Confidential(4)

CHAPTER 3





GREER


“I picked you because I really liked what you said on your website, about how adaptable you are, that you’re not the same therapist with every client,” I said. “It’s not easy for me to ask for help, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to adapt.”

“Adapt to . . . ?” Michael prompted.

“Some people might say I’m a control freak, and that’s been okay, for the most part. It’s made me successful.” I stared right at him, refusing to soften the remark or to make any apologies for my ambition. “Lately, I’ve been thinking that I want a baby, which is highly inconvenient.” I was thirty-nine years old, but I didn’t have to tell him that; he should have read my age on the intake. “Babies make your life unpredictable, and I’ve certainly never wanted that, but I . . .” To my mortification, I felt myself on the verge of tears.

He nodded with a simple, “Go on.”

At work, I didn’t waste a word. But in this office with its IKEA aesthetic overlaid with nomad chic, I found myself rambling. It was as if I’d been in captivity and had finally been released. “I’d be doing it alone. I don’t have a partner, but I wouldn’t especially want one, either. I can’t imagine all the compromises and accommodations with a child involved. Then I think maybe I could hire someone, but I’m not having a baby so someone else would raise him or her. If I do it myself, though, it’ll be chaos, and that terrifies me. But it terrifies me more to never do this thing that I suddenly want so desperately, yet it may obliterate me. I’d have to become someone else entirely.”

He nodded again encouragingly. He was better looking in his photo. Maybe it was an old picture, as he had more gray now and a few more laugh lines. He looked kinder, though. Less professorial.

“This isn’t how I normally sound,” I said. “If you met me in another situation, you wouldn’t even recognize me.”

He gave a slight smile. “If you met me in another situation, you might not recognize me, either.”

“I need help. I’m not used to that. I really hate it.”

“You hate being here?”

I looked at him with surprise as I realized, “No, I don’t.”

“It’s okay to have some ambivalence about this process.”

“I’m not an ambivalent person. I’m used to deciding on a goal and pursuing it wholeheartedly. But the things I want are in direct opposition to each other.”

“Career and family are in opposition?”

“For me, yes. I’m single. I’m in charge of my company, and I work a lot of hours. But it’s more than that. I have to be a certain kind of person to run my business, and that is not the maternal type. I feel like motherhood might make me a schizophrenic.”

“That’s a common worry.”

“Really? Schizophrenia is a common worry?”

He laughed. “The fear of losing yourself to motherhood is common. If you joined a moms group, you’d hear that a lot.” He must have seen the horror on my face. “Support is critical with such a big life change.”

“Sitting around with a bunch of women leaking milk? It just doesn’t sound like me.”

“You’ll have to expand your concept of who you are and what you’re capable of. You’re right, it’ll be scary, but it’s likely to be worthwhile.”

“Only likely?”

“There are no guarantees.”

I had foolishly hoped he’d reassure me, that he’d tell me having a baby doesn’t necessitate a radical lifestyle change, just a few tweaks.

He wrote in his Consent to Treatment that there are no easy answers. Yet I’d managed to hope that in this case, there would be, like what I really wanted was a charlatan psychic and not a mental health professional.

“You seem disappointed,” he said. He didn’t wait for my response; he was that sure he had me pegged. “I know it’s your first time in therapy. Did you have an idea of what our conversation would be, and this is somehow falling short? It’s good to talk about expectations.”

“I’m not used to sharing my feelings, especially not with men.”

“What are your relationships with men usually like?”

“They’re brief. I want a successful man, but successful men don’t seem to want their equals. They find me ‘intimidating,’ apparently. I’m not bitter about that. I haven’t put much energy into the search, and I’ve never tried to be a truly good partner to anyone. We have a few dates, and then a part of me is relieved when I don’t hear from them. Or if I do hear, I find fault with them. Maybe I’m looking for someone who’ll work harder at the relationship than I will, which isn’t fair. I want a beta to my alpha, yet I wouldn’t be attracted to anyone but the top dog. It’s a catch-22.”

Had Dr. Baylor put some truth serum in the water he gave me? I shifted uncomfortably on the couch, wishing I could stop, knowing I probably needed to go on. That’s what Dr. Baylor was saying with his nods.

Here came another one. Maybe they weren’t even intended as communication; it could have been the therapist version of hiccups or gas, a bodily function gone awry.