The Consultation

The therapist's office has that specific aesthetic that exists at the intersection of "calming" and "expensive"—succulents that are thriving a little too perfectly (someone is definitely getting paid to water those), abstract art that's just chaotic enough to seem deep but not so chaotic it might upset anyone, and a white noise machine that's doing its best to mask the sound of someone crying in the adjacent room. (It's not doing great. The walls here are aspirational rather than functional.)

Dr. Reeves sits across from me in a chair that probably cost more than my rent. She's got the look: glasses that say "intellectual" but are definitely designer, a cardigan in that shade of gray that only therapists and tech CEOs seem to wear, and a notepad that she hasn't written in once during our entire session, which feels like some kind of power move.

"So," she says, in that particular tone that therapists use when they're about to ask you something they already know the answer to, "tell me about your relationship with your mother."

I laugh. Can't help it. "Seriously? We're doing the mom thing?"

"Why is that funny?"

"Because it's—" I gesture vaguely, "—it's such a cliché. Next you're going to ask me about my dreams or my childhood or whatever."

She doesn't smile. Just waits. This is another therapist move—the strategic silence that's supposed to make you uncomfortable enough to fill it with honesty. I know all the moves. I've been doing this long enough to recognize the playbook.

"My relationship with my mother is fine," I say. "We talk twice a week. She sends me articles about fiber intake and asks when I'm going to give her grandchildren. Standard stuff."

"And your father?"

"Dead." (I say it flatly, because if you don't put emotion in it, people don't know how to respond, and then they move on faster.) "Heart attack. Six years ago. He was at the grocery store. Dropped dead in the produce section, which he would have found grimly hilarious because he fucking hated grocery shopping."

Dr. Reeves makes a note. First one of the session. Apparently dead fathers are more noteworthy than living mothers.

"You use humor as a defense mechanism," she observes.

"I use humor because things are funny," I correct her. "The universe is absurd. My father died next to a display of organic kale. That's objectively ridiculous."

"Is it?"

"Yes." I shift in my chair. (Less comfortable than hers, naturally. There's probably research about optimal chair comfort ratios for therapeutic power dynamics.) "Look, I know what you're doing. You're trying to get me to have some kind of breakthrough about grief or whatever. But I processed it. I went to therapy—different therapy, not this specific session but therapy generally. I cried. I felt things. I moved through the stages. I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"Yes."

"Then why are you here?"

This is the question, isn't it? The one I've been avoiding for the forty-seven minutes we've been talking in circles. (Forty-eight now. I can see the clock behind her head, one of those minimalist numbers where you have to actually think about what time it is because there are no numbers, just elegant lines, which feels like a metaphor for therapy itself.)

"Court ordered," I say finally.

Her eyebrows rise. Slightly. Barely. But I catch it. (I catch everything. It's a problem and a skill and the reason I'm here in the first place.)

"The paperwork said voluntary."

"Voluntarily mandatory," I clarify. "As in, I can voluntarily choose to come here, or I can involuntarily go to jail. Those were my options. I chose this."

"I see." She leans back. Crosses her legs. The body language says she's relaxed but the way she's gripping her pen says otherwise. "And what were you charged with?"

"Charged is a strong word—"

"What were you charged with?"

I sigh. Look at the succulents. Wonder if they know how good they have it, just sitting there being watered on schedule, never having to explain themselves to anyone.

"Stalking," I say. "Allegedly. Which is a really loaded term that doesn't capture the nuance of the situation."

"Tell me about the situation."

So I do. Because that's why I'm here, isn't it? To tell someone who's legally obligated to listen and morally obligated to not judge (or at least not show it) about how I ended up in a courtroom listening to a judge suggest that maybe I should "talk to someone about my behavior patterns."

I tell her about Melissa. About how we met at a conference (boring), started dating (less boring), moved in together (mistake, but I didn't know it yet), and then how she left. Just packed her stuff one Tuesday while I was at work and was gone when I got home. No conversation. No warning. Just a note that said "I'm sorry, I can't do this" and a key on the kitchen counter.

"That must have been difficult," Dr. Reeves says.

"It was confusing," I correct. "Because everything was fine. We hadn't fought. There were no signs. She just—" I snap my fingers, "—vanished."

"So you tried to find out why."

"I tried to understand," I say, because understand sounds better than the things I actually did. "I called. She didn't answer. I texted. She didn't respond. I went to her sister's house because I thought maybe she was there. She wasn't. I checked her social media. She'd blocked me. I created a new account to see if maybe she'd posted something that would explain—"

"That's when the stalking charges came in."

