Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,139
Wendell’s waiting room. Caught up in the song, I’d opened the wrong door! I laugh at my mistake.
I walk out and shut the door, then look around to get my bearings. I check the nameplate on the door, which confirms that I am, indeed, in the right place. Once more, I open the door, but what I see looks nothing like the room I know. For a moment, I panic, as if in a dream: Where am I?
Wendell’s waiting room has been completely transformed. There’s new paint, new flooring, new furniture, and new art—striking black-and-white photos. Gone are what I assumed to be the hand-me-downs from his parents’ house. Gone is the vase with the cheesy fake flowers and in its place is a ceramic pitcher and cups for water. The only thing that remains is the noise machine that ensures no one can hear what’s being said on the other side of the wall. It feels like I’ve walked into the finished product on one of those home-improvement shows where a space becomes unrecognizable from its original unfortunate state. I want to Ooh and Aah the way the owners do on these shows. It looks beautiful—simple and uncluttered and also a bit quirky, like Wendell.
My usual chair is gone, so I take a seat in one of the new ones with funky steel legs and a leather back. I haven’t seen Wendell for two weeks—I’d assumed his being out of the office meant that he was on vacation, maybe even at the cabin from his childhood with his large extended family. I had imagined all of his siblings and nieces and nephews I’d discovered online and tried to picture Wendell with them, goofing around with his kids or kicking back with a beer by the lake.
But now I realize that this renovation was also taking place. My good mood is dissipating and I start to question if my contentment was real or if I was experiencing a “flight to health” in Wendell’s absence. A flight to health is a phenomenon in which patients convince themselves that they’re suddenly over their issues because, unbeknownst to them, they can’t tolerate the anxiety that working through these issues is bringing up.
Typically, a patient might have a difficult session about a childhood trauma, then come in the next week and announce that therapy is no longer needed. I feel great! That session was cathartic! A flight to health is especially common when the therapist or patient has been away and in that break, the person’s unconscious defenses take hold. I did so well the past few weeks. I don’t think I need therapy anymore! Sometimes this change is genuine. Other times, patients abruptly leave—only to come back.
Flight to health or not, I’m feeling disoriented. Despite the room’s vast improvement, I sort of miss the old crappy furniture—much the way I’ve felt about the inner transformations I’ve been going through. Wendell was the makeover show that came in and launched my internal renovation, and while I feel so much better now—in the “during,” because unlike décor makeovers, there’s no such thing as “after” until we’re dead—sometimes I think of the “before” with a weird kind of nostalgia.
I wouldn’t want it back, but I’m glad I remember it.
I hear the click of Wendell’s office door and then his footsteps on the new maple floors as he walks out to greet me. I look up and do another double take. Before I didn’t recognize his waiting room, and now I almost don’t recognize Wendell. It’s like somebody’s playing a prank on me. Surprise! Just kidding!
In his two weeks off, he has grown a beard. He’s also ditched the cardigan for a smart button-down, traded his worn loafers for the same trendy slip-ons John wears, and looks like a completely different person.
“Hi,” he says, as usual.
“Wow,” I say, a little too loudly. “So many changes.” I gesture to the waiting room but I’m staring at his beard. “Now you really look like a therapist,” I add as I stand up, making a joke to cover my shock. In fact, his beard looks nothing like those stodgy ones in the long tradition of well-known therapists. Wendell’s beard is stylish. Scruffy. Unkempt. Rakish.
He looks . . . attractive?
I remember my earlier denial of any romantic transference with him. And I’d been truthful—as far as I was aware. But why was I so profoundly uncomfortable right now? Had my unconscious been having a passionate affair with Wendell behind my back?