The whole aesthetic feels like it was ripped straight out of a how-to guide for getting your clients to spill their guts.
Dr. Goode is dressed in a green sleeveless jumpsuit over a white dress shirt. Her megawatt smile sets off alarm bells in my head. Too friendly.
She motions for me to take a seat, and I dig my nails into my palm as I do.
“So, Danielle.”
“Dani. It’s just Dani,” I correct.
She smiles. “Dani. How are you today?”
“I’m fine.” One day, I hope to abolish that word from my vocabulary.
“That’s great,” she says.
“What’s Goode with you, doc?” I outwardly cringe at the play on her name I’m sure she’s heard a thousand times before.
To her credit, it doesn’t faze her. “I’m good today. Thanks for asking.”
I acknowledge her words with a nod and then the silence sets in. The silence goes on so long, I start to fidget in my seat, my sweater clinging to my neck with sweat.
“So, how does this work?” I ask. Do I start or does she?
“How do you want it to work?” she asks.
I inwardly sigh. Great, she’s going to be one of those “How does that make you feel?” doctors. I’ll be back to searching for a new therapist tonight.
“Aren’t you supposed to tell me that?”
She crosses one leg over the other. “I’m not into cookie-cutter bullshit.”
The nonchalance of her statement throws me for a loop. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m not here to tell you how your therapy should go. It’s your session, so we take it at your pace. If you wanna sit here and stare at each other for an hour, we can do that. If you wanna talk, you can do that. If you want me to ask you some questions, I can do that. But I won’t tell you which one you’re supposed to choose. There’s no right answer.”
I might like her after all. “And what if I wanna sit here and stare at the wall for every session. That’s okay?” I call her bluff.
“Again, it’s your decision.”
She seems so unbothered, the stubbornness in me can’t help but test the theory. I plunge us into silence for fifteen minutes. And for fifteen minutes, she sits perfectly comfortable in her chair, not giving a fuck.
“I don’t know where to start,” I admit.
She sits up higher. “Well, why don’t you tell me what you hope to get out of coming here?”
“So, start at the end and work my way backward?”
She smiles. “Something like that.”
It all sounds so simple. I really hope it is.
In the end, we don’t talk about the past at all. We talk mostly about where I want to go. What I’m hoping therapy can do for me. She doesn’t make any false promises, which I appreciate. She doesn’t even pressure me to book a second session, but I do the moment I leave.
I feel a bit lighter now that the first session is out of the way. I’m optimistic about Dr. Goode.
I force myself to call my mom and tell her about it, when really the person I want to call is Micah. That terrifies me. This is only supposed to be sex and friendship, but it feels dangerously close to the last time we were together. Maybe I should stop ignoring Omari’s texts and meet up with him. I’ve only been seeing Micah and perhaps the unspoken exclusivity of that is fucking with my head. Yes, I should link up with Omari and let him fuck those thoughts right out of me.
When I pull up to my place, I pick up the phone to do just that, but reality stops me. No matter how much dick Omari throws me, my mind will be on Micah. He’s wormed his way in there so deeply, it would take the jaws of life to get him out. I am fucked, and not in the way I prefer to be.
