TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: I'm going to probably try to remember to check this once, just to make sure it's recording. I think I told you last time, it was running. You're out of breath huh?

CLIENT: Yeah, well, driving at a speed of 70 miles an hour to get here. I spent like eight minutes trying to park in like, you know, in the last quarter mile.

[PAUSE: 0:00:51.4 to 0:01:38.6]

CLIENT: Do you have anything on the table from the last time?

THERAPIST: Anything on the table?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: What were you thinking about?

CLIENT: Stop throwing it back on me. (laughs) I don't remember, I don't know if you do.

THERAPIST: I mean, I remember where we left off.

CLIENT: Oh, you do?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I'm not sure I do. I really don't know what we -

THERAPIST: Oh, what we left on, we were talking about the whole parking thing.

CLIENT: Oh, really?

THERAPIST: Yeah, that was good.

CLIENT: The parking, like trying to pull in.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah, right. [0:02:47.0]

CLIENT: That was interesting. The one thing I did say last time was that I called my dad, to talk to him about being a physician's assistant, I think, something like that, but he didn't answer.

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: So he called back and then I said something like, you know, I was thinking about an PA last week but that was last week, so now I'm thinking of something else. I kind of like relished the stick to it, almost as if punishing him for not answering my phone call, silly as I guess it is kind of silly.

THERAPIST: What did you make of him not calling you back?

CLIENT: You mean not answering? [0:03:47.4]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Too busy. In those scenarios, sometimes most often, I don't handle it logically. Like if someone doesn't answer, I feel sometimes like oh, they must not like me, or I don't know, I must really have done something wrong by calling him. Also, it's not like my dad's ever really pushed me to take anything up, that I love to simply complain about parental situations. I think it might be helpful to explain. He once asked me if I ever thought about going into the medical field, and then when I said no, he was pretty upset. Like I remember being in my car and him just being not pleased, but it only came up once. And so dangling the prospect of being a PA, just because of the urgencyof the job, I was thinking would be nice, but the prospect of dangling it is sort of a way to hurt him I guess. [0:05:13.2]

Also recently, I went to his office because really, I haven't seen many lawyers. Since he was a lawyer, I haven't seen many lawyers through the course of my life. On that occasion, I vacillated between visiting him or not visiting him, because he's in the same office. I don't see him that often any more, maybe like once a month. To not see him at all, does not seem as attractive, but I decided against it. And he said, "Oh, so I guess you were in my office, I'm surprised you didn't stop by." So when I went back for something else, I decided to go into his office, and I went in there, he has a new office now, and he had everything sort of organized. I think in his old office, over the course of the years, he'd grown very comfortable with it and it was very small, but there were usually files around, a little bit of clutter, but this room was organized to perfection. There were pictures of large ships on the wall and the books were neatly arrayed. I don't know, it was probably a dark wood desk but I don't actually remember. It gave the impression of being very it's a corner office, it seemed very organized. There were pictures of the family there but everyone's picture in the family was there except mine. [0:06:55.0]

THERAPIST: Hmm.

CLIENT: So I decided to leave at that point, I didn't stay. I want to go into journalism. Do you know anybody? No?

THERAPIST: In journalism?

CLIENT: Yeah. It's a dying industry I hear, but I only want to because I think I could do a really good job.

THERAPIST: But the walking in the office, not seeing your picture up.

CLIENT: Right. It's as if my story had become too confusing for him to handle as a father, or too painful.

THERAPIST: What do you suspect he thinks of you or he sees you? [0:07:59.6]

CLIENT: I think he's bound to me by familial ties and he's like a dutiful father, but he's I think he's pained and disappointed by the fact that I and confused, but the course I've chosen to take with my life, because in the time that he and my mother grew up, college was a badge of distinction and achieving academically. I don't know what I might say there, but going through college was the right of passage for respectability, and I was given every opportunity academically, but I basically threw it in the trash for reasons I was never able to adequately explain. I tried very hard, with Birmingham specifically. It was one of those things I didn't believe was true, until I got confirmation from an administrator, like I made sure to ask them specifically if there's any way the Birmingham thing might fall through, before I even informed my parents, a month after I knew I was accepted into the program. [0:09:26.3]

