TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: Nice weather.

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: (sneezes) I'm allergic to something here. I smell green tea.

THERAPIST: Green tea?

CLIENT: Are you having green tea?

THERAPIST: I'm sucking on a cinnamon candy.

CLIENT: I smell [matcha] (ph?)

THERAPIST: Perhaps next door. She's also into essential oils and so forth.

CLIENT: (sniffles) I'm not having a good time. I've had a few very awful days. I'm not getting anywhere. I don't know what to . . . [00:00:56] (pause) (sniffles) I'm basically going insane. (chuckles) I want to crawl into a hole and just not come out for a long time. (pause) I don't know where to start, as usual. I guess just go in chronological order. Time has a good way of ordering things. Wednesday after therapy . . . (pause) [00:02:02] I don't know where to start. Where do I start? Okay, maybe I start with the good news, but I don't want to jinx it. This company that I'm working with that I submitted to, they said they want to consider it. It needs work, they said, but they'll work with me. So that's great, right? (sighs) I celebrated for five minutes and then I said [ ] (inaudible at 00:02:41) and that's good; that's good that I'm being realistic and just not . . . it's really hard to talk about. [00:03:00] (pause)

There's this guy in my program who is graduating so he's third year and I'm first year, but that doesn't matter because I already have a degree anyway. He's from Syria and he needed help with his English so he gave me his whole thesis to edit. He paid me money to do it, so I've been seeing him every weekend and telling him how to improve. I kind of grew attached to him. He's a decent looking, older by ten or more years, but he's well built and all. Somewhere down the line I was attracted to him, just by the fact that I'm not living with him at the moment. (chuckles) [00:04:02] He had his thesis reading last Wednesday and I was really feeling very supportive and feeling good about having helped him. He thanked me in front of everyone and the teacher came up and said, "Great job." So I started being like, "Oh, we could be a great team." And he's facing deportation and all that, but we could be together. (laughs) So extreme. I know he's dating other women, so stupid me, right? I just really liked that he depended on me to help him out and, after the thesis, he was looking for me and texting, "Where are you? We're all going to grab a drink. Come along with my other friend." [00:05:02] (sighs) It felt so weird hanging out at the pub. I don't go to pubs with the big screens, the baseball games. That to me is very American and I feel very shy entering that space. I feel like I don't have at all any baseball vocabulary (chuckles). I've not cultivated that interest at all, so I feel completely a fish out of water in such a situation.

So I was standing there by myself looking at my phone and the guy from Syria said, "Why are you standing by yourself?" [00:06:00] I was just observing and wondering the same thing I wonder every time I'm doing something on my own, not with Chris or not with Chris's friends or that crowd. I think we talked about it. How do I use this? Am I okay. I feel very anxious because it's so weird to me. It's not about Nepal. It's not about politics. It's not about history. It's not about literature. If it's not any of these things then I'm completely lost as to what to say. Everything shuts down in my brain and I'm like, "What do I do?" Only like minutes or maybe hours it doesn't occur to me to say, "So, what do you do?" Start with very simple questions. [00:06:59] All of a sudden the person standing there and sort of remaining like this black box that I'm so scared of becomes a human being and someone I can talk to. It's not like it's very meaningful and engaging and just all that, but not everything has to be that supreme connection that I'm so apparently [ ] (inaudible at 00:07:28). That was a bit weird. Interesting, but everyone was like, "Go with this guy. Let him drop you off." (laughs) He was trying to push me towards him. I was like, "I don't know. He doesn't like me. I know it." This weekend, when we went and had a read together, it was awful. It was so crazy. [00:07:59] I know he doesn't like me, but I had to open my big mouth and be like, "Yeah, I like him." He was like, "Yeah, I look at you as a little sister." It was so ridiculous.

