TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Yes. We should figure out how to deal with that. One unknown is whether Blue Cross would be I'm not sure if Blue Cross is going to send you checks, or whether they will send me checks. Their policy is that once a provider is no longer in network, they send checks to the patient. However, the whole thing over the summer where they terminated me... or patients with TP insurance, they kept paying me and not the patients directly. Which is against what they say they're going to do. I don't know what they're going to do. Because of that and because of Blue Cross. Which means I don't know how it's going to work.

[00:01:09]

I guess the best thing for me would probably be we have a few different ways we could do it. Like we could swipe a card once a week. That would probably be best, if they keep sending checks to me. And if they send them to you, I'm happy to do it that way, or I could just give you a bill at the end of the month.

CLIENT: Swiping? I don't get to swipe my card each week until we know where Blue Cross is sending the money.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: If that makes sense.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: So basically I would pay with swipe and then Blue Cross would send me the reimbursement.

THERAPIST: Right. So (pause) yeah, because of the recording, it would be...

[00:02:08]

CLIENT: [inaudible 00:02:09].

THERAPIST: Okay. It would then be I think $100 a visit, and then Blue Cross would reimburse you for whatever they reimburse. Probably $75.

CLIENT: Okay. (pause) Part of me [inaudible 00:02:38] to save money while...

THERAPIST: That would be better? Okay, sure. (pause) I don't have a credit card for you, but I think probably...

CLIENT: [inaudible 00:02:58].

THERAPIST: Yeah. Because it's let me think about that. Usually I don't take credit cards for larger amounts, just for like the $25 co-pay. It's worth it for the [inaudible 00:03:10], but when it's like $300 a week -

[00:03:15]

CLIENT: Oh, then you get fees.

THERAPIST: $100 bucks a month, then that winds up being like 3 percent I think. Which sorts of adds up.

CLIENT: So the other option would be you give me a bill every month.

THERAPIST: Right. Let me think about it, because I like the idea of just getting it done every week and not having to worry about a bill.

CLIENT: Yeah. Or every other yeah.

THERAPIST: Let me think about it. It might just be more convenient to do it that way, if that also works for you.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I will (pause) I'll think about that.

CLIENT: Okay. (pause)

[00:04:02]

THERAPIST: Schedule-wise, as far as I can tell, we're meeting today and then we're on for our regular schedule.

CLIENT: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Yeah, and I think I'm going to call the Disability Services office to know more about the week after that, like the 14th or 21st. (pause) I want to do a partial schedule, but I asked my physical therapist about it, and she was like, "Well, you know, you could work a half day or for three quarters of the day every day, but you might find that tiring. Or you could work a full day, three days a week, so you get a day off in between." I'm just sort of like, eh, I don't know. I just want to find out if I can do it without losing money.

[00:05:19]

Previously, HR said that I couldn't work a partial schedule and still get disability reimbursement, which I'm pretty sure is wrong. But wasn't a lot I could do. So [inaudible 00:05:43] attempt to find out [inaudible 00:05:45]. (pause)

So when I was home over Christmas, I decided that I'm not sure what started me on it, but I looked through my mom has some old boxes of my stuff in the attic and various places. I wanted to see if I could find the letter that Zoe gave back to me when they had this big fight over Emma.

[00:06:27]

And then, while I was looking, I was just like, "Oh my God. Everything," old papers, old letters... So I was kind of going through. I also, I guess based on letters, I had a pretty strong friendship with someone I don't really remember having for about a year and a half. I remember we were kind of friends, but we sent a lot of letters.

[00:07:00]

THERAPIST: During high school?

CLIENT: Yeah. It was like I guess it must've been a little longer, because it was during part of summer camp and part other camp. Or vacation or something. Yeah. I was just kind of like, okay. So I ended up pulling out to read I never found the letter that Zoe sent me. But I found a big stash of letters that she'd written me when she was at camp, letters from my friend Jamie when she was at various camps, and letters from Emma when I was at camp, and then when she was at a private school for two years.

THERAPIST: Out of town?