So, you imagine his pride, when he's told people in his office, one of the people in his office had gone to Birmingham themselves, and then it turns out I don't go, I imagine that's somewhat disappointing. It was the one situation I can remember, where my mother not my mother, where he sort of wasn't there weren't sort of bounds on his affection or his... his pleasure, I don't know. He was like jelly. He didn't know what to say because lo and behold, he's shipped his kid off to boarding school and more or less ignored him for the past five years, and just shelled out the cash and now his kid's going to Birmingham, so you know, lucky him. He was happy. I might have said before, I mean that's the only occasion the most things my mother says about my father is, you know, pop is going to be mad if you don't do this or pop's going to be disappointed, because he is, he's an upstanding man, he does right. He's a very positive influence for everyone around him. [0:11:27.6]

One occasion she said you've done good. That's the most praise I got for anything I've ever done in my life, is that you've done good. I made my father happy basically, she said, but that was after her initial reaction, which was sort of envious, she was fine. When I first told her I got accepted to Birmingham University she said, "You can't go." And it wasn't because it was just because she was still I mean, she's what 20 or 25 or 30 years older than me, and she's still not really, she doesn't have a firm grip on live, and so when her son has the possibility of achieving something, though she had pushed me previously, it's sort of like one of her favorite things to state is that from her experiences at work, is that people only help you until you're at their level. Once you rise above them they just hate you. You know, people will help you up to their level but if you try to pass them, they will tear you down. And that's her statement, so I assume she's somewhat affected by it as well. [0:12:46.2]

THERAPIST: Or she might have implied that between the two of you, hey you've reached some level that I hadn't gotten to.

CLIENT: Yeah, she would never say that. That was her initial that was like her reaction.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Her reflexive response. And then your dad being you know, this rare moment of him being proud of you.

CLIENT: Right, yeah. She called back, I think a week later, and then she told me that I'd done well. I think I'd been in a depression after that call, but that's also, that's a function of after talking with my parents sometimes, I just get really depressed, but I think my mother especially, sometimes my dad, but I just go into like a funk. It doesn't matter where I am. I can be very happy with what I'm planning to do and have something laid out, and then as if on cue, my mother will call and I'll feel terrible. I don't even know I think it's less the case now, but definitely up to a year ago, she'd call and I'd just feel terrible. [0:13:54.9]

And for my part, I'm not sure I've adequately explained the transition. I mean, I've had some successes in my past, and I think I have the capability to do good or great things, but I'm more of just a drag at this point. I mean, I've taken some assistance from my parents, I use my brother's car, my younger brother's car. I'm constantly forming plans that could pay off for me personally and then perhaps benefit the family as well, if work would pay off for me. I do feel like a dead weight, so you know, a feeling of guilt in response to their calls may not even be in relation to anything they say, so much as my real or perceived history and relationship with them.

THERAPIST: Yeah, how did they react to you leaving college? [0:14:57.9]

CLIENT: Well, my mom just said leaving college... Not much was said. If me going back and harping on Birmingham ever sounds annoying, I'd like you to tell me.

THERAPIST: It doesn't.

CLIENT: It doesn't?

THERAPIST: No.

CLIENT: Okay. Because after that, she sort of was like frenetic. She was like formulating these plans, she's saying here's an artist colony you can go to here, things you can do. She was getting involved in my life again, but I sort of pushed her away because I did not want her collaborating in my development again, or I didn't trust her to I guess, maybe because of Lawrenceville, I don't know why, but I absolutely did not want her... And in retrospect, a lot of the things she says and her suggestions are like perfect, but at the time they occur, they're so coarse and they're so opposed to whatever direction I'm thinking of taking, that they seem out of the question. So, you know, at the time, through some weird religious process, like a cabal of people met and decided to rescind my nomination. I was pretty depressed, but she was proposing very like enterprising, interesting, even prestigious, programs, that I could have taken at that point, but I just wasn't really prepared emotionally to do that. [0:16:27.9]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: They would have been good moves. How did they respond? So that's one phase, because I left college twice; once to just travel and with I don't know, Bob Dylan-esque aspirations.

THERAPIST: Your time out in Portland.