I came home and I cried so much. I was dramatic and all and I made Chris so upset, too, the next morning. It just feels like I had another one of those chats that makes me feel completely awful. It wasn't awful in the sense that he wasn't emotionally there. In fact, he was even trying to cry. His crying was just wincing and that's it. (chuckles) But from the inside, I know he's crying. "I'm like your father figure." How can you be intimate with your father, right? He's like, "Yeah, you're not getting what you want in this relationship," but I also don't have the means to end it. I don't have the emotional means or the financial means to end it. I want so badly to be taken care of and I also want to have an adult relationship. But that cannot happen and I feel like those are contradictory, it seems. I become a complete little girl when I want to be taken care of. That is not an adult. That little girl cannot have an adult relationship. (pause) (sighs) [00:09:58]

I guess the underlying thing that also happened this week was those stupid e-mails with Victor. On Wednesday or Thursday . . . he's been e-mailing photos of Nepalese directors and talking about movies. I'll just be like . . . maybe I was flirting a little bit, but I wondered if he was flirting, too. It doesn't seem like that. Maybe he was just being friendly. He had a cold and I said, "You, poor thing. [Let me take care . . .]" That's not flirting. That's not important. So he was e-mailing and on Thursday, again, he sent me all these photos and like (laughs) he's putting so much effort? I don't know. He's being very friendly or . . ? [00:11:01] Why would a guy do that to someone he has very unceremoniously dumped? That just got me thinking about him so much, really hoping. I realize I haven't really moved on. I've moved in with Chris, but that's not the same as moving on, right? In my heart I'm still waiting for him. It's stupid. (sighs)

He got some sweets, some dessert from Nepal and he said, "Once I get better I'll give them to you." I was like, "Oh, yeah. I look forward to that." Saturday I went running and when I came back he had sent this e-mail, "Listen, we should figure out where to meet so I can hand over this dessert to you. I'm very busy. [00:12:01] Weekends I'm busy with experiments. Monday or Tuesday after work." I just felt so horrible reading it. It was like someone had punched me in the stomach. I don't know why, but I felt the exact same way I felt in June last year when he said, "No. Nothing doing. That's it." I met Chris for dinner and I was just sitting on the edge of my chair the whole time. I couldn't take any food down. It was just awful. I just felt rejected all over again. I didn't reply to him and I didn't reply to him. I still haven't replied. I just don't know what to say and I couldn't sleep all last night because I kept thinking, What do I say? [00:12:59] "I misinterpreted your e-mails and I'm still waiting for you. You've moved on, I know, but I haven't so it's not a good idea to meet you. I'm not in a good place?" All these things are rolling around in my head. (pause) I'm very anxious. (pause) I mean I want to meet him, if only to just ask him, "Why are you doing this? Why are you getting back in touch? You feel so guilty that you have to see me to make sure that I'm not dead or what?" [00:14:00] Why is he doing this? Do you have any idea?

THERAPIST: It seems like you know him better than I do, but it seems like you're wondering why he's playing with you.

CLIENT: Yeah. On Saturday, I was thinking that I have to make a decision and be like, "This feeling is awful. This feeling is making me feel I don't want it. It makes me feel horrible and weak and I don't want to be in that place any more." I shouldn't. I should consciously make an effort to do only things that make me feel strong, and that's not one of them. Being in touch does not . . . [00:15:00] It does bring me some excitement, some joy, because he's interesting and he talks about art and stuff, but it comes with such a great cost. It completely messes me up. I am messed up, right? This is a mess, right? (chuckles) There shouldn't be two opinions of this. I just feel like I cannot have love and happiness that I'm seeking. In a way, I feel like I was rejected by three guys this week.

THERAPIST: Is Chris one of them?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And how does Chris reject you?

CLIENT: By telling me that he cannot give me what I want, saying "it's not a button I can turn on." [00:16:04] I can see that he loves me, but this mood that we're in of father/daughter or brother/sister is not conducive to romantic adult love. It just makes me feel really awful, sad about myself. (chuckles) (pause) He was like, "All this time we were together you were the person who didn't seem very interested. I spent many nights frustrated and you didn't want it so I figured that's the end. But then something changed in you last year or two years ago or something, and I just couldn't handle that change." When he was here, he said himself that he's a creature of habit. He couldn't jump; he couldn't switch. (sighs) (pause)

THERAPIST: You said a bunch of things, but I'm wondering if we can kind of disentangle or flush out what's making you feel so awful. It seems like part of it is feeling rejected. And then part of it is you're feeling like you're seeing something about yourself you don't like. [00:18:07]

CLIENT: [Maybe it's that] (ph?) I'm so desperate and needy and putting myself out there, feeling very pathetic. Not even five episodes of 30 Rock helped. (laughs)

THERAPIST: You should have tried six.

