He said he’d put me in a group. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the word group landed like a punch between my ribs. A group would be filled with people, people who might not like me, who would pry into my business and violate my mother’s edict not to expose my mental anguish to other people’s scrutiny.
“I can’t do a group.”
“Why not?”
“My mother would flip. All those people knowing my business—”
“So don’t tell her.”
“Why can’t I do individual sessions?”
“Group’s the only way I know how to get you where you want to go.”
“I’ll give you five years.”
“Five years?”
“Five years to change my life, and if it doesn’t work, then I’m out of here. Maybe I’ll kill myself.” I wanted to wipe that smirk off his face, and I wanted him to know I wasn’t going to stick around indefinitely, schlepping downtown to talk about my feelings with other broken people, if there weren’t material changes in my life. In five years I’d be thirty-two. If I still had a slick, unattached heart at thirty-two, I would off myself.
He leaned forward. “You want intimate relationships in your life within five years?” I nodded, willing to bear the discomfort of eye contact. “We can do that.”
I was scared of Dr. Rosen, but was I going to second-guess the Harvard-educated psychiatrist? His intensity scared me—that laughter, those statements—but it also intrigued me. Such confidence! We can do that.
As soon as I agreed to group, I became convinced that something catastrophic would happen to Dr. Rosen. I pictured the number twelve bus mowing him down in front of Starbucks. I pictured his lungs riddled with malignant tumors, his body succumbing to ALS.
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him,” Dr. Rosen said in our second session when I told him my fears.
“Aren’t you Jewish?” There was the Jewish surname, the mazel tov, the needlepoint with Hebrew letters hanging across from the diplomas.
“The expression means you should pray that I die.”
“Why would I do that?”
“If I die”—he clasped his hands together and smiled like a manic elf—“someone better will come along.” His face burst with joy, as if he believed that anything—anything at all—could happen, and it would be glorious and better than what came before it.
“I was once in an accident on a beach in Hawaii. Someone I was with drowned.” I felt a rise in my chest as I watched his eyes expand before my detonated bomb.
“Jesus. How old were you?”
“Three weeks shy of fourteen.” My body buzzed with anxiety as it always did when Hawaii came up. That summer, the sweet spot between eighth grade and starting a new, all-girls Catholic high school, my friend Jenni invited me to join her family for a vacation in Hawaii. We spent three days exploring the main island—black sand beaches, waterfalls, a luau. On the fourth day, we went to a secluded beach at the edge of the island, and Jenni’s father drowned in the surf. I never knew how to talk about the experience. My mom called it “the accident,” other people called it “the drowning.” The night it happened, Jenni’s mom called family members back in Dallas, sobbing into the phone: “David’s been killed.” I didn’t have the words for what happened or how it felt to carry the memory of dragging his limp body out of the ocean, so I didn’t talk about it.
“Do you want to say more?”
“I’m not praying that you die.”
If you Google “see Buddha kill,” you’ll find a link to a book titled If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients. Apparently, psychotherapy patients, who were now my people, must learn that therapists are nothing more than struggling human beings like their patients. It was an early signal that Dr. Rosen was not going to give me answers, that he might not have them to give. I added to my fantasy reel of Dr. Rosen’s grisly demise an image of me driving a wooden stake into Dr. Rosen’s heart, which was unsettling, and not just because I’d confused Buddha with Dracula.
Freshman year of college, some lively, popular girls from Austin invited me to road-trip to New Orleans with them. The plan was to stay at one of the girls’ cousin’s place and party in the French Quarter until it was time to drive back to campus. I told them I needed to think about it, even though I knew my answer. I cited homework as an excuse, even though it was the second week of school, and my only assignment was to read the first half of Beowulf, which I’d read in high school.
Groups intimidated me, even all those years after Bianca and her Jolly Ranchers. Where would I sleep in New Orleans? What if I didn’t understand their jokes? What if we ran out of things to say? What if they figured out I wasn’t as rich or cool or happy as they were? What if they found out I wasn’t a virgin? What if they knew I’d slept with only one guy? What if they learned my secrets around food?
How could I