CLIENT: Right. The next time, I just sort of fizzled out and went home, and I remember my mom was driving me from somewhere? Oh yeah, so when I left school the last time, I stole my friend's care and had my other roommate come along, so that I could take the car back, because I needed his car to get stuff to the bus station, and he wasn't using it. So we used it to take some stuff to the bus station and I loaded up all my stuff up on a bus and went home and showed up and called my parents, sometime near the end of December, probably halfway through, and my mom came and picked me up. She didn't ask me any questions. I think I explained the facts in a few short sentences, but she didn't press much. [0:17:50.1]

And then I stayed home for 2008, 2009. I stayed home for almost exactly is it almost exactly a year? It could have been two years, but I don't even remember, but I stayed home for an extended period of time and really, we didn't really I think my dad made a few stabs at it, like trying to talk about it, but he always asked why did this happen. As far as he knew, everything was going great, and then I just failed a bunch of classes the semester before I was supposed to go to Birmingham, what happened there? But from my point of view, I'd sort of been really unhappy since sophomore year at Lawrenceville, so it had been something that was long in the making.

THERAPIST: Ah-huh.

CLIENT: I'd always managed to pull my shit together at the last minute, but the semester before Birmingham, I just didn't have the will or the it didn't come together. I didn't even want it to come together. So that was like a disconnect. I kept saying that and they didn't really understand that, like they didn't connect with the fact that I'd been pretty miserable for the past few years. [0:19:19.1]

THERAPIST: Yeah, it was kind of a long time coming in a way?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: And they didn't have a real sense of that ever, while you were at Lawrenceville.

CLIENT: Yeah, I mean, I totally protected them from it and that's not an altruistic thing. I have sort of a I feel sort of a terrible guilt because I don't feel it at this moment, but there was something there, where my family was shelling out big cash for me to go to Lawrenceville. In my eyes, Lawrenceville was a lot less than it purported to be, than they thought it was, and I knew it was crap basically, by all my standards. It didn't measure up, it was just a sort of distinction, but I would never tell them that, because if I told them that, I would lose my independence. I went to boarding school so that I could get away from my family, but I also expected to start my independent life. For whatever reason, I wasn't able to pull that independent life together at 15, so yeah, calling out faults for it. The school or me or my parents is kind of irrelevant. The fact is I couldn't pull together the independent life I wanted to, but if I had told them that the school was perhaps less than I thought it was, I would have been pulled out of the school or my independence would have diminished. [0:20:59.3]

THERAPIST: You would have lost that chance to have that independent life.

CLIENT: Yeah, as far as I could see, so I had to keep it, or I felt I had to keep it private.

THERAPIST: When you say you were looking for an independent life, how do you mean? What were you looking for at that time, what did you feel and why? Independent life.

CLIENT: Well, friends, and I think foremost was a sense of what I would classify as sort of a political ascendance, like a meritocratic rise. I didn't have much sense of money at that time, but I had a sense of what was important, and I wanted to be someone who was very at that time, I suppose I expected to be someone who shaped society in a significant way. I didn't have any profession in mind but it seemed to me that I was entering a class of people who or I would be entering a class of people who valued what was important, you know, intellectual pursuit, conscientious not conscientious. Yeah, a conscientious approach to society really, for social change.

THERAPIST: Hmm. [0:23:04.3]

CLIENT: Yeah, I imagined being sort of being a bad boy, of all things, I guess, but I was so sheltered that I didn't really understand the level of experience my peers would have, from their lifestyles. I expected to be probably like one of the dumber people at the school, but I was still one of the smartest, I think I can say. Like I expected to learn from everyone around me but the fact is, when you get there, everyone sort of filters into their own specialized, everyone cares about different things. They don't care about my academics or philosophy. You take one class and one person is clearly the smartest, then the other people are faced with a choice of okay, what are they good at? If they're not as smart as this guy then maybe they're the social person who has a lot of friends or maybe they're the funny person, maybe they're the athletic person, you know, but if you can't really, if you think you can't top someone else in a particular realm, then you sort of balkanize and take on your strength, or you're just kind of satisfied with mediocrity or whatever. [0:24:35.5]

THERAPIST: Is there something about that with your dad, too? Like I was thinking the one thing that really struck made him happy or proud rather, was this achievement, this kind of like really big time achievement, the Birmingham. But that you didn't know where you really stood with them if it wasn't you know, if it didn't reach that level of acclaim or something, or prestige, in terms of pride. You said it sounds like he's, as you say, an upstanding guy who's going to be dutiful. [0:25:36.2]

CLIENT: Yeah, I, I hadn't thought of that before. In my own mind, the time when I got accepted and I was just sort of failing my classes, I took it for granted that Birmingham would be disappointing, like it was something I prepared myself for. The interesting thing about the perceived my roommate's going at it and how I perceived them going at it, you know, after I had had sex or established relations, the interesting thing about that is it sort of prepared you, whether it occurred or not, it prepares you for the worst case scenario emotionally. How does that connect? So I had sort of assumed, based on my experience with Lawrenceville, that it wouldn't be everything it was cracked up to be. [0:26:46.6]

THERAPIST: Ah-huh.

