pass the time, like one of the depressed girls in one of those books I read did.

sylvia and tedSometimes the therapist would ask me questions, more about my behavior than my feelings, like have you been drinking alcohol? And so on. Sure I had tried it. but I didn’t understand how to do that, either really. I didn’t drink much, even then. I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t have sex. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know.

He had pictures of his twins on his desk. They were toddlers. I asked him about them once, and he smiled and I smiled. I liked the sight of those twins, they were blonde and they were young and they were happy. I noticed his gold wedding band. He was so vanilla. His life looked so content, so complete, from where I was sitting.

I do remember one time he asked me what was bothering me, why was I sad, and I said, because. The whole idea I had of my life, what schools I would go to, what I would accomplish, how successful I would be, how smart I was, what I could do, was over. It was all over, before it had even begun.

I was fifteen.

I had already figured out that I wasn’t going to be who I wanted to be, I said, and I was always going to be less than what I wanted to be. Plus, now I knew how hard it was for me, how sensitive I was, how easily stressed I became, how emotional, how difficult it was just for me to be me.

I was fifteen.

I can already see my whole life before me, I said. I can already see how hard it will be, I can already feel what it will be like. I know all the motions I will go through, college, work. I know what it will all feel like.

I know how hard it will be.

He did not respond.

I think he may have known I was right.

Meredith Hight is the contributing editor to This Recording. She lives in Los Angeles. She tumbls here.

"Down to the Ocean" - Grouper (mp3)

"Follow In Our Dreams" - Grouper (mp3)

"Heart Current" - Grouper (mp3)

Comments

[Jennifer]

Meredith,
I don't even remember how I came across your blog, but I wanted to tell you how thoroughly I enjoy your writing. Very honest, and there are times, particularly these introspective pieces, where it's as if you're peering into little quiet corners of my own mind.
Jennifer