CLIENT: (laughs) I should have because I didn't sleep. I mean Tina Fey makes fun of herself all the time, right? It's just not in the same way, not in 30 Rock, in some grand, French film or something worse. Swedish? I don't know. Who are the people who are the most psychologically hard on themselves? (laughs) [00:19:04] It's like that's what I feel like. I want to throw things at Saturday night, if that's possible. (laughs) (pause)

THERAPIST: I was thinking about your not having talked about this guy you're helping out. What is his name? You don't want to tell me.

CLIENT: Let's call him Darcy. (laughs)

THERAPIST: Darcy from Syria? Is that a very popular Syrian name?

CLIENT: There are Christians there. There are Christians and Jews and Muslims that live together, Christians and Muslims.

THERAPIST: What's making you so self-conscious?

CLIENT: Well, you're recording it so . . . (laughs)

THERAPIST: Really?

CLIENT: You're not recording it? (laughs) [00:19:57]

THERAPIST: Yes, but . . . yeah. Do you feel like you don't say things in here because I'm recording it?

CLIENT: No. I try not to think about that. I say things. I don't think it's that.

THERAPIST: Okay. I don't want that to affect your treatment or I at least want to know how it is.

CLIENT: Yeah. No, I know that so I try not to censor myself because of that. (laughs)

THERAPIST: I can give you the reality. It really wouldn't matter what his name is for the recording, because all the names are changed. But there's something about you needing to keep it private or you're ashamed.

CLIENT: Yeah, ashamed. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: So I was thinking that you haven't mentioned him before. It sounds like something that's been ongoing and it's something that you've maybe kept to yourself, your editing his work.

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't want to talk about it because I don't want to make it a big deal. [00:21:01] Once you do start talking about it, it comes from your subconscious to your conscious, you know? I thought maybe it was just something passing because I knew he didn't reciprocate, although who knows? To me guys are a mystery now. (chuckles) He's like, "Yeah, you're a great artist." So that's all. Yeah. (pause) So that's why I don't want to discuss it, but (sighs) it's not that I've cried about it for so long, I guess. With the other things that are tangled this week, I thought, it was important enough to talk about. [00:22:00] I was also thinking that I am finding this person attractive and I'm thinking that that means that I'm maybe somewhat over Victor, you know? (pause)

THERAPIST: What are you embarrassed about?

CLIENT: I just feel pathetic. (pause) Embarrassed about . . . in what sense?

THERAPIST: You keep saying that you feel embarrassed.

CLIENT: I don't know. I guess just rejected. [00:23:02] (pause) Why is it making me feel so bad, so horrible? It shouldn't, right? (laughs) Is it that big? Is it that life altering, earth shattering? (chuckles) I don't want to ask you personal questions, but if you get your sexual [ ] (inaudible at 00:23:49) rejected by another person, do you feel awful? [00:24:00]

THERAPIST: It depends on what the investment is.

CLIENT: Ahh. As in time and other things?

THERAPIST: Probably more than time, what the investment is, about who I am.

CLIENT: Who you are? What do you mean?

THERAPIST: How much of myself is invested. What does rejection mean to me as a person? What does it reflect?

CLIENT: That would be important to think about. (pause) Investment. (sighs) This Syrian guy. I don't know. He was paying me and I kept saying, "I feel awful you're paying me because you have no money and you have all these problems." He's full of problems. He's always got something going wrong. [00:25:00] I was so amazed by his positive attitude. That's what I found attractive. It just kept building up that he's always saying nice things about everyone. I guess maybe I didn't invest that much. We just met six or seven times and I spent a lot of time editing his stuff, but I got paid for that. I did dress up a couple of times to look nice. What was the other thing you said what does the rejection mean? Or how does it change things?

THERAPIST: The investment and the meaning for you. [00:25:59]

CLIENT: I just don't know how to answer the question.

THERAPIST: It sounds like you almost feel like you sort of feel like a silly little girl.

CLIENT: Silly?

THERAPIST: Yeah. Like a silly little girl. "I'm being so silly." It seems like the fact that there's an age difference and that he's older sort of fed into that. "I'm just being a silly little girl."

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Like it makes you feel diminutive.

