In Which Dr. Lavender Taps on My Head Like a Ripe Coconut

Following The Recent Unpleasantness, I have made appointments with several psychologists, counselors, and psychiatrists.

Mr. Ineffective from last week was pleasantly but summarily fired yesterday when I canceled my future appointments.

However, in Dr. Lavender, we have a strong candidate.

Dr. Lavender is a psychiatrist of the old school. At the end of last night's session (which I had believed to be chiefly to talk about adjusting meds), he said, "I would like to wait awhile before changing your medications. I don't know you well enough." And I thought that sounded like the right thing to do.

Fiddling with meds is a potentially high-risk situation. I've seen two people have very bad reactions to meds prescribed to them by a doctor who had met them only once.

However.

Because Dr. Lavender is Old School, he is a psychiatrist who talks to me, not just the man with the prescription pad.

I think one reason why I stuck with Ari so long was because I didn't have to go through the dreaded intake interview. There are only so many times I can take this before the pain seems unbearable. It goes like this:

Are you married? No, divorced.
Do you get along with your parents? Yes, especially since they're dead.
When did your parents die? Hm. I think my father died in 2003. My mother on July 1, 1997 at 11:30 am. My parents divorced when I was very young.
When was the last time you saw your father? October, 1976.
And before then? Um...1960?
Any children? No.
Any brothers or sisters? No.
What's your social life like? I volunteer at Volunteer Theatre.
What do you do at home? Read, sleep, and play cushion to as many cats as can heap themselves on me.

Every one of these questions has a repercussion inside me. Alone. Alone. Alone. Rejected. Rejected. Rejected. It makes me even more tired.

Dr. Lavender asked, "If you were sitting in my office nine years ago, what would we be talking about?"

"We would be talking about my plan to leave my ex-husband because in the past he had been physically abusive and was always financially irresponsible."

Dr. L paused. "That's a good answer. That's a very good answer. But not quite what I was getting at."

What I like about Dr. L was that he paused several times and seemed to be working out things in his head. Then again, he could have been wondering what Mrs. L had whipped up for dinner.

At one point, he began to say something, then murmured, "No. No, that's too soon." A long time ago, I would have said, bring it on. However, last night, I thought, yep. Whatever it was, it's probably too soon.

After more conversation, Dr. Lavender looked at me and said kindly, "It seems to me you don't think very much of yourself. You seem to not like yourself at all."

Hey! Alert the media! I've never heard that before.

And throughout all of this, I had an undercurrent of thought going: I have been through this so many times and it's all just been stop-gap. I had thought that all of this had been scarred over, that if it wasn't exactly healed, it was not visible to the naked eye. What if it's all grown back or was never properly cleaned up after all?

Can I stand to have Dr. Lavender crack my head open like a ripe coconut and stir the contents?
Can I stand to have him find the silver scars and with one slight incision, see all that nastiness come bubbling up again?

I don't know. I truly don't know. I've made another appointment.

And just as he thought whatever it was, was too soon, at the same time, I thought, this is too soon for me to tell him: How dear friends have spaced me for reasons unknown, the many incidents of rejection, my social awkwardness dating back to the time I was seven, the beatings, the negligence, the threats my mother made on my life, the threats my ex-husband made on my life and other things besides.

I am Dr. Lavender's cash cow for the year (or at least 39 more visits). I also feel like a science experiment. I have a feeling pain will be involved.

But I don't mind if it all proves to be worth it. Can that nastiness all be dealt with and put away for ever? If it can, I'm all for it. If it just keeps coming back again and again, I don't think it's worth it.

But it's too soon for that.