Where Have I Been?
In which the author emerges from an alcoholic comma…
Some time ago, no matter how long precisely, I made a visit to a psychotherapist. She was a nice person, with several degrees in various psycho-social disciplines, and a well appointed office done up in soothing colors. During one of our first sessions, she asked me why I thought I needed help.
I told her I had recently lost a job. She nodded, her face a studied mask of empathy and psycho-therapeutic acumen.
I told her I was having great difficulty finding a new job, possibly because I was considered old and over-the-hill (I’m was, at that time, 52 years old) or because, being old, but not at all over-the-hill, I could command the salary of between three and five 20-somethings while doing more and better work than any seven of them. Or because the 20-something MBA wunderkind manager couldn’t handle the dynamics of hiring someone older and more experienced to be subordinate. The therapist nodded, sagely, and with a gravity that well encompassed the gravity of the situation.
She paused for a thoughtful silence, nodding gently and making notes, in pencil, on the sheet in her lap. Is that all, she asked, a model of earnest therapeutic comfort.
No, I answered. During this time, and unexpectedly, my wife’s older sister died, leaving two special-needs children to…