CLIENT: I do like older men. I don't find younger men attractive much at all. (chuckles) It's that and then the fact that they reject me, automatically I feel powerless. (pause) [00:27:00] Maybe I should think more about what does it change? It doesn't change much, or does it? For me it seems like it changes everything. (laughs) Maybe not with this guy, but with Victor. From last year onward the connection I had with him I feel like I can't have that with anyone. And then me thinking that it's sacred and hallowed and I can't share it with anyone. I'm waiting for him to reconsider. Keep waiting. (chuckles) It's not going to happen. With him I feel like I'm really invested.

THERAPIST: Plus you're going out with someone who, at least on paper, is your boyfriend and you're going out on dates. I imagine it's sort of confusing and it makes you feel awkward and uncomfortable. [00:27:59]

CLIENT: And very guilty, yeah. Awkward and uncomfortable. With Chris or with other guys?

THERAPIST: I think you're just feeling that way inside you.

CLIENT: Yeah. Like you said, do I want someone to take care of me yes. But does that make me feel powerless and dependent and not in a position to not allow me to pursue certain things? Yes. That's the cost. (sighs) Are we done?

THERAPIST: No, we still have fifteen minutes.

CLIENT: We have lots more time. (pause) [00:29:08] Yeah, I don't know why my first reaction to all of this is, "Oh, I've been such a fool. It sucks to be me." There is this really acute, internalized crisis of identity, I think, instead of rationally looking at it. It's been two days and I still cannot read Victor's e-mail without it feeling like a blow, a slap on the face. He probably didn't mean anything by that, you know? (pause) [00:30:05] Last year when I was dating there were a couple of guys who were younger. I just did not feel at all attached. I felt in control and not at all . . . yeah. (sighs) They text me, "Please, let's meet. Let's meet." I was like "no." (laughs) So I was in a position to reject them, you know? I tried to be as nice as possible, but maybe it's just that older me are bad for me. (chuckles) [00:31:02] It's true. That's what I [told] (ph?) people I find attractive. (long pause) [00:32:19] Maybe they do see me as a silly little girl and I just anticipate it and project that on myself. I should say, "No, I'm not. Look. I'm quite mature." That is, if I am mature. (pause) Like the first time not the first I was the one who got in touch with Chris. I don't know if I've ever talked about it here, but I saw his profile online when that used to be there. I sat on it for a few days or months and then I picked up the card and sent an e-mail, because I just wanted to get to know someone like him who was political and intellectual. We met for a few times. I wasn't physically attracted to him, but I was attracted to talking to him. One time he said, "You're so young. I don't know how to talk to you." This was several years ago, seven years ago. The thing that remained with me was, "You're so immature. How can I, a well-read, reasoning adult talk to a child you?" [00:34:13] (long pause) I couldn't be that well-reasoning adult. [00:35:01] I could be if I tried, I thought. I can work on myself and I can read a few books and I can be that. But then it's not like he's going to stop growing and I'm going to keep growing. Maybe that can happen, but maybe a more likely scenario is that the gap will always remain there, the age gap or the intellectual gap, the maturity gap. And then with Victor I'm like, "Okay, he does not think that way." He approaches all ages. He gets on with undergraduates, too, so he clearly doesn't see . . . but, who knows? Maybe they're mature undergraduates. Maybe they don't feel like silly little girls like I do. (chuckles) Even now. [00:36:00] But then he doesn't think like Chris because he's more carnal, more sensual. He knows that, "Oh, the woman can't talk. I can have her in bed." But then, again, for a while I felt like I was at his level, maybe intellectually. That didn't matter. But then I ran out on him and he started really scolding me like, "You're not grown up at all. You're still acting like a little child. Adults don't do this, don't do that. You're always throwing tantrums and I just can't deal with that." [00:36:58] That was his second reason to break up with me. "I just don't think of you as a human being when you act like that. I think [ ] (inaudible at 00:37:08)" I'm not saying he's not right. I'm sure he is right.

THERAPIST: About what?

CLIENT: About all of those things that I am not. That I haven't grown up, that I have childish tendencies and that I throw tantrums and don't act like an adult. I guess I'm trying to figure out why I feel so foolish. You said, "You feel like a silly little girl." I feel like that's more what's happening here more than the investment. That's there, too, but I think this is the thing that's making me feel acutely self-conscious and embarrassed. [00:38:04] As adults we all feel rejected and we feel bad when we're rejected, right? I invested in this and it didn't work out. But in my case it's more like put yourself inside a bag and don't come out.