CLIENT: No, it was that is kind of weird. It was local, but she boarded. Actually, that's a little weird, now that I think about it. I mean, it wasn't more than an hour away. (pause) Whatever.

[00:08:07]

(pause) I don't know, it was very weird. Re-reading all these letters, I'm just kind of like oh wow, being a teenager is horrible. Those were my first thoughts. I'm just going through, and I'm like, page after page of having intense feelings about things and like Jamie wrote a letter where there was two and a half pages discussing how she really, really did not like this boy. That I do not remember at all, but she remembered when I called her about it. Also, before I really understand what anorexia was, I knew that Jamie (pause) ate very low-calorie, regimented meals, because she also did ballet for awhile.

[00:09:11]

So I wanted to lose weight, and she helped me set up a good diet plan. In retrospect, I was like I asked an anorexic to set me up with a diet plan? Like, what was I thinking? But I didn't you know, whatever.

THERAPIST: How old were you?

CLIENT: I think I was either 15 to 16.

THERAPIST: Huh. I'm sort of surprised you hadn't heard of anorexia at 15 or 16.

CLIENT: I didn't get it.

THERAPIST: Okay. That's different from not having heard of it.

CLIENT: Yeah, like I totally knew what it was. Like in a health class or magazines, they show you super emaciated people. And Jamie she has a round face and just like a little chin chub right here. What was very weird I realized she was anorexic when I saw her changing for gym, because then I could see her body. But her face actually never looked that thin. And she usually covered up a lot. She wore long sleeves. So (pause) yeah.

[00:10:33]

And it's just one of those things, TV specials versus your actual life. There's also this weird thing where she alternated between having these very regimented food things, but also clearly wanting to eat. Like if she came over to someone's house for dinner, she would eat whatever. When we talked about it later, it was a weird combination of her mother restricting her food and then her restricting her own food and (pause) it was a lot of things combined.

[00:11:21]

In like three different letters, she wrote to me saying, "I really like making diet plans. So if you're really serious about losing weight, you should let me know." But then in this one letter she mentions it, and then I was like 5'3", 145. I wasn't that and then she wrote, she's like, "In my assessment, you are not fat at all." And then she listed all these positive characteristics about me, which was adorable. (laughs)

THERAPIST: That's awesome.

CLIENT: Yes. And then creepily, at the end, she mentioned her mother said all the beauties of the future will be African American. Her mom is creepy. So there's that.

[00:12:16]

And then there's that I did which was not a good idea to read, go through all these letters in one fell blow. (pause) I don't know, I think I just felt like, "Oh, it's like ripping off a band aid." (pause) Emma was very Emma was smart. She was a smart kid, and me and my other friend were in Honors track classes and like the Gold reading group or whatever. And her parents always told her that she was better than everyone because she was so smart. Yeah.

[00:13:06]

She also needed glasses but didn't want to wear them, so she didn't always rec she would walk by you without saying anything, and also do this weird literal looking down to try to see clearly that made her look really obnoxious. At a certain point, it just wasn't whatever. And she used to correct our teachers a lot. (pause) Her mother was a lawyer, her dad was some kind of engineer at AT&T. Which was totally normal for where we lived, that she was also like "Meh meh meh, my mom's a lawyer."

[00:14:04]

So when I think about it, I remember her being really arrogant and obnoxious to a lot of people. Then I remember, I don't know, maybe sophomore or junior year in high school, her being really arrogant and kind of obnoxious to me as well. I remember it more in junior year and through the beginning of senior year. Going over these letters, and she was incredibly pretentious. Like just (pause) these are probably from when we were maybe 10 through 16 or 17.

[00:15:02]

THERAPIST: I guess I'm a little struck by the whole letter writing thing. But I guess it was a thing.

CLIENT: Also we were girls who went to camp. (laughs) Oh yeah. No. Yeah, so I went to Finland for a month every summer, or most summers, and there was Girl Scout Camp and various camps, and yeah, letter writing was huge. (pause) Which [inaudible 00:15:41] when I was looking through these, I'm like, "Ah, never again will anyone be able to pull out a shoebox of incoherently scrawled letters."

