Ann Lynch:
"My therapist was my best friend and mentor. I looked up to him, as he was a gallant figure in my life. I held the highest respect for him He kept my secrets hidden and didn't expose them to anyone. Everytime it was my time to see him, he would come and get me like "All right Ann, It's just you and me now, aren't we lucky. " Once he had to see someone before me accidentally, and he says to me, `Rats!'
"My therapist is like an Honor Guard. with Flying Colors. He's not judgmental except when he agrees with me about the people in my life that bring me misery. Then he goes ahead and agrees with me. He takes a big bunch of papers that don't mean anything and just throws them in the trash like they aren't important. `So what about those Suns of Bitches. Who cares about them anyway.'
"He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes and looks at me eyeing me: So what's new Ann? "I'm just glad to be here in your presence," I say. He looks through my folder. Nothing new? I tell him how down I am. He gives me my appoinment card by sliding it across the table. Here you go. "Fancy that," he says. He tells me jokes like maybe some famous people have manic depression only they have to perform anyway against their will. And they have symptoms.
"I give him my poetry and my journals to look at. He takes them and reads them back to me -- the pages that seem important. He reads me my poem "Promises to Keep."
"Do you trust me, Ann?" was the first question he asked of me. "I certainly do, " I say.
"I was hospitalized and he came to see me. He sat down on the bed right beside me. I got up when he sat down. "Sit down he said."
"I'm not afraid of his physical presence. I take comfort in his body. That makes him perfectly special. That's why our ties are so strong.
"He wanted me to go to the hospital and get ECT treatment, but I refused. I didn't like the idea. I was foolish back then. I argued with the doctor. Then we had to move. I missed my therapist. God I cried. I came back to see him just once for a final visit. I asked if I could still see him. He said I could if I want to. That was pleasure to my ears. But of course I couldn't.
"I wrote many journal entries about my love for my therapist. He's always been very real to me.
"I guess he's been like a higher power for me. Because I can just call him to mind and I feel a whole lot of good sensations. I feel all my remorse is over with and my mind can heal just by thinking of our beautiful relationship. What we had together was so special.
"When I was in Florida I found a children's book at the library called, Guess How Much I Love You? and at the end the little rabbit says to his father that he loves him all the way up to the moon. That is far, says the father. Then the father says to his son I love you all the way to the moon . . . and back. Now that's far. That's how much I love my therapist. It was the cutest little book I ever saw.
"I called my therapist's phone number and it had been disconnected. I don't know how to get in touch with him anymore. I think our relationship might be disintegrated. It's been alive for all these years now. I
may have to say good - bye."
My Reason for Reason
If it weren't for you
There would be no beginning
There would be no ending
There would be no bending
Nor no nursing
Nor no filling
There would be no tax on gas
There would be no wood in trees
There would be no length of day
Or no falling out at night
There would be no glass wear
There would be no Sinclair
There would be no robins
And the table would cease to creak
And I would be left laughing
In a timid kind of contrast
And the holy could indulge
In sweet tenderness of loss
Yet in that there low
We would all be kind of defiant
And whispers would actually be quiet
And loudness could not sing
Because she would be locked up
And her torments would grow and grow
Then the disciples would administer
Supplications and her hell would be
A lot worse. Because loose cannons never
Go off and in its hidings his torture
Would seem or be like gravity
And this is always how its been
If I did not find you saving me.
c2004Ann Lynch