CLIENT: The friends I knew, who had actually went, it wasn't, but I think I was being prepared for that, I probably would have done well anyway. But yeah, I was perceiving it as just a raw, sort of that's not true. I held out hopes that it would be something truly great, but I was really preparing myself for I don't know, it being something very much different from I had thought or whatever.

THERAPIST: What you might have hoped it to be.

CLIENT: What everyone assumes it would be.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Kind of like in the same way that you had maybe hoped that Lawrenceville would become this -

CLIENT: Exactly.

THERAPIST: Okay, yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: Your question about my dad touches something else, because now even since I was in grade school, he's a very affable guy, but he'd playfully, like he'd ask what goes on at school, and every time you would tell him, and this was true for my brother and sister as well. So what did you learn in school today? And you'd tell him what you learned and he'd be like oh, that's nothing, like you haven't learned algebra yet. And that's like from elementary school through to like it was like every day and it was strange, because trying to explain it to somebody, because he does it in like a laughing way, like it's a completely joking way, but at the same time it's completely dismissive. [0:28:09.8]

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: I've tried lots of things. I think a lot of what I've done, I hoped to receive some recognition from my parents in some way that I might not be conscious of, but they usually rebuffed and I'd pull out really soon, really soon. Like I was a pretty good singer/songwriter, and I performed at a family function, having composed a song that morning and then memorized it. We were having a surprise party, so everyone had to hide, so I made it in the morning and then memorized it while we were hiding, and then played it an hour after we stopped hiding, and it was like seven minutes long, and it had like finger style and it was good, like the story and the narrative and how it fit the person whose 50th birthday we were celebrating. It was very cohesive and it was sort of celebrated. It was celebrated by the extended family, but then I remember looking at my father in that time and he was looking back at me without happiness or... I don't know he was just sort of... I don't know how to describe how he was looking at me. [0:29:53.7]

THERAPIST: What did you see in him?

CLIENT: It wasn't encouraging and it wasn't hostile. Maybe a touch of envy? I don't know. I remember another instance when I was playing too, I told you there's one sort of patriarch of the family and he usually, he was singing old songs, sort of old timey songs, and I'd sort of play a song too, of my own, or that hadn't heard before, it was on my mind. But I remember feeling bad for him. I think I stopped. People at some secret gatherings actually, this one where I played, they always ask me to play, but I always shied away from it and part of the reason was I recognized, in the patriarch, a sort of hurt, like he wasn't needed any more or anything like that, and I wasn't sure actually, I was sure I couldn't take on his role and I didn't something of it was just feeling... Maybe it's dubious, but I definitely felt guilty. [0:31:23.0]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: But my father, that was different.

THERAPIST: He didn't have that look but it was something else?

CLIENT: It wasn't hurt and it wasn't pride, it wasn't encouragement. I guess if I had to draw a conclusion, it was that he recognized I was good at something but it wasn't what he wanted me to be good at.

THERAPIST: Okay, ah-huh.

CLIENT: Yeah, that was probably it.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: So I mean, I guess I wanted to do that kind of stuff.

THERAPIST: Yeah, but it meant something to you, obviously. And obviously that year then, of being out in Portland, must have (inaudible) between the two of you.

CLIENT: Between no, well, don't really talk about it, I don't know.

THERAPIST: Or at the time, I was thinking you were doing something that was very much well, it wasn't becoming a physician. [0:32:27.9]

CLIENT: True. But I had I was very I mean, I didn't tell him anything other than I hoped to do it.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay.

CLIENT: I don't even share anything with my parents about what I hope to do, ever. So yeah, I mean they never knew I planned Birmingham or, you know, much of anything, or what I was doing when I was in Vancouver and Portland.

THERAPIST: Oh, is that right? What did they think?

CLIENT: I don't know. (chuckles) I don't know.

THERAPIST: Okay. But yeah, you didn't talk to them about it.

CLIENT: Why would I, because my experience is, if I let them in to whatever I'm enthusiastic about, they just pop it like a balloon.

THERAPIST: Okay. [0:33:28.0]

CLIENT: So the thing with Birmingham, I remember my dad being proud though. It's like...

