By this shirt here: Back on top shirt, hoodie and sweater
I don’t remember my last session in person. But I do have distinct memories of the office itself: the stack of magazines (if my therapist is reading this, I admit I considered stealing The New Yorker every week), the evaded glances in the Back on top shirt, hoodie and sweater room, the air purifier in the corner, lazily exhaling a yogic blend of eucalyptus and patchouli, the pleasant neutrality of it all. And it’s that neutrality that worries me: Because it might mean I’ll never return. And if I don’t, what other reasons to leave my home, to enter into the outside world, will I lose when this is all “over”?I’m a lifelong insomniac. Until college, I preferred any bed that didn’t leave me alone in my own, a tendency my parents long suspected therapy could solve. I’ve since spent close to a decade chasing sleep and experimenting with methods that span the therapeutic spectrum, from seeing my mother’s own behavioral therapist, a warm woman (but an obvious mistake), to a short stint with a Jungian therapist on the Upper East Side whose rotating screensaver of Galápagos wildlife I would watch, reclined on her tufted-leather couch; to a few sessions with a male psychiatrist who I associate with Paul Auster novels and a low-level depression that I thought Zoloft could solve. (Couldn’t!)
Come March of this year, running into my therapist became the Back on top shirt, hoodie and sweater of my worries. Seeing her at all was impossible, and so we pivoted, like everything else, to a virtual model. Our first session, done via Doxy, was strangely intimate: me in my bed, my laptop propped up on a stack of pillows, and her in her living room, surrounded by plants, a bright yellow lamp beside her, her back facing a window overlooking our shared neighborhood. Two people, just out of bed (well, half of us anyway), surrounded by our things. I rebelled against the new format at first, cancelling more frequently and more last minute, acting as if I was obliging her when she called. As if I wasn’t the one paying for her time. I was wasting both our time, and cheating only myself. Dr. Jacobs seemed less worried about the future of therapy: “Zoom is not replacement, but it’s an effective and meaningful temporary substitute,” she said. “At a time when we need connection perhaps more than ever, I am tremendously grateful for virtual therapy—both with my patients and my own therapist—and have been continuously surprised by how rich, dynamic, and fruitful treatment can be online.”
