Almost ten years ago, I walked into Dr. Dosh's office. A psychologist recommended to me by my auntie (who is a psychiatrist). I wasn't sure how I felt about talking to a man. I felt I would feel better exposing my deepest self in front of a female. How was I going to tell some man about my life, about the hurts and all the intimacies and all those scary dark places no one had ever been introduced to?
But I went. And I sat in his office for several years.
And I loved him.
There were moments when I questioned his sanity. He often interrupted me to talk to me about his life, his own struggles, a passage he might have been impacted by in a book about Buddhism. Sometimes he would go and copy passages from his books on meditation and living in the moment and being present while we were still "in session." Honestly, I think my "reduced" price of 120.00/hour was overpriced and sometimes I think we probably should have come out even steven from the therapy and insights I gave to him. I'm kidding. Mostly.
And I loved him.
He was probably, next to my father (maybe even above my father) the first male person in my life who I could just be with. He was the first person I told my biggest secrets to, and the first person I basically "came out" to. And despite anything I brought to him, and how many times I lay on the couch sobbing about some ouch I had experienced decades before him or anyone loved me enough, he never wavered. He never left me.
Until he died.
Some days, like today, I wake up missing him. Maybe the part of me that misses him is already tender due to some hormonal imbalance in my brain or hormonal womanly thing. I don't know. But this morning I dreamed that I was in his office. And it was exactly how I remembered it. I knew he wasn't there, but I went to his office building in my dream -- to see the empty office and feel maybe that he was there. I wanted to tell him about so many things. Some things that I still struggle with but more than that I wanted to tell him that I did it. I dared to love someone who would love me back in that way he had talked to me about way back when. I wanted to tell him how terrified I was and still am but how I keep moving forward despite it because no amount of fear is going to kill me. I want to tell him that I finally am listening to him. I wanted to see his face when I told him, the smile that would reach the corners of his eyes beneath his spectacles. I wanted to see him excitedly reaching for yet another book, pointing out the passsage " here" he would say. It says "right here" that you would get "here." Eventually.
In my dream there were Christmas cards displayed on his door the way he used to. I would search for my card sometimes around the holidays. It was like some testament that I did belong there. That I had a place in his life. That maybe he loved me as much as I loved him.
I think it would be impossible.
Sometime in the dream I realized that he wasn't there. He really wasn't, despite every physical evidence that he would be; the apple on the corner of his desk he would eat between patients -- the scattered files on his desk and his mac-book opened to his appointments -- all of them still current. Patients who would come into this alive yet dead office, sit there on the couch that absorbed so many stories. When it hit me in the dream I started to cry. I felt myself wailing, sure I was crying outloud in my awake world. I woke myself up -- crying --
But my face was completely dry.
I miss him today maybe more than I have missed him since he died several months ago of cancer. The feeling that I can never tell him in person the obstacles I've cleared and about the book I wrote and about this wonderful person I have fallen in love with and still fall a bit more in love with every single day .... is indescribable. It's like crying in a dream, waking up from it, knowing everyone in the world heard your sobs, then realizing it was all inside.
All just a terrible dream.
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