A walk to the therapist's office

On Monday I took the bus to see a therapist for our first session. She was very nice and eerily perceptive and I am seeing her again next week.

This is not the first time I've seen something like this. Why is it I always find underwear and dildos on the sidewalk? Are they the toys adults haphazardly discard in favor of shinier objects, or am I prone to stumbling upon the aftermaths of public orgies?

I woke up at 8 AM and rode the bus for 20 minutes, getting off at 8:40 AM then walking for seven minutes to her office. The light was still warm and dim, and shadows fell elongated against orthogonal building exteriors and sidewalks. I couldn't help but admire the short buildings and carefully pruned shrubbery that mark suburban America. Her office was located in an apartment building and felt very much like a home—garishly floral couches and chairs lined the interior, and the walls were decorated with both Impressionistic and Chinese landscape paintings. A dilapidated bookshelf held books on self-healing, mindfulness, Jung, and Asian Art. 

I often feel, in these sorts of situations, selfish and privileged. To have the rapt attention of a stranger is a dangerous drug, and I'm very self-conscious of the fact that I'm not actually the center of the universe. But my awareness of privilege is paradoxically a root of my desire for therapy: I have food to eat, I live comfortably, and I don't have much to worry about. And yet I still manage to pick my life apart until stability hangs by a thread, and I feel chaos loom like a light glowing through thin cloth.

The last thing she asked of me before I left her office was to say one thing I liked about myself. This simple request begot a slew of tangential thoughts and self-analyses that lasted for much longer after she'd asked. But in the moment, after a few seconds of sincere consideration, I said I liked how I am interested in many different things, and that my curiosity makes me both a more interesting person and a better conversationalist. I don't actually know how true this is, but I felt confident in my self-compliment at the time. 

I'm curious to know what she thinks of me, what she thinks of the problems I spoke on. I wonder if she's encountered anyone else like me in her entire 30 years' worth of experience (of course she has), and if so I wonder what eventually happened to that person, if anything was solved. I wonder if there is anything diagnosable or concrete, or if I'm just lazy and average and normal. It feels good to have one-on-one attention from someone who is both knowledgeable and caring, which is, the more I think about it, pathetic. 

Here's to hoping I learn how to feel less sad and anxious all the time.