THERAPIST: Because you don't feel rejected as an adult woman. It's not like, "I really liked this guy. I feel really bad that he's not interested in me." It's like, "Oh, I'm so silly, so foolish."

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Kind of like you're being ridiculous.

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause)

THERAPIST: It also seems like your not bringing him up before and your feelings towards him, it's like you need to hide that vision from me insofar as talking about it in here with me makes it feel more real.

CLIENT: Yeah. And hiding it also, perhaps, because I shouldn't when I'm living with Chris, you know? How horrible. It can also, in a somewhat twisted way, make sense because what Chris said, "I'm like your father." You don't have an adult relationship with your father. (sighs) I don't mean . . . I'm just saying wouldn't another woman feel that way if the guy said what he said to me? "I think of you as a younger sister." No, they wouldn't feel like a silly little girl? I don't mean . . . I'm just saying wouldn't another woman feel that way if the guy said what he said to me? "I think of you as a younger sister." No, they wouldn't feel like a silly little girl? [00:40:06]

THERAPIST: They might wonder where he's coming from if they didn't feel that way about themselves. It might seem like an odd statement. Kind of like if he said, "Really, I look at you like a mother." You'd be like, "What?"

CLIENT: (laughs) (pause) I don't know what's happening here. It's complicated. Like you think that you are, maybe not emotional equal, but at least in some respects. He's older, but I've been writing for longer, which means that I've been able to help him edit and stuff, so I'm more mature in that regards. We all have different registers of where we're at, you know? Not everyone is equal in every respect. I could be more emotionally mature than Chris. Ha-ha. Or at least have experienced more.

THERAPIST: Why do you say "ha-ha?"

CLIENT: It feels like I really do think of myself as emotionally mature.

THERAPIST: You do. And you also think of him as mature. Not always, actually. Sometimes you feel like he doesn't really deal with his emotions at all, but you don't put him in the same category that there's an immaturity to his emotional life, too. [00:42:00]

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean he's mature intellectually, but maybe not emotionally. The thing is that he doesn't need to be. He doesn't need at all to deal with emotions. He's never in such a scenario. He Skypes with his parents once a week and that's it, if that can be called an emotional time. (laughs) He doesn't have issues with friends. He doesn't have any emotional issues except me. (laughs) And I don't know how well he's dealing with me. I don't have an objective opinion on that. (pause) [00:43:05] So I feel like a silly girl, but it might be outside impetus that makes me feel that way because these men actually do call me that.

THERAPIST: It's very difficult to know where one ends and one begins. There's something that's being reinforced, but I think it's being reinforced because that's what you're putting out there. It's getting reinforced. I think you project that and that's the feedback that you get. Then you project it more. So it's not like you're misreading the signals. I don't think that at all. But people are picking up on something that you're already putting out there.

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) Yeah. (sighs) [00:43:59] I have to figure out what I'm putting out there. (laughs)

THERAPIST: I also wonder whether you feel that being an adult woman and being taken care of are mutually exclusive.

CLIENT: I do. But they're not?

THERAPIST: I don't think they are. I think even in very strong relationships people can feel like children at times and feel very nurtured and take care of in a child like way, even if that isn't their primary motive being in the relationship. But I think you see them as such extremes. Either you're very childlike and seen as a little girl with a dad, or you're sort of a mature woman who doesn't need anything and maybe is almost robotic.

CLIENT: Yeah. I feel like that's the only way of being the child, disciplined very harshly. (laughs)

THERAPIST: That's how Chris deals with his child inside. [00:45:03]

CLIENT: Discipline?

THERAPIST: I think so.

CLIENT: (laughing) I don't think of him as a child so much. I know actually I keep calling him a little boy, but that's only when he wants to eat something. It basically comes out with food and gadgets or something, but he doesn't have emotional child needs at all like I do. Like I'm a child and I'm like, "Oh, I want to be taken care of and I want to be hugged and I want to be loved non-sexually." (laughs) He doesn't have that. I want to be hugged and held. He's like, "I want to eat that." (laughs) Okay, that's easily taken care of. [00:46:05]

THERAPIST: Cecelia, we need to stop for today, okay? I will see you on Wednesday. Okay. Take care.

CLIENT: You, too. Enjoy the weather.

THERAPIST: Thank you very much. You, too.

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