THERAPIST: You didn't need to [inaudible 00:15:53]?

CLIENT: No, no. It struck me a little bit too, because I was just like wow, there's a lot.

[00:16:00]

So she's dropping in French, little phrases are French, and she used to use these really weird stilted phrasing, actually kind of like pastiche from I don't even know, probably Jane Austen or something. I'm just like err... But then she was also just a kid or [inaudible 00:16:32] or whatever, so then it'd be like, "and then I really wanted to go to the mall." She'd write weird things about going to a bookstore and looking around, but then she really wanted to buy four volumes of John Locke or something weird. I'm like, "Kid, you're 12."

One of her big things at one point was she started reading Kurt Vonnegut, and she started identifying herself with the character Myra Breckinridge. There's just a line in the book that's repeated, "Myra Breckinridge, a woman who no man can love" partially because she's this weird, amazing, superior creature person.

[00:17:29]

She's also transgendered, which wasn't relevant to Emma, I think, but everyone wishes they could be with her, and she's like "I'm too amazing." I also remember when she started reading Kurt Vonnegut, she was like "Oh" I remember her being like, "You wouldn't understand. This is beyond you." I think at that point I was like 14, maybe. 13 or 14. I was like, really?

[00:18:06]

And so in one of her letters, she's like "Thank you for your letter where you quoted several passages from Mother Night or something. She said that she was very surprised that I'd managed to finish it and comprehend it. It's like, Jesus Christ, you're a jerk. But then she's also kind of writing about miserable family stuff as well. But I keep going through, I'm just like, you are a jerk. That's right. I forgot. (pause)

I also forgot that she had quite a bit more money than my family did. In one of the letters, she's talking about how they also had a condo. So they had a big house in our suburb, and it might be a more expensive part of the suburb, and then they also had a lakeside condo, and then there was something else. It was because she was talking about her mother buying her clothes. Like, lots of new clothes. And like -

[00:19:34]

THERAPIST: I see. Is this sort of in a shoving it in your face way?

CLIENT: No, it was more she was complaining that her mother wouldn't buy her any new clothes until she cleaned her room. But then after she cleaned her room, her mother was like, "Well, you already have clothes. [inaudible 00:19:52] there's clothes in your closet." There's something about the amount of clothes that she wanted to get new, I was like, what?

[00:20:04]

It's not that I didn't get new clothes; I did. But they were all on sale, or... and I never had a back-to-school shopping spree or whatever. When I was younger, I just wore my brother's hand-me-downs constantly, and garage sale clothes.

THERAPIST: [inaudible 00:20:30]?

CLIENT: [inaudible 00:20:31] all these garage sales.

THERAPIST: Garage sales, indeed, yeah.

CLIENT: Yeah, which I did not think anything of than I loved my brother's hand-me-down clothes.

THERAPIST: Oh really?

CLIENT: Yeah, because I don't know, I really looked up to him and I thought they were cool. And (pause) also we both loved Oshkosh overalls, and they had really cool prints on them. So I could get his old printed... yeah. Sometimes I'd get his cool flannel shirt, whatever, which... yeah.

[00:21:05]

So I read through all those letters, and then I just was I don't know. (pause) I had this brief passionate feeling very or feeling sort of sorry for her, and that when she was at this private school, her letters were really happy. I mean, she was still a pretentious idiot, but she was happy and pretentious. And then of course when she was back in my high school, there aren't any more letters. (pause) And (pause) so (pause) I was kind of [inaudible 00:21:58] around if I wanted to talk to Zoe about this. Then I was thinking that I did.

