Transcript of Audio File:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: You have a pretty big office, but not that much space for pictures.

THERAPIST: That's true. Let me know if it's too distracting. That's my main concern.

CLIENT: Okay. I will let you know. I'm sure that in two days I will not notice that it's there.

THERAPIST: Thank you.

CLIENT: I get anxious on Fridays about 5:15 and just want to go home. 5:15 on a Friday — boy. (laughs) There's not a whole lot on my mind other than what's on my mind all the time so . . . yeah. Trying to say things but I feel like I haven't anything to say. [00:01:05]

THERAPIST: I see. Actually when it's Friday afternoon then you'd better be entertaining or have something new?

CLIENT: No. That was just me trying to say what came into my head. But, yeah . . . My friend, Ashley, is coming tomorrow. She and Jerry are . . . they were basically raised by their mom. Their dad and their mom didn't get divorced until they were 16 or 17, but he was just kind of always absent when he was around. [00:02:00] Their mom is kind of a mess in some ways and cannot be taught personal boundaries — like you cannot teach them to her. (laughs) She refers to me as her third twin, so I really can't teach her my boundaries. (chuckling) I don't know. In some ways they just really have their shit together in ways that I really do not and increasingly wonder if I ever will, which is an incredibly round about way of saying I spent a long time cleaning. (both laugh) It's like only when Ashley is about to come over do I think of my apartment and it's like — holy shit. (both laugh) I kind of thought it was pretty nice. Well, yeah, but we have about three bedroom apartments' worth of stuff in a studio. (laughs) [00:03:15]

Apparently we've been having a lot of people come over, but I don't remember any of them before like February 15th. (laughs) James say, "Oh, yeah, Candace brought that to us," and it's like, "Candace was here?" (laughs) I remember Scotty because she was here, I think, in March. Yeah. If people didn't come over we would not clean very often. (pause) [00:04:08] My ECT is still bothering me. (pause) I think it's getting old for James to have to say, "Well this is everything we did with Candace. This is what happened on this day." He has to kind of reconstruct everything for me. I don't remember anything. (pause) [00:05:01] It's yet another piece of my life that is huge and really important in some ways that I feel like I can't really tell people about. (pause) Ashley is not staying [ ] (inaudible at 00:05:34). She has to work so that's good, I guess. (pause) I don't know. I don't know what to say. [00:06:05]

I went to the Good Friday service today, which is three—hours long. That was a lot of church. (laughs) James did not go today. I did not ask him to. Yeah. (pause) I got really grumpy at the priest. He made a language reference he got completely wrong. I'm such a snob. (laughs) When people who don't read or speak a foreign language read those words they get really excited when they get to pronounce the consonants that aren't in English, so he was like excessive. I was like, "Just shut up. Just leave it alone. (laughs) Also, why are you quoting the plural? It's not a plural word." (laughs) (pause) [00:07:18] They did a thing where this word for love originally comes from the word for womb so, clearly, several thousand years later when people were speaking the word for love they were thinking about wombs and motherhood. No. Language doesn't work like that. (laughs) It's a nice idea. It's nice to know. It's very poetic. I just feel like a killjoy. Maybe I should have stayed Maccabean. Kill all the fun. (both laugh) (pause) [00:08:34] Part of me wishes I could disconnect that very critical, grumpy side of myself but — you know. I said, "No, I'm sorry. That's wrong," over and over again because, let's be honest, in a Christian church nobody gets references right ever. Ever. (laughs) Because people take a semester. [00:09:25]

THERAPIST: I see. Enough to be dangerous.

CLIENT: Yeah. (laughs) But it's also kind of fun.

THERAPIST: You don't get all that many chances to know your shit these days.

CLIENT: That is also true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I studied a lot. I spent a long time on it. I'm trying to relearn Aramaic now, in part because one of the tutoring websites that I signed up for, I signed up to do Aramaic, and in part because I applied for a couple of Aramaic positions and I figure I should at least have the sense that I'm not completely lying to people when I tell them I can teach this. [00:10:52] I don't know if there are any subjects that you can focus on that remain with you over the years, but these are not. (laughs) I've got some work to do. That should be nice. We're meeting my high—school Aramaic teacher for lunch next week. Have I said anything about him? He's kind of been like my biggest cheerleader for a long time actually. He did his PhD (ph?) — with my department. [00:11:49]

THERAPIST: Based on cultures?

