ii
prev.cont.I go to therapy on my computer. I think online therapy is stupid. My therapist is a man I’ve never met in real life. He doesn’t know me in the three-dimensional world, but he interrogates me about the decisions I make and guides me through deep breathing exercises.
I think he’s getting bored of me. I noticed him looking at his phone while I was talking today. He asked me what I thought this year was going to be like, and was I nervous to start my first official year of clinical training? And then he looked down at his phone. I could tell because I saw his his glasses light up with little white rectangles.
I tried to answer his question, but it was impossible not to be disarmed by the white rectangles, one on each lens of his glasses. He wasn’t looking at the two-dimensional version of me; he was typing a message to someone. I know that humans aren’t very good at dividing our attention, so I knew that if I kept talking, I’d basically just be talking to myself. I started to wonder if what I was saying wasn’t interesting enough, and then I got angry. Isn’t it obvious that you shouldn’t be on your phone during therapy, especially when you’re the therapist? The screens are making us all demented.
At the end of the session, he told me that we don’t have to keep doing weekly appointments, considering how well I’m doing. He said that I should just go into the year with confidence and hold onto all of the coping mechanisms that he taught me. And wouldn’t it be nice to just let life wash over me for a while? He sounded pretty convinced. I was too stunned to disagree, so I said, “Yes, sounds good.” He told me to email him if anything comes up.
I turned off my computer and looked at my face reflected back to me in black. I guess we’re doing this alone.
I looked out the window. Snow was falling in heavy chunks onto the street that will be my home for the next 12 months.
I looked at my phone and saw an ad for a “green noise” app. I felt a surge of anger. First the therapist who couldn’t go 45 minutes without checking his phone, and now this app that promised to bring the healing sounds of nature anywhere I go. Nothing is normal anymore.
But I’m no better than the green noise peddlers: I use a 10-hour box fan sound effect podcast to hypnotize me to sleep at night. I trick myself into imagining my speaker as a box fan, and I let the noise distract me from the thoughts that come after my head has hit the pillow. Sometimes I even let myself believe that the box fan is blowing a pleasant breeze. My life is becoming a more simulated, artificial version of a life.
Everything already feels different, and it’s only been a few days. I feel like I’m on the cusp of something. I'm feeling pretty good right now, notwithstanding the all-consuming sense of dystopia that runs in a constant loop in the background. It's hard to see how this could go wrong. Famous last words, I'm sure.
exit