My therapist ghosted me.
She seemed to understand that I didn’t need her like I did once. She might have picked up on the fact that, as with most of my potential addictions, favorites of those I’m surrounded by, I try and I fail to keep them going. My ongoing addiction, in fact, seems to be to the failure to become addicted. I am excellent at beginning new things and then giving them up—cold turkey. Last year I bought a new tennis racquet, an abundance of tennis attire, a membership to the courts at the park in my neighborhood. I never once used the courts and I’ve used the racquet but three times. (But I wear the outfits all the time.)
Each week I open a new bottle of “beautiful” wine. I’ll buy anything the people in my wine shop describe this way. “Beautiful” wine, all to myself, only to nurse a three ounce glass over the course of two or three hours before returning to water and forgetting the rest of the almost-full bottle in the fridge. I am in the process of doing this now.
Passing the smoke shop the other day, I stopped in and took the plunge: I bought my first vape. I sipped it whenever I could remember over the next couple weeks, keeping it in my bag (for fun!) and pulling it out as an on-the-go occupation for avoiding my own nervous tics and awkward situations. Then after a weekend of forgetting I had it at all, I sipped it once, coughed, and put it down for good. The habit kicked me.
Instead it’s intangibility I can’t seem to shake—summer storms and nostalgia, the idea of a thing, wallowing, asking people if they “need anything,” telling the cat how perfect and adorable he is, gazing out of windows, daydreaming, wishing I was somewhere, taking forever to fall asleep. I’m addicted to nothingness. Anything that eludes my grasp.
Still, you could say I, like so many others, was addicted to therapy for a time, the indulgent pleasure of simply talking and talking about myself while appreciating my shrink’s ability to laugh at my jokes and my chance to talk some shit, for once, on everyone (including myself). But I didn’t need her anymore and the money I spent could be going elsewhere (like several $38 bottles of wine, 80% of which were to be dumped down the drain). I started to postpone and she started to “forget” about our appointments, ‘till I stopped re-scheduling them and she stopped calling.
So why am I writing about it now? It occurred to me one morning, as I stared out of the window during breakfast, drinking my coffee (to which I am, in fact, addicted) that if she’d only called back, if she’d asked about my schedule the following week, I’d be the one giving her up. Shouldn’t she want my money? I thought. Shouldn’t she be keeping an eye on me? I wondered. But she didn’t—she just disappeared. Maybe she kicked me, too.