We move on to discussing medication. Or, rather, he’s talking about something called SSRIs and I stop listening. Something behind his right shoulder is distracting me. A small abstract watercolor. Not abstract exactly, more geometric. Squares and pyramids strategically aligned by color. It has to be new. I’ve sat in this room every week since late last summer and never seen it before.
“Is that watercolor new?” I ask.
“What watercolor?”
“The one behind you. The one with all the shapes.”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
I scan the room searching for further evidence of my waning powers of observation. Desk, chair, sofa, crucifix. Those I remember. This paperweight, the Venetian millefleur, I remember that too. The psychopharmacology reference guide on the side table. That I haven’t seen. That’s definitely new.
“You aren’t listening to me, are you?” he asks.
“Sure, of course.”
Actually I stopped listening when he told me what I didn’t want to hear. He’s gone too far. He’s overstepped his boundaries. He’s diagnosing me.
Depression.
“Call in FDR!” I say.
“What?”
“I have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
I think my stentorian Hyde Park mimicry is pretty funny, clever at least, but it doesn’t get a laugh. He’s holding a manila folder with papers attached by a strong metal clasp. A medical record. My medical record. I’m reassured by its brevity, just a few sheets of paper. It would be thick as the phone book if I were crazy. It had never occurred to me he was keeping a medical record. He’s not my doctor. He’s my counselor. That’s what the State of North Carolina ordered. Counseling. I pay him a lot of money and he counsels me to stay off my knees in public toilets. That’s the State’s only interest in making me do this, to protect its upstanding citizens from stumbling upon acts of depraved perversion when nature calls while they’re doing eighty miles an hour on its beautifully landscaped interstates. The State of North Carolina has no interest in How I Feel.
I tell him he has it all wrong.
“How so?”
I can’t be depressed. Don’t depressed people sleep all the time? Lately, I can’t sleep long enough to finish a dream, tossing and turning and twisting the sheets between my legs. Don’t depressed people want to be alone? I’m constantly seeking out crowded rooms, noise, distractions. In fact, I crawl the walls when I’m alone, pacing, smoking, smoking, smoking. Aren’t depressed people passive? Not me. It’s easy to get a rise out of me these days. People stare at me from the safety of their own cars, shocked by my bulging veins and grinding teeth when we’re crawling at fifteen miles an hour. Don’t depressed people cry at the drop of a hat? Well, meeting one of the diagnostic criteria isn’t enough. Besides, it’s not as if I actually cry. It’s just that I feel like crying.
“It’s not a sign of weakness, you know,” he says in his professional voice.
“And it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he says.
“How would you know?”
Christ, I’m down his throat. He doesn’t react. He’s not startled, not taken back. He’s observing.
“I know because it’s a disease,” he answers. “Just like hypertension and diabetes. I’m writing you a prescription.”
“No.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
He’s slipping up. At least it shows he’s not completely complacent about this.
“Sorry,” he says. “Tell me why you don’t want to try medication.”
“I not only will not take them,” I declare, sounding like a petulant five-year-old, “I’ll never even get them. I’ll never have it filled.”
“You’re not being rational. That’s the depression talking.”
That’s the depression talking.
Where do they come up with lines like this? Do they teach them in medical school? Clever Diagnostic Quips 101?
“What are you feeling right now?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m not feeling anything.”
I’m lying. I’m feeling exhausted. Too tired to invest any more words and emotions in denying his diagnosis.
“You’re always feeling something,” he says.
“Okay, you win. I’m feeling depressed.”
Maybe that will shut him up. The clock says only twenty more minutes until I’m released. I’ve let him win. Maybe he’ll take pity and set me free early.
“Too easy,” he says.
“What?”
“Too easy. How does depression feel? What does depression mean to you?”
“Abraham Lincoln.”
“Excuse me?”
“Abraham Lincoln.”
“Okay. You got me there.”
“Abraham Lincoln. Diagnosed with depression one hundred years after he died. After he died, for Christ’s sake. What does that tell you?”
Eureka. He’s befuddled.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“It’s easy. Do you think one hundred years ago people walked away from the White House, shaking their heads and clicking their tongues, saying, ‘Man, Old Abe, Honest Abe, he seemed a little depressed to me today’? Of course not. They’d walk out and say, ‘Abe was awful quiet today.’ Or, ‘Old Abe seemed to be somewhere else.’ Or, ‘Abe was a little short-tempered, not like him to be that way.’ The word depressed probably didn’t even exist back then. Who invented it? Your buddy Freud? His buddy Jung? Hell, whoever it was, they got it wrong. Depression isn’t a disease. It’s a description!”
“So then tell me what it describes.”
“Huh?”
“A description has to describe something, right? So tell me what it describes.”
“You’re playing fucking games with me.”
“So why don’t you play along? You’re good at games.”
He knows how to play to my vanity.
“I’ll say depression and you say whatever comes into your mind. You’ve got one minute. I’ll time you.”
“Look, Matt,” I say, “I’m not one of your juvenile delinquent pinheads. If you want to play a word association game, just ask.”
“Sorry,” he says sheepishly. He actually blushes.
He looks at his watch.
“Hold on. I need to smoke to do this.”
“Go!”
I waste the first twenty seconds finishing a drag on my cigarette.
“…Okay. Depression. Black. Block. Box. Weight. Dead-weight. Sink. Drown. Float…”
I’m stuck on float.
“Float…I see myself on my back, floating, bloated, bluish.”
Dead. No, not dead. Just not alive.
“Time’s up.”
“How’d I do?”
“Great! You won,” he says, clicking his pen.
“What did I win?”
“This.”
He scribbles on the prescription pad and hands me my prize.
“You’re going to take these, right?”
“Doctor’s orders!”
At the door, he does something he has never done before. He hugs me. I’m too surprised to hug back.
“Everything is going to be okay,” he says. “I promise.”
Manipulative bastard. He knows just how to get to me. I had no intention of filling the prescription, let alone taking the damn things. But the hug has broken my resolve. I can’t let him down. Spooky, I think as I drive away, I wonder if I’m becoming one of those creeps who falls in love with their therapist.
The Bride of Frankenstein
If I’d remembered tonight was Halloween I would have found some excuse to stay over in Davenport, Iowa. I could have called Matt to tell him I needed to cancel our session so I could take in the International Sofa Museum. What? They don’t make couches in Davenport, you say? This great city must be famous for something! Agriculture? Okay then, I don’t want to miss that exhibit of the world’s largest ear of corn. Who would? Sorry. See you next week.