Someone New

When I was 33 my life fell apart (just like Jesus!). I was working for the Los Angeles Times in the San Fernando Valley, a desolate, industrial plant in Chatsworth -- a step up from Ventura, but a long way from downtown, or Tokyo, where I wanted to be. I had just broken up with someone I thought I would marry. I was glad to be free, but heartbroken and so sad that the only thing I was capable of was lying under my fan in my Valley apartment in the hundred degree heat and staring at the ceiling, listening to Beth Orton's mournful voice over and over and over again. I felt lost, adrift, depressed and utterly hopeless. Where had my life gone wrong?

I called all my friends looking for a therapist. I had had cheap, affordable therapists before, but now I was desperate. I needed someone really really smart and really really good. I was in deep shit.

Finally I found someone everyone raved about. I called her and told her I was poor, but I could see her twice a month. She said she didn't do that, but she would take me on, and we would work it out later. I needed her too much. I said yes. And so I began to trek to Brentwood to see her.

She changed my life.

I told her my life had gone horribly, horribly wrong. I told her I didn't know how I had ended up in an office in the middle of the Valley living in a lonely apartment off Ventura Boulevard. I told her I would never find love again. I told her I hated my life and didn't know how I had gotten here. I told her I thought once I had been on a great river, flowing through life, and now I felt I had drifted down a muddy tributary and I couldn't get out. I was stuck.

She tried to talk to me. Most of what she said was so hard to take in I just shut down completely and couldn't even hear. It was simply to difficult to take in. And I was trying. It was like I went deaf. But she did not give up. She began to send me metaphors. In her stories, I could take it in. Through her metaphors, I could understand what was troubling me. They were fantastical tales set in imaginary countries. I was a sad Zora guitarist, stuck in the land of Time. Her stories were long rambling missives, but they functioned like my own personal fairy tales. And I could hear. She had figured out how to get through to me. I didn't understand it but I felt better. It felt like magic.

It was a hard thing to share, it was so bizaare.

Within a year of seeing her I was in a new apartment I loved, dating the most wonderful man I had ever met and would eventually marry, and had gotten a job in the L.A. Times downtown office.

She was wacky, highly credentialed, gifted, and a true shaman. For years I clung to her, even as she got sicker and sicker with various illnesses. I followed her as she moved farther and farther away from me, and emailed her for more stories when I got stuck. She always came through. She was a true healer. A one of a kind therapist. I feel so blessed to have crossed paths with her. Eventually she grew so ill she could no longer practice. I believe her illnesses stem from taking on the sadness and illness of others. Maybe no one can do that over a lifetime. Not if you really really care.

I don't know.

But even when she stopped formally practicing she would always take my calls and nurse me through a crisis. Until her returned calls became more and more infrequent. Now I just visit her art at various sites on the internet and hungrily read her essays. Her words still move me.

But after years of hoping, praying that she would always be with me. After dreams that she was saying Good-bye, with me chasing after her saying NO, NO, NO, I am finally accepting that our patient/dr. relationship is over.

I am so grateful for what she did for me. She was one of my great teachers. My greatest healer. She appeared in my life at a time when I was breaking down and helped me get back on my path. But I am trying, as more time passes, to accept that she came into my life, taught me what she could, and now I must move on. Not forget her. Not forget what she taught me. But begin my search for my new spiritual and soul mentors.

Tonight is a first step. I am going to see a new therapist.

I'll let you know how it goes...