[00:22:03]

So we hung out twice, and the first time, we went out and got lunch and did a few things. And (pause) at one point, we're having lunch, and I was trying to talk to her how I've been really stressed over our landlord and how that was really difficult, and it was the end of the lunch, whatever, so waitress wasn't the most attentive. But I'm talking to her, I'm like, "It's been really hard. I've been really scared in my apartment," and while I'm talking to her about all these things, she keeps on looking to signal the waitress. At one point, I was kind of like "What the fuck?" and she's like, "I'm sorry, I'm listening; I just want to get my side of marinara" or whatever. So [inaudible 00:22:56]. (pause)

[00:23:00]

And then imagine having to go to a hotel for the night, and I was going, "Yeah, I just really didn't feel safe," and I started to say, "I was having some of those classic PTSD symptoms of" I just barely started saying that, and she uncomfortable laughed and said, "But you don't have PTSD." Just like really, really defensive. And I was really hurt and surprised, like (pause) I really didn't expect that. Whether or not she thinks I do, I didn't think that she would blow me off in [inaudible 00:24:05].

[00:24:06]

(pause) Which made me think I really don't want to talk to her about Emma. Then a little bit later, talking again, she was talking about how her whole family's really emotionally constipated, they don't talk a lot; her brother Leo had just told her that he never hugs people. Ever. Zoe's like, "So when I've been hugging you all these years...?" He's like, "Yeah, you didn't notice I never hugged back?" (pause) Which I actually do remember him being more physically affectionate and hugging in high school. So (pause) Zoe and I are like, "Wow, that's a thing."

She was talking about how the first Thanksgiving Thanksgiving or Christmas after she had been in the fire and she got out of the hospital, and her parents came to Philadelphia because she couldn't travel at all, and she was sitting there like, this would've been a really great time to kind of (pause) express some emotions, like, "I'm really glad you didn't die in the fire."

[00:25:27]

THERAPIST: Yeah, absolutely.

CLIENT: And no one was able to do that. It was very awkward, and no one the whole issue of her being burned in a fire, being convalescing, why they were in Philadelphia, it just wasn't talked about.

THERAPIST: So this is what she talked about, fairly soon after you...

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) Yeah, probably like 20 minutes later, half hour later.

[00:26:05]

THERAPIST: Oh. Did it feel like she was communicating to you that she just couldn't talk about...

CLIENT: I wasn't sure. Part of me wonders if in the restaurant, she was just feeling really uncomfortable with what I was saying.

THERAPIST: In a way, it doesn't matter where she's coming from.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Maybe that's more important.

CLIENT: When she was talking about this with her family and I was sort of talking about my family, I felt like she was being like, "Yeah, we should try to be more" for me, I was hearing her as she wanted to be more open. She said she wanted to be more open with her family and for them to communicate more. And I was saying my family doesn't sometimes, and so we were both saying how we wanted more I guess intimate communication with our families.

[00:27:06]

Before she left, I was kind of unsure. I was like, "Let's go on a walk. Go around the neighborhood for a little bit." (pause) We walked by [inaudible 00:27:27] Elementary School, which is sort of close by. So I asked her, with some [inaudible 00:27:38], if she remembered anything about Emma and I having a fight, I think is how I put it. And it was (pause) awkward. It was very awkward. Her phrasing frustrates me more now that I think about it. At the time, it was kind of like just blinded, "say it."

[00:28:10]

But she's like, "What you told me was" and "The information that you told me." It was very like she didn't say "What happened was." She said "You told me this." And (pause) she just sort of said "You told me that Emma had done something really mean and that you were upset and you didn't want to talk to her." I had clarified that no, what had happened is Emma had told people I stole [inaudible 00:28:55]. Zoe said, "Well, she never said that to me."

[00:29:01]

THERAPIST: That Emma never said that to you?

CLIENT: Zoe said that Emma had never said anything like that to her.

THERAPIST: Oh, meaning...

CLIENT: Emma never told Zoe that I had stolen her stuff.

THERAPIST: I see. So even if Zoe heard it sort of secondhand from somebody else, it's never something Emma said directly to her.

CLIENT: Right. Which I knew Emma never would. She would [inaudible 00:29:25] told Emma. She's not an idiot.

THERAPIST: That's not the point.

CLIENT: Exactly. It very much felt like she's just like, "He said, she said. Who knows what really happened." I told her an example, and she's like, "That sounds really awful."

THERAPIST: Told her an example of?