THERAPIST: Yeah, what?

CLIENT: Well, he asked about like maybe it wouldn't live up to his maybe I was thinking that it wouldn't live up to his expectation, or the reality of the academic experience wouldn't be as prestigious as he perceived it, but what I thought of, I guess, something like that question, is um, it was kind of arbitrary how my dad was proud in that one moment. It's like a way of getting a handle on all the past hurt too, to shaft him in that one instance where he was actually, he feels, you know, he's arrogated some pleasure or something. Even though it's something I wanted, it was almost more important to thwart him. [0:34:55.1]

THERAPIST: Right, right. Well it also calls, it also I guess kind of makes it maybe I was thinking in some way, that you made him proud, but confronting you with this feeling of I hadn't been before somehow, this was the thing. This is the thing that really did it.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And that it was as if you were going to make it explicit between the two of you. Hey, this is what it your pride is here, now it's gone, because of this Birmingham thing. Well what about the rest of our relationship? It's almost like I was thinking in some way it has a way of having the two of you look at what is between you two, what feelings are there, what aren't there, what isn't there. [0:35:59.3]

CLIENT: To his everlasting credit, he believes that he shouldn't force his children's hand towards any particular field. He believes that everyone has to choose their own way, but when he told me that, I thought to say, you know that's true but it's sort of indistinguishable from not caring.

THERAPIST: Ah-huh.

CLIENT: Lack of involvement.

THERAPIST: Yeah, and in some way maybe, it was just in hiding his interests, as opposed to not having them.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah.

THERAPIST: Not being obstructive, but hiding them, as opposed to kind of sorting it out, hey this is what I'd like, but my son is this, you know that kind of thing.

CLIENT: Yeah. Why would that be problematic?

THERAPIST: Because you knew he still had them. You knew he still had his wishes, and instead of him being explicit, he still felt that and you knew it, but it was never... [0:37:09.3]

CLIENT: Yeah, it's not something I could actually wrestle with.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. I don't know, there's something there about him not I mean, I remember you saying about his father wanting to be kind of he was reacting to his father's kind of heavy handedness. Not heavy handedness, but kind of influence.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm. Yeah, my grandfather was someone of rules and axioms. He used to say... We stayed at his house during the summers since I was a small boy and he'd say, "When I was in the Army, I had to make the bed so neat that when the drill sergeant dropped his quarter on it, it would have to bounce up higher than from where he dropped it from." (laughs) Which is impossible. [0:38:15.8]

THERAPIST: That's right, it's impossible. It defies the laws of physics. Yeah, no but boy, there's something about you calling him with the idea of being a did you actually say a physician's assistant on the...?

CLIENT: I said PA, yeah.

THERAPIST: PA, yeah.

CLIENT: That would be great because it's like urgent. I like driving around. When driving around, I like the urgency in being able to sort of pass other people and disregard where they need to go, because I'm more important, that kind of stuff, but I don't think I'd like being part of an institution and I don't think I'd like that I'd be on a salary. I already told you that, yeah, so, but yeah, I did say PA, and so I told him I wanted to go into journalism now and what he thought about that, but he only described about being a PA and what's that like, and then he I started talking to him but he had to go. [0:39:26.8]

He was never there when I was a kid and I didn't hold it against him. I'd like to think I was pretty mature about it, and I sort of rebuffed in my own mind, the idea that it was harmful to me in any way, but it's possible it was. I mean, the very fact that I felt that argument in my head that it wasn't hurtful to me may be evidence that it was. You know, he was never he brought me to basketball games but then he never stayed. I remember distinctly, he'd offer rewards for how many points I got, but I think one or two times I like, because I could, because he wasn't there. So I'd lie to get some sort of reward.

THERAPIST: It was kind of empty.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah, no, I think there's quite a bit there between the two of you. A lot of it went underground in some way, but you sensed it, you sensed these things between the two of you. Maybe you didn't have I was thinking, you know he, among other things he was a dutiful guy, responsible I'm sure, and all that stuff, but also tried to at least promote the idea that he wasn't going to be controlling or you didn't have to live a certain life to make him proud. [0:40:58.8]

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: But in fact, you ended up feeling, I think, some ways that he did.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah.

THERAPIST: Well, all right. Tuesday.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm, Tuesday, at noon.

THERAPIST: Tuesday, noon, yes.

CLIENT: Circa noon. Thanks.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

END TRANSCRIPT