Sciophobia

As I mentioned a month ago, I finally made an appointment with a therapist. Since then, I've had three such appointments. The relatively swift pace of this was my own choice as I was actually home for a period of two weeks. Now that I'm traveling again, it may be as little as a week, or as much as two months before I have the opportunity again.

It turns out that I had a stroke of luck at my failed attempt of war dialing. My therapist an impossibly thin elder woman with short, graying hair. Her practice is out of her book-lined basement in the southern edge of Minneapolis. I couldn't help but scan the titles in curiosity. There's a stack of computer books, gay and transgender periodicals, psychology books, and even a few of Wiccan subject. Whether or not this was for personal interest or for research for clients, I did not ask.

During my first session, the sound of piano music drifted down the staircase. "My partner," she said, adding a noticeable beat at the word, "often plays during sessions. I hope you don't mind her playing." How could I mind, for that moment this seemed like the warmest and safest place in the world. I did eventually she her partner while waiting in my car for my last session. Tall and decked out in a jogging outfit, she waved as she past my car and entered the house from the front door.

Of those three sessions, we've covered a great deal of my history. I should have realized that this would have been a required step in order to establish a baseline for the client. Having throughly documented (paper journal #17 started last week) and analysed my own experiences, most of what asked did not require a great deal of consideration before answering.

Inadvertently, however, she uncovered something that's disturbed me since.

"How was the relationship with your father?" she began. To be honest, until a year after my Transition, I didn't have much of a relationship at all with him. We would go out to stores on Saturday morning, or to a swap meet to look at used cameras or computers, but during the week I was not to disturb him. He was, after all, too tired from work to do anything other than watch television. In many ways, he was like the sleeping giant as I grew up. "Be quiet and good otherwise I'll have to tell him about what a bad person you've been." My mother used that threat sparing me, but it was enough to leave me in terrible fear. As an adult, this all sounds rather odd as my father is quite a gentle man -- even if he has a repressed wild streak.

"What about your mother?" Ahh, this one. Given my recent realizations about her, I felt it necessary to tread lightly around this subject. I told her about how I spent the most time with her growing up. I mentioned the summer afternoons where we'd travel to the nearest "city" and peruse the antique shops. She had a Victorian sense about her, and a vein of stoicism a mile wide. I do not want to demonize her, but there were times that I would find her wearing this expression. It was as if to sigh, look at the mess my young self caused, and ask, "How much is this going to cost me?" The worst of these was after I had badly cut my finger with a pair of sharp scissors when I was only 6 years old.

I was trying to make little helicopter blades out of cardboard, and I was using them to punch the holes. My small hands slipped and the blade cut a swath through the top of my right index finger, above the second joint. During the whole incident, the drive to the Emergency Room, my left hand clutching the bloody paper towel around my injured right, she never comforted me. She, in fact, never said a word and was noticeably repressing rage. And through it all, that expression again, "How much is this going to cost me?" She didn't talk to me for the rest of the day after that. I had overheard her calling her boss explaining why she couldn't come in today as if it were all a grave incident. Afterwards I slunk silently back into my room to contemplate my 7 stitches and to play alone -- as I did most days -- as quietly as I could.

I didn't tell my therapist any of this of course. If I did, it would no doubt delay my goal of getting a letter assuring a Thai surgeon that I do indeed, have my head screwed on properly. It's a dreadful sort of economics: More sessions means more time, which means more money. That same money could be going into my SRS fund. While I did apply to have these sessions covered under my insurance, there's no guarantee they'll approve them. Instead, I skimmed over the details, avoided mention of the more harsh incidents like the one above.

Then the third question: "How was the relationship with your brother?" My brother and I had a rather tempestuous relationship growing up. He always felt he had something to prove, and since we weren't allowed to play with neighbor kids, I was the only to compete with. He seemed determined to prove that he was better at everything than I could be. To be honest, it was all quite true. When I was 5, I couldn't understand programming, electronics, or anything that he was interested in. I read very, very slowly, although I could read quite above my age when I was so inclined. We never really played unless it was something he conducted. My ideas for play had no merit unless they didn't fit in his design. Often I felt as if he were forced to play with me by my mother, and didn't appreciate this in the slightest. Eventually I stopped trying to play and retreated into my science books, novels, and the family encyclopedia. By the time I was 9, we never played together again.

Today of course, we don't even speak. How long has it been? A year? Two? I honestly don't care anymore. "He made his decision, I made mine," I say while drawing myself up, a sad imitation of my stoic mother.

At this point in the session we both seemed to be a bit surprised. "Friends?" I wasn't allowed to play with the neighborhood children, of course. I was raised to hate and distrust them. They did, after all, taunt my brother quite often. It didn't help any that he invited it with how he fought back. He never seemed to learn to be the apathetic shadow I was. Outside of a few that took pity on me in the lunch room, I didn't have anyone I could call a "friend" until after the 8th grade.

That's when I realized the pattern. Father, mother, brother... No connection. No connection. No connection.

"It sounds," she said, "rather lonely." The mention of that word felt like a dagger in my chest. It was a vile blade that somehow found a way between the plates of my hard exterior. I bit back a tear. No, I won't cry. Not here. It was too late of course, she noticed. Thankfully we didn't have a chance to expand upon it. The session was over and our 54 minutes spent. I cut a check for $110 and left.

Despite the fact that moment of realization was almost two weeks ago, I haven't been able to put it out of my mind. This can't be my life, I would say to myself, it wasn't really that bad, was it? I've since thought about how that early lack of emotional connection to anyone has effected the rest of my life. Throughout it all, I never have been able to bring myself to completely trust other people. Even those that were close to me at one moment or other, there was always the little thought in the back of my mind. Don't get used to it, it would say, they'll just use you, betray you, or leave you in the end.

It's hard to believe otherwise given the element of history: I felt closest to my grandmother just before she died due to complications from lupus. I felt closest to my mother just before she was diagnosed with a rare form of malignant melanoma. Mercy dumped me without a word or explanation -- the first person I had truly opened up to. Relationships since have met with similar failures.

And sometimes, in the silence, I wish there was nothing beneath protective plating. That there was no beating heart inside. That I were just a hollow, metal shell, an animated suit of armor.