"The sister called the cops," I say. "Apparently showing up at someone's house more than once is 'threatening' and making multiple accounts to view someone's Instagram is 'harassment' and trying to understand why your girlfriend of two years disappeared without explanation is 'an unhealthy fixation.'" (I'm using air quotes. I'm aware I'm using air quotes. I'm also aware that using air quotes makes me look exactly like the kind of person who would end up in court-ordered therapy but fuck it.)

Dr. Reeves is quiet for a moment. The white noise machine hums. The person in the next room has stopped crying, or maybe they've moved into that silent stage of despair that's somehow worse.

"What do you think happened?" she asks finally.

"I don't know," I admit. "That's the problem. I don't know. And not knowing is—" I stop. "It's worse than any answer could be. If she'd said 'I don't love you anymore' or 'I met someone else' or 'you leave dishes in the sink and I can't live like this,' at least I'd have data. Information. Something to process. But she gave me nothing. Just absence where a person used to be."

"And you need to understand things."

"Everyone needs to understand things," I say. "That's not pathological. That's just being a person with a functioning brain."

"Tell me about your work," she says, changing tactics. (Another therapist move—when you hit resistance, come at it from a different angle.)

"I'm an analyst," I say. "Data analyst. I work for a consulting firm. We help companies optimize their operations by identifying patterns in their data."

"You look for patterns."

"I find patterns. That's different. The patterns are there. I just see them."

"And in your personal life?"

"What about it?"

"Do you look for patterns there too?"

I know what she's getting at. I'm not stupid. She's drawing a line from my job to my behavior, suggesting that my professional skills have bled into my personal life in unhealthy ways. That I'm treating Melissa's departure like a dataset to be analyzed rather than a human experience to be felt.

And maybe she's right. (Probably she's right. The judge seemed to think she'd be right, which is why I'm here.)

"Sometimes," I admit. "Sometimes I notice things. How often someone texts back. Whether they use periods at the end of sentences. If they're online but not responding. The gaps between when they say they'll do something and when they actually do it."

"And with Melissa?"

"There were no gaps," I say. "That's what I'm trying to explain. Her behavior was consistent right up until it wasn't. No change in texting frequency. No emotional distance. No signs of dissatisfaction. And then—nothing. Complete discontinuity. Which is statistically improbable unless there was an external variable I wasn't accounting for."

"Maybe the external variable was her internal experience," Dr. Reeves suggests. "Maybe she was unhappy in ways you couldn't see."

"But I would have seen," I insist. "I see everything. I notice when someone changes their coffee order or buys different brand of toothpaste or laughs differently at jokes. I would have noticed if she was unhappy."

"Would you?"

The clock behind her head says we're at fifty-nine minutes. One minute left. She's going to use it to leave me with something to think about until next week, because that's how this works. You don't resolve things in therapy. You just collect increasingly uncomfortable insights that pile up until you have no choice but to change or suffocate under the weight of self-awareness.

"Here's what I think," Dr. Reeves says, right on schedule. "I think you're very good at seeing patterns in data. In measurable, observable phenomena. But people aren't data. They're not always consistent. They don't always show their variables. Sometimes they hide what they're feeling, even from themselves. And sometimes—" she pauses, "—sometimes the thing we're looking for isn't actually about the other person at all."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Something to consider for next week," she says, and just like that, we're done. Time's up. Session over. Come back in seven days with your credit card and your unresolved issues and we'll do this again.

I stand up. (My ass has gone partially numb from the inferior chair, which feels like adding insult to injury.) I grab my jacket and head for the door.

"One more thing," Dr. Reeves says as I'm leaving.

I turn back.

"The man in the produce section," she says. "Your father. You said he dropped dead next to the organic kale. You said he hated grocery shopping."

"Yes?"

"But you also said he was alone when he died."

"Yes."

"So how do you know it was the produce section? How do you know it was the organic kale specifically?"

I freeze. My hand is on the doorknob. The white noise machine is still humming. The succulents are still thriving. Everything is exactly as it was sixty seconds ago except for this question that I can't answer without—

"I was there," I say quietly. "I was with him. I'd gone to help carry the groceries because he'd called and said his back was hurting. I was standing right next to him when it happened. I watched him die and couldn't do anything to stop it."

She doesn't say anything. Just waits.

"And Melissa," I continue, because apparently we're doing this now, "Melissa left because I told her about it. About watching him die. About how I memorized every detail—the kale, the fluorescent lights, the way his hand gripped the shopping cart, the exact time on my watch when he stopped breathing. She said it was unhealthy. That I needed help. She said I scared her."

"And did she tell you this?" Dr. Reeves asks gently. "Or is that what you concluded from the data?"

I open the door. Step into the hallway where other broken people are waiting for their own inferior chairs and their own uncomfortable hours.

"She left a note," I say finally. "The one on the counter. I didn't read you the whole thing."

"What did it say?"

"'I'm sorry, I can't do this. You see everything except what matters.'"