in an ordinary exchange there are potholes. And he is about to step into one.
He also knows that no amount of normalizing the demands of one’s own business (`you never knock off’) can disguise the fact that he is essentially alone.
`Sport? Anything like that?’
Need to reduce the cortisol and circulate the endorphins …
`Used to. I used to do a lot of things –‘
His sentence and voice break simultaneously. Like the snapped twig he has become. Even to his own ears he can hear a grief (and incipient fear?) that he can’t disguise.
And that he knows she has heard as well. It is the kind of comment you can’t retreat from. And that calls for a response.
Yet when it comes, it’s not in the form of the emotional probe he had feared. Instead she asks a couple of questions.
`Were you capable in the past of a high level of energy you can’t now sustain? Are you tired with the effort of trying to do what you no longer can?
Yes and yes.
Then she says something about over-compensation. Something to the effect that if we find ourselves unable to expend effort on things to which we’ve directed our energies before, then barring physical incapacity, it’s likely something else is going on.
Something to which our inability to perform as previously is drawing our attention.
She’s getting close to the mark here.
But they are also coming close to time.
He likes it that she seems to see in his depletion not the signs of a spent force but potential highlighting of new purpose. In an adroit kind of volte-farce, the implication is not that he is the dessicated shadow he fears well on the way to becoming. Rather that he is on the brink of accessing important life-change.
How has she done that?
On the basis of the little I have told her?
Then again comes the unsettling realization that he may have told her quite a lot.
But right now it doesn’t matter. He has got through the second session.
They both have.
It seems extra bright when he leaves her office. And he knows that’s not just about the weather.
A tiny easing of his inner load – microscopic but perceptible – lets in some chinks of light.
How would it be to feel a degree of optimism all the time?
Not crazy brave. Just the ability to envisage a future that might be positive. To envisage a future at all.
But fleeting entertainment of that possibility sends him plummeting again.
Jesus Christ. All that wasted time.
Gropes his way to the car; fumbles with his keys (did a woman just look at him strangely? Are there tears in his eyes?)
I can’t take too much more of this.
These sudden freefalls. This leeching of energy.
And a new and disturbing thought insinuates itself. What if hope does start to take hold, only to be destroyed again?
Most everything else has been.
In the safety of his car he tries to recompose himself.
One day I will decompose. And I won’t go through this anymore.
Because I won’t experience anything.
The thought is consoling as well as disturbing. But an unbidden image of his former self – when he was able to do things - cuts through like a blade.
What was the line from that Brando movie he’d twice seen with Laney?
`I used to be a contender’.
Recollection of that sears him as well.
Sees himself on the ski slopes five years ago. The swerves on the snow. The wave of ice droplets that flew in his wake.
Never peaceful inside. But coveted moments of feeling intact.
It is as if ice inside him is melting. As if something is leaking from the clamp that has been placed on it.
Apprehension of a strong and functioning self is almost too much to bear.
The possibility of hope and extinction of hope is a variety of pain he has less experience with. And which at this point seems impossible to contain.
The attempt almost leads his body to convulse.
It’s a full twenty minutes before he can inhale without shuddering. And another twenty before he is able to steer his way back to his flat.
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