Baltimore by Jelena Lengold Page B

reason to feel shame and that it was all perfectly normal. I wanted to tell her about how she tried to convince me to believe the pillow was, in fact, the baby from my dream and how I had to play the roles of the membrane and the big elephant and the small elephant, and that it was all her idea, not mine! And now, all of sudden, it turns out I opened up too much!
    “That’s not what I said.”
    “But that’s what it sounded like.”
    “All right. I realize I hurt your feelings with my question. What I wanted to say was: Did you open up because you were following your nature or because you thought it was something you should do? I don’t want you to open up only because you think you should, if it’s something you don’t usually do.”
    What is she trying to say? That I’m really an obedient child, a goody-goody who’d been told: “Now you’re in therapy and here you have to expose your feelings to the bone, no matter how much it hurts?” Could it be that all that crying earlier brought her to this conclusion?
    “Okay,” I said, “but then you should have said so, instead of creating a misunderstanding.”
    “What does that critic of yours say to all this, the one from our last session? What does he say about the way you’ve opened up?”
    “He doesn’t say anything.”
    “And about me?”
    “Well… he says that you’re improvising. I disrupted your plan for today’s session by talking about this, and now we’re out of time, so you’re trying to come up with a way we can spend the remaining twenty minutes or so.”
    She laughed:
    “That’s partly true. But it’s also important that we discuss the feelings you came in with today. How do you usually express anger?”
    Ha! Ask my husband, he’ll tell you. He can also show you the scar on his forehead, if you’re that curious.
    “With explosive, short-lived outbursts. I get over it very quickly, unless it’s something really big. But the fact that I don’t know how to forgive someone who really hurt me is a much bigger problem. I realized some time ago that forgiveness is one big deception of Christianity. At least in my case.”
    “Which person in your life couldn’t you forgive?”
    “You already know. I told you about it. But this has nothing to do with that story.”
    She made that face of hers, ‘I know everything and I can sympathize with anything,’ and said:
    “This has nothing to do with me, this anger you’re feeling.”
    Well, now she made me really angry!
    “Of course it does. I can do you a favor, if that’ll make it easier for you, and tell you it’s really projected anger against my father, mother, a former lover, or whoever, but it wouldn’t be the truth. This is exclusively your doing. Don’t tell me you’re incapable of making a mistake?”
    “What is on the other side of your anger?”
    Sometimes, she really confuses me with her cross-examination. Really, what is the opposite of anger?
    “Well, I guess some kind of passiveness, an inability to fight back.”
    “May I say that you’re very sensitive?”
    “Of course you may. I’d even feel better if you did.”
    “Why?”
    “I always thought of myself as being more sensitive than most people, but then it occurred to me that this kind of thinking might be overly narcissistic. Everyone is sensitive in their own way. But, if you also think I’m sensitive, in a way that confirms my assumption….”
    “Well then, from now on, I’ll have to watch what I’m saying to avoid hurting your feelings.”
    “No, you don’t. That would put a strain on you. You can say whatever you like, but allow me the right to react in accordance with my feelings. Like now, for example.”
    “Of course you’re entitled to that. In fact, therapy is a combination of mutual understanding and confrontation. Going through these two processes leads to authenticity. But… you mentioned most people. How do you see yourself compared to most people?”
    “With regard to