The long goodbye

I know I’m dragging this out like the ridiculously long goodbyes we used be be able to have in airports, waving, smiling, and blowing kisses until we disappeared down the jet way and then resuming a wordless miming ritual of the same upon taking our seat at the window, even though we really couldn’t see each other. Yes, this blog is going away; yes, I will miss this black space and white font; yes, I will miss Teresa on this blog. But I hope letting this go will make room for something good. The membership expires tomorrow, so this will likely be the last post.

I had my first appointment with a mental health professional since the $125 and 50 minutes I’ll never get back incident with Dr. Awesome. I was 30 minutes late for the most ridiculous reason. I got to the building with time to spare but forgot the phone number, suite number, and the actual name of the doctor I was seeing so I rode the elevator in a 13 story building for 25 minutes walking into random offices asking if any of them were expecting me. The young man at the information desk in the building might as well have been vase or a hat for all the assistance he was able to provide. While riding the elevator, afraid that my stopping at every floor and wandering about was going to eventually provoke the attention of security professionals, I scanned my cell phone for dialed numbers trying to remember when I had made the appointment so I could figure out which number to call. 22 minutes into this ordeal, I picked the right number from my cell phone, they told me where they were, and I finally ended up breathlessly in the office of the man with the blue sweater.*

His sweater was probably cashmere though I base that only on his trouser jeans. Older men who wear trouser jeans, probably also wear cashmere when they wear cerulean blue sweaters. A refined and monied casual. He was left-handed which shouldn’t matter at all except that I feel a third graders kind of kinship with fellow south paws. I want to talk about scissors and ladles and other confounding prejudices of the right with a civil rights fervor. He was amused (I think) that I had been to two previous therapists only once and that I simply called Dr. Awesome crazy. He did not invite me elaborate on that assertion. He seemed to bemusedly accept that based on my track record, he may never see me again even if I made a big show of making a follow-up appointment. In our brief 25 minutes together, we got more out of the way than I did with the previous two folks put together so I’m hopeful that the third time is the charm. We shall see.

Perhaps the end of this black and white, often melancholy blog is the beginning of an adjustment in my psyche, moving from the contrast of a dark space with many points of light to a lighter space with dark elements for contrast. You know, working the balance of my insides so that whichever of the yin and yang is black, doesn’t suck in all the light.


*I’m tempted to give him a moniker of BS because of that sweater but we’ll wait for session two to see if I can come up with something that doesn’t have a pejorative connotation.