CLIENT: Which was like I came into our school newspaper classroom -

THERAPIST: Yeah, that was the okay.

[00:30:00]

CLIENT: Yeah. And she said, "That sounds really awful," but I don't know. I still felt like she was saying she was [inaudible 00:30:13], "Nobody said anything to me. No one else said anything to me." I don't know, [inaudible 00:30:21] a little more. What she was saying was her perception of what had happened was that I was just no longer getting along with Emma. Like our interests had changed; I just didn't feel like hanging out with her. [inaudible 00:30:50], she's like, "Zoe, that's what I wanted." And that she didn't understand how serious I felt this was until which I'd kind of [inaudible 00:31:08] that.

[00:31:09]

There was a New Year's Eve party, and it was supposed to be myself, Zoe, and our friend Rita. And Zoe invited Emma without telling me. But this was like [inaudible 00:31:27], and was super pissy at me in advance.

THERAPIST: Zoe was?

CLIENT: Yeah. She's like, "Don't be mean to her. I can't believe you're so mean to her. I'm inviting you over, you can't control who I'm inviting." And I was just so devastated. It was so horrible. I actually really don't remember how Rita felt or react I just remember being miserable.

[00:32:02]

THERAPIST: With Rita, did you say?

CLIENT: Another girl Rita who was friends with all of us. But we all met Rita in high school, while I had known Zoe and Emma since elementary school. Also, Emma wanted to be friends with Rita to social climb, in a certain way. And Zoe had no memory of me writing her this letter or of her writing back. I told her, "Do you remember when I [inaudible 00:32:48] this letter?" and she says, "No." No memory of it. Which yeah, to me, I was like, that was a huge thing.

[00:33:00]

So she has no memory of it at all, and (pause) I also asked if she thought about it. I was like first I was like, "Do you think about it? Do you [inaudible 00:33:19] sending me this letter?" and the answer is no. She says that she doesn't. It's not something she really thinks about or remembers. In bringing it up, she's like, "Yeah, you told me that happened," but that was about it.

THERAPIST: Ouch.

CLIENT: Yeah, she didn't apologize. The closest was she said at first, she's like, "Well, I didn't understand that this was serious and important to you."

[00:34:14]

(pause) [inaudible 00:34:23] really hard is just she kind of half apologized for not understanding [inaudible 00:34:33] or whatever, when I said that this was something really important to me. (pause) But yeah, that was kind of it. And (pause) we only had like 45 minutes for our walk. A little bit after that, I was like, "Oh, I have to walk you over to your house." So we're walking across the field.

[00:35:07]

I changed the subject to whatever. And she said, "Just so you know, kind of related to that thing about just not getting along with someone anymore, or not being interested in the same things, Chet's going to be there." So Chet's someone who I used to be friends with [inaudible 00:35:35] for awhile, and he just became someone I didn't really want to be friends with. It's not like he's dead to me; I just don't... you know.

THERAPIST: Right. There's not a falling out there, but...

CLIENT: Yeah, there was just a series of "huh." (pause) And for me, I just to go from me talking, for us, for trying to talk about what to me was a super traumatic event to her being like, "Oh, segue, you know that guy that..." You know?

[00:36:18]

THERAPIST: Right. Like in the sense of, "Oh, I've kind of got to equate these two things," which has a completely different degree of significance for you.

CLIENT: Right. And also, it was indicating that I have -

THERAPIST: Indicating it again, that I really have no idea how much that matters to you.

CLIENT: Yeah. It also felt to me like this weird backhanded attempt to be like, "Well, when I didn't believe you, I was inconsiderate. In this totally different situation 15 years later, I'm being considerate."

[00:37:03]

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I don't care. (pause) The other thing which we were walking and she was talking about a friend of hers who she was going to meet later for dinner, and that he had a really hard time getting over rejection. And she's not listening [inaudible 00:37:27]. Oh, no, what it was is we were talking about how neither of us had dated until senior year of high school. We'd gone with friends to our junior prom. And I mentioned that yeah I was like, yeah, I had this awkward, awful experience of trying to ask some friends to a dance or a prom, whatever, and having them all say "We can't go to the dance together because you're black and I'm white, and that just can't happen," in various ways and shapes of saying that. And her response was she was very shocked, she said, "No, that can't be, blah blah blah blah."