CLIENT: Yes. Then he went back and taught high—school. He taught me Aramaic, then he taught me Greek. Everybody else dropped out of the class except for me. It was a private school so he could just keep teaching me Greek.

THERAPIST: In high school?

CLIENT: Yeah. It was really good. He's been really good to me. It was crazy, which is kind of good and bad at this point. He makes pilgrimages up a couple of times a year, I think. We're going to have lunch with him. He loved his graduate studies. He just had the best time. I think he spent ten years on his PhD. I think he just stayed there as long as humanly possible. He didn't really want to do anything other than just keep studying, but he's a very strange, shy, lifelong celibate, as far as I can tell. He lived in a one—bedroom apartment all ten years and then moved into a one—bedroom apartment and lived there. He was pretty good. [00:13:45] (long pause) [00:14:40]

It feels like it's been a very long time since I was last hospitalized, but it really hasn't as far as I can tell. Yeah, cleaning out the place I found a couple of sheets that they give you to come in for ECT at this time and this place and don't eat and all that and you wake up and it's mid—February. Okay. (laughs) (pause) [00:15:40] It feels like it's been long enough that I shouldn't still be here.

THERAPIST: Which "here" are you thinking?

CLIENT: It's unclear. (chuckles) Without a job or unclear what I'm going to be doing. Vacillating wildly between feeling like everything is okay and feeling that everything is really not okay. (pause) It's just doing all the social things, like going to my friend's house for dinner tonight. Dinner [ ] (inaudible at 00:17:02). Franco is very like [ ] in some ways. Some of it — a really nice little apartment his first year and just lives there and has his routine and really likes his routine. He did have a girlfriend for a long time, otherwise they're pretty similar. It's kind of adorable. I don't know. Maybe that's why I [ ] (inaudible at 00:17:42) to Franco when Sascha broke up. I might have already said that.

THERAPIST: I think you mentioned.

CLIENT: That might be the most humiliating thing I forgot.

THERAPIST: [ ] (inaudible at 00:17:58)

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you said that I was like, "Oh, that was a really ugly break—up." I'm pretty sure Sascha called me to yell at him after bringing [ ] (inaudible at 00:18:27).

THERAPIST: It's sounding somewhat familiar to me, too.

CLIENT: Okay?

THERAPIST: Yeah. You were [ ] (inaudible at 00:18:33) for that, I think. [00:18:45]

CLIENT: I actually can't reconstruct why she was blaming James. I don't remember that story, which is probably not worth for him but . . . (laughs) Just like it's not worth asking James where all of my clothes are. Somehow it really bothers me that I don't remember where my clothes came from. (pause) I just feel a little bit unmoored all of the time, or a lot of the time if not all of the time.

THERAPIST: I think there's something about those kind of guys that's calming, reassuring. They're steady. They're rational.

CLIENT: Like Franco and your instructor, you mean? Rational is the word. (laughs)

THERAPIST: Contained. [00:20:18]

CLIENT: Yeah. (long pause) In some sense the difference between them is I'm one�s student. I still sort of feel like I have to act like I have my act together a lot, not that he's falling for it at all. (laughs) The more I have an adult relationship with him the more I know he pretty much knew every time I had just forgotten to do my homework and was just making it up as I go along. (laughs) That was not cool to him. In some ways Franco's and my relationship is sort of predicated on my not having my shit together. We were friends in college and we did theatre together. [00:22:00]

THERAPIST: I didn't know you did theatre.

CLIENT: Me?

THERAPIST: No, you I knew, but him.

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't think he acted, but he was a language major with me. His apartment — he loves film; like he LOVES it. (laughs) All the movies that he goes to see, he gets a poster and frames it and puts it in his apartment. (laughs) I don't even know what to say. (laughs) The play I did, we both had the scholarship to do some kind of research project or any kind of research. It ended up that I wrote a story and he edited it. Editing, I think, was his main thing. He was very, very good. [00:23:03] That's how we got to be friends. He was always a little bit of an odd duck in theatre, like you always sort of wondered why he was there because he had his act together. (laughs)

THERAPIST: He does something pretty different now, doesn't he?

