The Return(36)

When my anger finally dissipated to a manageable level, I was able to drive home. Days later, I poured the whole story out to my doctor, but in the following months, I told none of my friends. Nor did I tell my friends about the nightmares and the insomnia or anything else that was making my life a trial. And I wondered: Why can I tell Dr. Bowen, but not the people I consider friends?

I suppose it has to do with fear: fear of rejection, fear of disappointing others, fear of their anger or their judgment. This says more about me than it does them, but I don’t feel this way when I speak with Dr. Bowen. I’m not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the simple fact that I pay him. Or maybe it has to do with the idea that, for all our conversations, I know little about him.

In that way, we’re not friends at all. Because he wears a wedding ring, I assume he’s married, but I have no idea who his wife is, or how long they’ve been married, or anything else about his wife at all. I don’t know whether he has children. From the diplomas on the wall of his office, I know he went to Princeton as an undergraduate and Northwestern for medical school. But I don’t know his hobbies, or the kind of house he lives in, the food he likes, or any books or movies that he may have enjoyed. In other words, we’re friends, but really, we’re not.

He’s just my therapist.

Eyeing the clock, I saw it was almost time for our weekly call, so after rinsing my dishes in the sink, I propped open the back door for some fresh air and put the computer on the kitchen table. Dr. Bowen liked to see my eyes when we spoke, so he could tell whether I was lying or hiding something important. On my end, it was a lot easier than meeting him in person, and I had easy access to the bathroom if I had to go. No reason to put the session on hold, no matter what. I could just carry the computer with me while I did my business.

Kidding.

At the top of the hour, I logged into Skype and it automatically dialed the number. When the connection was made, Dr. Bowen popped into view. As usual, he was at his desk in the office, a place I’d visited more times than I could count. Slightly balding with round, wire-rim glasses that made him look more like a professor of mathematics than a psychiatrist, he was, I guessed, about a decade and a half older than I was.

“What’s up, Doc?”

“Hello, Trevor.”

“How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

When I asked, it was simply part of a greeting. When he asked, he actually meant it.

“I think I’m doing well,” I answered. “No nightmares, no insomnia, sleeping well. I had one or two beers on four different days last week. I worked out five times. No episodes of anger or anxiety or depression in the last week. Still working the CBT and DBT skills whenever I feel like I need them.”

“Great.” He nodded. “Sounds very healthy.”

He paused. Bowen did that a lot. Pause, I mean.

“Should we keep talking?” I finally asked.

“Would you like to keep speaking?”

“Are you going to charge me?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I’ve got a new joke,” I said. “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“I don’t know.”

“Only one. But the lightbulb has to really want to change.”

He laughed, just as I knew he would. Bowen laughs at all my jokes, but then he gets quiet again. He’s told me that jokes might be my way of keeping people at a distance.

“Anyway,” I began, and proceeded to catch him up on the basic goings-on in my life in the past week. When I’d first started therapy, I wondered how any of this could possibly be useful; I’d learned over time that it allowed Bowen to have a better idea about the stress I was under at any given time, which was important in my management of PTSD. Add too much stress, remove the skills and healthy behaviors, and it’s either kaboom, like I felt toward the Home Depot guy, or way too much drinking and Grand Theft Auto.

So I talked. I told him that I’d been missing my grandfather and my parents more than usual since I’d last spoken to him. He responded that my feelings were entirely understandable—that checking the hives and fixing the engine on the boat would likely have triggered a mix of nostalgia and feelings of loss for just about anyone. I mentioned that I was nearly certain that someone had broken into the house and had lived there. When he asked if I felt violated or bothered by that, I said that it was more curious than bothersome, since aside from the back door, there’d been no damage and nothing had been stolen. I also mentioned the things Claude had said about my grandfather, and—as we had so often of late—we spoke about my grandfather’s last words and my ongoing confusion about them.

“It still troubles you,” he observed.

“Yes,” I admitted. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Because he told you to go to hell?”

Dr. Bowen, like Natalie, seemed to remember everything.

“It wasn’t like him to say something like that,” I insisted.

“Maybe you misunderstood.”

Bowen had suggested this before. As I had in the past, I dismissed it.

“I’m sure he said it.”

“But he also said that he loved you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you indicated that he’d had a major stroke? And was on a lot of medication and was quite possibly confused?”