Monday Blues, Part 1

It’s one of those days I’m just not sure I can tolerate the grief anymore. In the “Real World,” people leave treatment in a number of ways. The most common is they fade away when the acuity has passed, or they never return after the second or third session. Once in a great while somebody just disappears in the middle of something intense, but this is rare. I also don’t usually suffer from the feeling they are wandering off into the wild with no support or expectation of it.

I haven’t written about Mr. Stark in the past few weeks as I’ve just been too sad. He was granted parole, and we had a few days before he transferred out to prepare for this transition. This was in the middle of a huge art extravaganza at our studio, involving 20-50 people daily for two weeks. It was also in the middle of my father being diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer and a limited number of months left to live (we are still waiting for confirmation of this opinion). I received the paperwork on a Monday morning, first thing, and my heart sank.

He has been working hard, making difficult progress and was at the brink of what felt like a turning point: a change in how he was thinking and dealing with his emotions and fears. We both assumed, due to his flurry of tickets earlier in the year, that he would be flopped. He wasn’t. I should have given myself a day to process, but I didn’t. I called him out to tell him the news. It was possible he would be gone in two days, we needed to do some preparation and I had paperwork to complete. It didn’t feel like I could wait. Besides, he would be so excited. I was greedy for the opportunity to tell him myself. Although I was disappointed and worried and the timing could not have been worse, I knew it would balance out with his amazement and anticipation.

He walked into the office, I assumed, wondering why I had called him at such a weird time, or even called him at all. I put on happy face, glowed at him, waggled my eyebrows and reached out the paperwork declaring him free. He sank into the chair, looked balefully at the paper, and told me he already knew.

“I’m not ready, Ms. Mclain. It’s too soon.” His face was still, his body limp, and he wouldn’t look at me. This is a guy who is constantly moving in session. Shifting, hooking his leg over a chair arm, laughing, angry, pacing. No movement. Just an overwhelming despair that flooded then met with my own exhaustion and regret and inundated us both.

I got up and shut the door. He looked at me then, for the first time, “I guess I’m here for a bit?”

I nodded and told him I’d cancelled the remainder of my morning. We had to figure out how to seal off treatment in a way that could hold him safe. What had just happened is the one person he had come to trust and rely on was being precipitously removed from his life, another relationship ending in pain and ashes. We mostly sat for that hour and were sad, talking a bit about what needed to happen, but being quiet most of the time and just sitting with each other.

He does this thing with his arms and hands, where they become completely tense and energy filled. At some point during therapy I finally asked about it, and he told me this was a way he channeled his rage and fear and desperation out of his body: a sign of his emotions overflowing. It is something to do with his arms and hands that didn’t create violence except toward himself. I lost count of how many times this behavior manifested on this Monday.

He rose to leave just before count, and stopped at the doorway as I was looking at my hands trying to wait until he left to vent my own frustration and fear. He stopped in the doorway.

“Ms. Mclain, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m leaving.” Silence, I don’t even have the strength to wonder what comes next.

“I really care about you; you’ve become really important to me.”

What do I respond? Where is the boundary? What does he need? What is true and real?

“Me too, Mr. Stark. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be crying.”

“I know that, you didn’t need to tell me.”

And he is gone.