CLIENT: Yeah, he does science [ ] (inaudible at 00:23:32). He's like two—thirds a statistician.

THERAPIST: Right. He's like a quantitative science . . .

CLIENT: Yeah. And I think we both kind of left the department in disgust somewhere after our sophomore year because none of the faculty seemed to really care at all, and so it was just very frustrating to be — you know you're in a field that you know is not going to make you any money, is not going to get you anywhere, and you're doing it because you love it and you're putting everything you have into this and not getting anything back from anybody else or from any of the people in charge. The other students were a little bit vapid, to be honest for the most part anyway. [00:24:28] I was perfect for a theatre major. (laughs) I was everything you think of. (pause) Kind of wondering how much he respects me is something that has cropped up periodically in the time we've known each other. I'm pretty sure he does, but . . . He's good at all of the things I have kind of an inferiority complex about, like statistics (laughs) and doing taxes on time and things like that. (pause) [00:26:04] Then all of the things that I'm good at are the things that — oh, and we were in drama together. That's how we know each other, really, because we used to sit next to each other. That was only one year because drama really sucked. (laughs) That was another putting a lot of effort in and not getting very much out. He's like remarkably terrible at languages. I think there's no way he's actually as bad at languages as he thinks he is. I think he's just convinced that he can't do it, but he took like eight years of French and he doesn't speak any French at all. (both laugh) Like at all. He was in the [ ]program in a pretty good school system. I don't think it was one of those cases where . . . [00:27:04]

THERAPIST: [ ]

CLIENT: It's like an accelerated high school program. It's like AP, but you do it with all of your courses.

THERAPIST: Like an accelerated model or something?

CLIENT: I think so. Typically schools do an AP, so . . . I did AP. Basically he started being put in accelerated class when he was five years old. I don't think it was a case of where the teacher didn't know any French and so nobody learned anything. I think he's just doesn't know any French. When he talks about me, when we talk about each other, both of us have the kind of like — here is my friend who is good at these things that I could never possibly do. Ever. (laughs) [00:28:08]

THERAPIST: So it's unclear if he actually respects you.

CLIENT: (laughs) I think that's just me.

THERAPIST: Maybe. Do you think? (both laugh)

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean, I always know it's probably just me. (pause) He's also a terrible writer. So, yeah, it really is that our skill sets just don't overlap at all — at all — which made working with him on the play really, really good, actually. [00:29:08]

THERAPIST: It was pretty clear who was going to do what.

CLIENT: Yeah. We ended up collaborating a whole lot on a whole lot of things, but because we came from such different places it ended up being much better than [ ] (inaudible at 00:29:29). (laughs) In retrospect, it really wasn't. I'm not much of a playwright. I was really not much of a playwright at 20. I sort of want to get nostalgic about being in college, and then I think about college and I'm like, "No, you were miserable. (laughs) Why would you be nostalgic about that time? You were just as lost as you are now." I can see how people do it. [00:30:36] I was ready to graduate in three years because I hated it so much. I didn't because I figured I should . . . I decided to major also in English and have a useful degree. (laughs) [00:31:10]

THERAPIST: I think maybe I knew you majored in language, but I didn't know it was for mostly practical reasons.

CLIENT: I didn't take any language classes in college until my senior year because I thought, "Why would I take a language class? I don't need to take any. I can read a book and analyze it." That's all you learn to do and I can read [ ] (inaudible at 00:31:30) I realized that a religious studies degree was not going to do me very much good. It's something known as practical. (laughs) So I stayed those two years to do research. [00:31:50]

