Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,110

want to hear something?” she continues. “I’m also going to miss myself. All those insecurities I’d spent my life wanting to change? I was just getting to a place where I really like myself. I like me. I’m going to miss Matt, and my family, and my friends, but I’m also going to miss me.”

She goes on to name all the things she wishes she’d appreciated more before she got sick: Her breasts, which she used to think weren’t perky enough until she had to give them up; her strong legs, which she often thought were too thick, even though they served her well in marathons; her quiet way of listening, which she feared some might find boring. She’s going to miss her distinctive laugh that a boy in fifth grade called “a squawk,” a comment that somehow stuck like a burr inside her for years until that laugh made Matt glance her way in a crowded room and then make a beeline for her to introduce himself.

“I’m going to miss my freaking colon!” she says, laughing now. “I didn’t appreciate it enough before. I’m going to miss sitting on a toilet and shitting. Who thinks they’ll miss shitting?” Then come the tears—angry ones.

Every day is another loss of something she took for granted until it was gone, like what happens to the couples I see who take each other for granted and then miss each other when the marriage seems to be dying. Many women, too, have told me that they loathed getting their menstrual periods but grieved the loss of them when they reached menopause. They missed bleeding the way Julie will miss shitting.

Then, in almost a whisper, Julie adds, “I’m going to miss life.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” she says, starting soft and getting louder, surprising herself with her volume. She looks at me, embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I agree. It fucking sucks.”

Julie laughs. “And now I got my therapist to say fuck! I never used to swear like this. I don’t want my obituary to read, ‘She swore like a sailor.’”

I wonder what she does want her obituary to say, but time is almost up and I make a mental note to come back to this next time.

“Oh, who cares, that felt good. Let’s do it again,” Julie says. “Will you do it with me? We’ve got a minute left, right?”

At first I don’t know what she’s talking about—do what? But she has that mischievous look again, and then it clicks.

“You want us to—”

Julie nods. The rule-follower is asking me to yell obscenities with her. Recently in my consultation group, Andrea had said that while we need to hold hope for our patients, we have to hope for the right thing. If I can no longer hold hope for Julie’s longevity, Andrea said, I have to hold hope for something else. “I can’t help her in the way that she wants,” I’d said. But sitting here now, I see that maybe I can, at least for today.

“Okay,” I say. “Ready?”

We both yell, “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!” When we’re done, we catch our breath, exhilarated.

Then I walk her to the door, where, as usual, she hugs me goodbye.

In the hallway, other patients are leaving their sessions, doors opening at ten to the hour like clockwork. My colleagues look at me questioningly as Julie leaves. Our voices must have carried into the corridor. I shrug, close my door, and start laughing. That was a first, I think.

Then I feel the tears well up. Laughter to tears—grief. I’m going to miss Julie and I’m having a hard time with this myself.

Sometimes the only thing to do is yell, “Fuck!”

36

The Speed of Want

After completing my traineeship year, I began my internship at a nonprofit clinic located in the basement of a sleek office building. Upstairs, the light-filled suites had views of Los Angeles’s mountains to one side and beaches to the other, but downstairs was another story. In cramped, cave-like, windowless consultation rooms furnished with decades-old chairs, broken lamps, and torn sofas, we interns thrived on patient volume. When a new case came in, we all vied for it, because the more people we saw, the more we learned and the closer we came to finishing our hours. Between back-to-back sessions, clinical supervision, and mounds of paperwork, we didn’t pay much attention to the fact that we were living underground.

Sitting in the break room (aroma: microwaved popcorn and ant spray), we would scarf