[00:38:25]

THERAPIST: Like, that just could never happen.

CLIENT: Yeah. And I'm like, yes, I get that it is shocking. I was shocked at the time. It wasn't that she was saying -

THERAPIST: "I found it unbelievable, but it didn't mean I didn't believe it."

CLIENT: Yeah. It was [inaudible 00:38:44]. I just was kind of like, "Do you think I'm exaggerating? Do you think I'm lying? Or are you just uncomfortable with the realization that racism existed in our high school?" I mean, I knew from a previous experience that she was super uncomfortable with one of the various kids at [inaudible 00:39:07] high school who was also Jewish.

[00:39:09]

There was this series of something he had written, I don't remember but it was like two days solid of weird anti-Semitic comments we made about him. And (pause) so that was shocking in that I was like, this is a fairly Jewish school. What? And I also was kind of like, I thought we were more I was surprised that someone would basically raise their hand in class and just say something really [inaudible 00:39:45] about it, as opposed to saying it in the hallway.

THERAPIST: Right, right. That's sort of a different thing.

CLIENT: Yeah. It was too. (pause) But that, so...

[00:40:04]

THERAPIST: Right. Well, in addition to that it happened, like, what the fuck, you're her close friend; tell her what happened to you, when you were there. With multiple people.

CLIENT: Yeah, and they're also the guys that I was talking about were dancing with all people.

THERAPIST: I imagine they were people you were friendly enough with to want to ask them to the dance.

CLIENT: Yeah. And they were also people that [inaudible 00:40:33] both Zoe and I knew them, both of us probably had crushes on them in various points in -

THERAPIST: This walk sounds horrible.

CLIENT: It really was. It was really -

THERAPIST: As you describe most of it, but horrible.

CLIENT: Yeah. It was also really disappointing.

THERAPIST: Yeah, sure.

CLIENT: Part of it felt kind of surreal in that I was like, this is really not compassionate or kind or how I think a best friend would treat me.

[00:41:12]

THERAPIST: Right. There's not even any charge to it in the sense of it's not like you're 16 or even 18 and this just happened. It's not like she's going to be in class with all these people tomorrow.

CLIENT: Yeah. Like Jamie saying that she at the time thought it was fucked up but didn't she's like, "I didn't know what to do." And I totally get that.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: (pause) Yeah. (pause) Yeah, I don't know.

[00:42:01]

THERAPIST: Yeah, you [inaudible 00:42:03] like that.

CLIENT: It really was. And she had the I know she's super busy at work, etc., etc., but she hasn't [inaudible 00:42:18] since. And while it's not uncommon for us to go for awhile without talking, I kind of feel like we had this kind of intense conversation, to me. Even though it may be a a something. But (pause) I don't know.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I'm sorry we ran out.

CLIENT: That's okay. I thought I had some in here, but I don't. (pause) On one hand, she's not (pause) she's not a local friend, etc., etc., but (pause) I have been really worried about having this conversation with her for a long time, and haven't wanted to.

[00:43:21]

THERAPIST: Yeah. I think you mentioned it to me. Not just what happened with her, but the risk involved in talking with her about it.

CLIENT: Yeah. I also think about how sometimes I wonder and want to find out in a way where I don't have to do it I wonder what my classmates (pause) what my classmates thought our high school was like, racially. (pause)

[00:44:01]

Partly from just hearing some people be like, "Oh, there was no racism [inaudible 00:44:10] my high school." I've heard that from a bazillion of my friends, and I'm like, "Well, okay, I get that you didn't experience that." Did you ever talk to anyone who wasn't white about it? And the answer is, "Well, no, because we were all blah blah blah." I also at the time I was also super into [inaudible 00:44:39] and other things. But (pause) I don't think any I think myself and [00:45:00].

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