THERAPIST: You seem to be running yourself down a bit and also sort of throwing the baby out with the bath water a little bit. For example, when you said a minute ago about wanting to be nostalgic about college but then really thinking about it and remembering how miserable you were or how lost you were, is what you said. I'm not doubting any of that, it's just that you've been talking about was the play, which sounded like it genuinely was nice to do with Franco and it sounds like that was good. I don't know. It seemed like you were kind of quick to just throw the whole college thing away there and I wonder if — I mean I know it's the kind of thing you do in general — but I wonder if part of why you're doing it now is because you're about what to talk about. Maybe in your words you're doing this wrong and it's better if you run yourself down first or something like that because maybe then you don't have to worry so much that I'm going to think you're going to get that job. I don't think at one level you imagine I think you're going to get that job, but I think on one level it's really something you worry about a lot. [00:34:04]

CLIENT: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. (pause) I am worrying about that, in particular, because [ ] (inaudible at 00:34:31) A big part also is that I just feel really bad about myself right now, so it's easier to be kind of snarky about myself than it is to just say, "I feel really bad about myself." (pause) [00:35:12]

THERAPIST: Part of the way it emerges is with a kind of worry or feeling that you're sitting with somebody who, on another level, not actually me, but who is harsh and impunitive. [00:35:52]

CLIENT: I think that might be the moment when you tell me I suck (laughs), which is not at all what I expect — but also exactly what I expect. (pause) [ ] (inaudible at 00:36:24). Yeah, you don't want to hear me talk about college. (laughs) I don't know. I'm trying to go on you said "I don't know what's going to be important." What were you going to say? [00:37:04]

THERAPIST: Maybe it's because college was really miserable for you in a lot of ways, but you sort of give it over to me that I'm not going to want to hear about it. I don't know what the reason you have in mind is — I don't want to hear it. It's probably not important or something or go anywhere or be useful or something like that.

CLIENT: That was a long time ago. (laughs)

THERAPIST: That was a long time ago. But I guess I wonder if maybe that provides some cover for how painful it was or confusing. (pause) [00:38:32]

CLIENT: It's really disappointing. It's sort of like every time I was bored or restless or felt like everything around me was moving way too slowly or felt like I didn't have anywhere for my mind to go or I didn't have anybody to talk to in high school, people would tell me, "College is going to be this great learning experience and your mind is going to expand. It will be just so wonderful and you'll be challenged and stimulated and that will be just great." Then I got there and it was like, "This is worse than high school." (laughs) It was like everybody was moving in slow motion, or at least that's what it felt like. Texas A&M is a beautiful school devoted to undergraduate education and the professors didn't seemed to be that interested — none of my professors, at least seemed to be terribly interested in anything their students had to say or in actually communicating anything other than a kind of set piece that they had written down. I didn't have anybody to talk to other than Franco and James. [00:40:10] The three of us got very, very close because we didn't have anybody else and we all felt the same way, I think. Everyone else was moving in slow motion. (pause) I don't know anybody else who had that experience in college. (pause) Just being bored all the time. (pause) [00:41:17] Just kind of lost. (pause) And it got better, but it got better mostly because I kind of said, "Well, this is what it is." I stopped expecting challenge and stimulation to come from anywhere other than myself. (pause) [00:42:38]

THERAPIST: It must feel like a pretty big and sometimes familiar disappointment.

CLIENT: It was definitely big. I don't know how familiar it was. I mean, certainly — yeah, I guess it was. Certainly the sensation I remember so clearly being in second or third grade and being in reading class and we'd have to go around the room and read a sentence at a time and I was just about to tear my hair out. I would have finished the book by the second day. (laughs) I don't understand why I'm spending an hour doing this. This does not make sense to me. Actually, it's more likely that I would have read the book two or three years beforehand when my sister was reading it for school. It was like college is kind of exactly the same thing. (laughs) I was like, "I'm not that smart. I'm quite smart, but I'm not that smart." I don't feel like there's an excuse here.

THERAPIST: I see. I think I see what you mean, like you were reading second—grade books when you were like maybe five. [00:44:11]

CLIENT: Yeah. I learned to read when I was five, so it was more like in second grade I was probably reading the books for the first time, but when I was in fourth grade I was reading sixth— through eighth—grade books.

THERAPIST: Yeah, so like a really smart kid; but not like some wild genius who's never going to be at home in any classroom.

CLIENT: Yeah, not like a prodigy. (laughs)

THERAPIST: We should stop for now.

END TRANSCRIPT