Dear X

You show up more in my mind than you aught to.

I know that.

But you pop up in moments when I’m stressed or unsure.

So I think about why a lot — which only brings it on more (like a wiggly tooth that you can’t help but push with your tongue — partly just to feel a little sweet pain).

It makes me feel ashamed. Dirty. Secretive.

Because I can’t really tell anyone.

So you become a kind of drink I have in the alley. In the dark. Before I go in and pretend everything is alright.

What’s funny is that when it started I needed help. That was your job, to offer help.

You made me feel special, oddly, by doing just that.

You gave me advice that opened the door to trust.

It was a great thing, for sure. In it I found a stone I could build on and that brought down my defenses. I needed that because I’d done damage to H, the woman I’d married 12 years before and I needed help.

Baffled, I was ready. Evenso, I still needed convincing.

That simple way you had was good enough to help me open up just a little.

But, ironically, from the start, I also understood you had a secret wisdom. Because you told me where to go with a specificity only those who know have. So I felt I shared something with you that was outside the room. (How often did I note this at the end of sessions — that it really was quite something — the knowledge you had of the places to go, the meetings that were near me?)

I was right but didn’t dare guess it then. It was too new. I was too raw. I was too pre-occupied with my own problems.

It didn’t help that your office was in my office building and that I’d run into you occasionally in the hallway. The secret relationship was confirmed with every passing “Hello.”

There’s no doubt that I fed on it like a slow drip IV that opened up even more when the company plan ended and you said you’d take me on for a deal.

I felt special again.

That’s how the Tuesdays began.

From there, the needle dug deeper into the groove as I slipped into the pattern that a babysitter ignited long ago.

There were other things that — now when I look back — my mind wound itself around. Things you can’t do anything about and that only a pattern in a mind can create: Like you, S was tall and big chested and wore glasses, too. Like you, S had a nasal twang at moments. Like you, S had a hardscrabble character to her.

But it went deeper.

Like EMDR. Careful as you were, you used your hands and that meant you had to approach and get close. And suddenly there was your body, knee against knee close. My breath would change in those moments and I’d think, this is weird: I want this but it’s forbidden.

Compounding it was the fear of losing this specialness if I told you about it.

And the fear of being seen as dirty if I ever told you about the one time in EMDR that I saw you giving me a handjob in the back and forth movement of your hand.

How could you have known about this?

I did confess at some point that I occasionally imagined sex with you. I didn’t lie that they were momentary — as fleeting and dismissable in the moment as the fast fantasies I had occasionally about other women — T and Shez and R.

What was different was that none of those others had the secret knowledge. The relationships with them were on the table. Public. Worklike.

You said that it was normal. And you were firm and clear about your boundary.

I remember saying back then, it wasn’t you I was worried about, it was me. Not that I’d actually do anything (I knew even then how deeply committed I was to H and how an action like that was not appropriate, invited or fruitful — how destructive it would be to all I loved). Still, it was me I worried about because while it would never be a thing I (or you) would cross, my mind freely crossed under the bar anyway and did what it wanted to. Enjoyed the heat of it. The forbiden-ness of it.

When these moments came up, you met them as you could, as you were likely trained. You wrapped it in the “transference/counter-transference” gobbledegook that is no better than a prayer uttered as a habit.

Looking back, you probably should’ve thought about it all a bit more. (And maybe you did: Hindsight is an unhelpful friend.)

I certainly was too chicken shit to get into it myself. How could I know the way? Every step would make everything that much more special. Yet I think you knew: you saw it curling around the edges. The way I dressed. How I looked at times, or didn’t look at other times. The way I read the books from Jung to Yalom.

I did try to leave once. I was sure it was time and it felt right. (It really did.) Perhaps it was only an attempt to rid myself of the pattern. Or just walk away from it. In any case, you said there was more work to be done: “We’re not done yet” I think was how you put it.

You might’ve been right, but the real mistake was not to push more about why the end was better then.

Later, there were other opportunities to talk about it: Moments when I’d say something between us was odd — like the time I came to your SF office and told you how distanced and disoriented it felt. Other times I wondered allowed what this “therapeutic relationship” really was. (Who was I really talking to in our 50 minute hours together?)

It all fueled a desire to know you better. Who you were. Why you had a tattoo of a phoenix rising up your calf. What the sanskrit said on your arm.

Sometimes you hinted that you knew. “I don’t want you to become too dependent” I remember you saying once. To the little boy within these were only comforting hints and confirmations that you knew something odd was happening.

The crazy last straw was when we finally did the “termination” because I was moving. You told me the source of your secret knowledge. I’m not sure why you did. Maybe it was to say, “See, it’s nothing special.” But it confirmed my feeling that something was shared between us. You even told me you knew some of the people I knew.

It really baked my noodle.

What meetings did you go to? What was your story? Who are you?

I talk about you with L, my current therapist — whom I have never met in person and who does EMDR not with her hands but a foam clown nose on a wand.

I wonder aloud to her about the relationship because, dirty as it can make me feel, at least I learned to be brave enough to voice what I am noticing.

I’ve told her that leaving you was akin to leaving a girlfriend behind. But now I know that isn’t enough. It’s not accurate.

Because you still pop up in my mind.

When I’m angry. Or stressed. Or unhappy. Dis-satisfied with the emotional bed that Heather is offering (or not).

You are a place to go where I’m special. Different from the others. Taken care of.

Certainly, you pop up less than before, you are still with me and lately I’ve been really wondering why I'm still in the same place now.

My wife is in pain.

I still look at things I don’t want to.

I still think about you when I know I shouldn’t.

It leads me to hating you. And that brings back a babysitter who I also hated, and wanted. And made me feel special.

But I wonder now if that need to be special was also fed by AA — the secret that you can’t tell others about but that you need to stay alive and well.

Are all secrets this way? Is this the deeper reason I write out these notes and show no-one?

What a pattern.

But that’s real and true, X.

I have to say goodby in a very final way. I think I have to fire you for real.

I’m wondering, oddly, if I should do that by ending the relationship with L. Should I simply close the door on this place that makes me feel special? It seems like an odd thing to do — end it with L to end it with you — but I wonder if it would let me come fully into myself?

This doesn’t really make sense when you truly examine it. After all, it’s not a problem with therapy per se, but a very specific instance of it — and even then the benefits outweighed this specific and strange and unforeseen echo of an old pattern.

And I know this is not the whole reason I come to this hour every week on Friday. It is just part of the puzzle. A hunk of something I have been reluctant to look at, but has always been there.

Like all good problems, there is no obvious path.

Perhaps it’s just enough to notice it.