Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [48]
And I don’t even feel like I’m talking myself into it, which for me is always an occupational hazard.
“You must be Augusten,” the woman in the floral print dress and Reeboks says to me. “I’m Wendy.” She extends her hand. What is it with alcohol counselors and floral prints?
I rise from my chair in the reception area of HealingHorizons. She has no grip. She lays her hand in mine like she’s handing me a baby trout she just caught and doesn’t know what to do with. I think, Her father wanted a boy, so he didn’t bother to teach her about grips.
“Hi, Wendy, nice to meet you.”
“Follow me, then.” She smiles.
She smells like hair conditioner. She smells like her floral print dress. I suspect a cover-up of some sort. But then, alcoholics are suspicious.
Once inside her office, she takes the seat at her desk and points me to the chair beside it. There’s a framed poster on the wall across from me that reads WILL YOU PLEASE LET GO OF YOUR WILL!? She also has a large bookcase filled with various manuals: Managing Codependence, Twelve Steps One Step at a Time, When Children of Alcoholics Aren’t Children Anymore, If You Want What We Have.
For the next fifty minutes, we go over my “plan.” Group therapy Tuesdays and Thursdays, one-on-one every Monday. I sign a consent form that states I will not become romantically involved with anyone from group therapy, that I will not come to Group intoxicated and that if I am unable to attend either Group or one-on-one, I will give at least twenty-four hours’ notice.
“So how are you feeling, settling back into your life?”
I smile broadly. The new me is open and expressive. “Tentative, but hopeful, really hopeful.” I’ve learned to always list more than one emotion when asked. It’s more believable.
“That’s good,” she says reassuringly. “It’s okay to have some mixed emotions. And I’m glad you admit that you feel tentative.” She smiles at me and there’s a long silence in the room. My hands start to sweat slightly. I’m not sure why. I think it’s because I’m thinking I should say something. But I’m also thinking that therapists believe silence is okay. So I am actually not being silent, but manipulative and controlling. Once again, an alcoholic specialty.
“How was your experience at Proud Institute?” she asks.
She’s the first person to say that name since I’ve returned. “It was very intense,” I tell her. “At first, I wanted to leave. My first impression was not a good one.”
“But you revised your opinion?”
I nod my head. “Yeah, that’s an understatement. I never expected it to be so intense. It was like emotion, emotion, emotion half of the day. And facts, facts, facts the other half. It was like Jerry Springer meets medical school. I mean it’s not like I had some great moment of truth or anything. More like a lot of little ones, gradually. Although I did really realize I’m an alcoholic, so I guess that’s happened.”
“I’ve heard that from many, many people.”
This makes me want to ask her if she’s an alcoholic. That she’s “heard” it implies she hasn’t experienced it herself. I don’t want a therapist who has only textbook knowledge. I want a therapist who lost a leg in the war. Someone who has been there. And this doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Every woman I know goes to a female gynecologist, after all. They don’t want some guy poking around in there.
“So, what made you go into chemical dependency counseling?” I ask, as if I’m interviewing her for a position at my Scarsdale facility.
“What makes you ask?” she asks back.
“I guess it’s not my business, but I was just wondering if you have personal experience with addiction.”
“Would it make a difference with your program whether I have or have not?”
I feel trapped. If I say, Yes, my mental health is possibly connected to whether or not you are an alcoholic,