Conversation with an MFT

I went to my first therapy session today with Shannon, an MFT (I’ll let you figure out what that stands for). She seems nice, so I won’t go with my first impulse to define the acronym. She’s a young black woman, mid-thirties, I’m guessing, possibly younger based on her choice of office décor. She has giant posters of DC comic heroes and movie memorabilia plastered all over the walls.

My first thought, upon seeing her, was—“Oh, shit, I’m not going to get to play my poor me card. She’s gonna look at me with the judgemental eyes of one who knows the score. Who’s this guy think he’s foolin’? He ain’t disabled, he’s just tryin’ to play me.” (Why am I affecting a colloquial accent? She’s black, but she certainly wasn’t speaking in any kind of homespun vernacular.)

I may have embedded prejudices that I’m not even aware of and certainly don’t want to admit to. It shouldn’t be an issue in 2019, but let’s be honest, it’s going to be an issue as long as people keep making it an issue. I want to be past all that, where we can all just joke about stuff like our differences, but we’re living in a sensitive time. I feel self-conscious for even noticing that my shrink is a young black woman.

She put me at ease by not presenting an agenda for my immediate recovery. She claimed to simply be there to “have a conversation.” Pretty non-threatening. I gave her my story, condensed version, with minimal tears and choking up. I am getting used to repeating the facts, and like it or not, it is hardening me and blunting my trigger reaction. It wasn’t a painful session, but I’m not going to say it produced any hope in me.

I keep being amazed by the fact that other people find my conversation or communication to be articulate or intelligent. I think that maybe someone set the bar lower when I wasn’t looking. Maybe I’m just a throwback to a different era and people today really are less able to use language. Perhaps I only appear intelligent when compared to a typical millennial phone zombie with text-speak for a vocabulary. It doesn’t make me any smarter, it’s just a sad commentary on society that someone like me could impress anyone intellectually.

But, sure, it tickles my ego to hear it. Makes me feel like I have some superpower or rare skill. Mr. Uses Words Good Guy. Super Poly-syllable Man, able to string together complex phonetic phrases to form complete words. Too bad about his fatal flaw, poor grammar. Oh, well, no one will notice. The king’s English is dead, long live the tweet.

I don’t see a future right now, and I’m not very good at living in the present moment. Let’s see, where does that leave me? Living in the past, in some concretized, fictional rendering of my life, retold and reinforced into reality by the retelling. In that sense, thoughts do create reality, or at least what is real for me.

I need to try another experiment with stream of consciousness meditation. Just sitting and writing down thoughts and impressions of what appears before me. I’d do that right now, but I’m getting tired. But it can be enlightening to just see how much I perceive at any given moment. Maybe I’ll also take a picture and put it next to my wall of text, to see which one actually conveys more information.

Pictures can be just a veneer of what is actually going on. Which is why, I guess, I am so down on Facebook. Pictures get all the attention, and no one bothers to write much of their own text anymore. Everyone is sharing, copying and pasting, and failing to give much description of what is going on in their lives. I’m as visual as the next guy, but I need words to feel a connection.

I’ve stumbled upon my true calling. Professional complainer about the way things are these days guy. The job has been vacant since Andy Rooney died. I’m curmudgeony enough. Where do I apply?