I know that it may surprise no one here but I actually went to therapy once. It wasn’t for any psychological imbalance, mind you, though you probably wouldn’t be shocked to hear that either.
Instead, it was for a crumbling marriage. I never thought I would go to a therapist, but hey, I really didn’t want to have to move again.
So there I was, just me and the therapist. She asked me to talk a bit about myself. The session lasted an entire hour and she never asked another question after that. I just took off.
It’s not that I find myself that interesting. In fact, I used to think that I was just like everyone else. I lack focus most of the time, I flit from one thing to another, have literally thousands of ideas in my head at any one time, can recall really obscure factoids, often at a moment’s notice, and as we all know, I have Verbal Tourettes.
As I continued to take her on a virtual tour, I could see her increasingly look on with amazement. She later told me that she had never had a male client just rattle off everything about him so quickly and easily. She usually had to pull it out of them over the course of dozens of sessions.
It was then that I told her about the file cabinets.
I’m sure by now this single session has turned into a major medical paper that has won her some prize in psychology and earned her a place in the Therapist Hall of Fame.
You see, I have file cabinets in my head. I can picture them. They sit in the middle of my brain in a circle. They are cartoonish in appearance. If you were looking at them from the desk (we’ll get to that in a minute) they would rise up, getting bigger and wider, like buildings in a cartoon. They’re all different colors, bold colors; no some namby-pamby beige in my head.
In the middle of the floor is a desk. There is a wood chair behind it. Both are mahogany in color, very 1950s detective era in style. There is a small banker’s lamp on it, you know, the one with the oblong green glass shade.
In the file cabinets is everything I know. Some of the drawers hang open, the files partially fallen out. Other files and papers have fallen to the floor, waiting for me to pick them up some day. Still others are stacked on the desk, waiting to be put away.
The ones on the desk are issues I’m still dealing with my life. For example, I have an abandonment issue. It’s no longer the top file on the desk. It’s at the bottom somewhere now. It was placed there when my brother died when I was 14 and then my father died when I was 22. I still haven’t put it away because I seem to revisit it now and again. I look at the folder, open it, rummage through the stack of papers inside and put it back in the stack.
It was that folder that led me to the therapist in the first place. I was going to be abandoned yet again, so the file was at the top and marked, “URGENT.”
There are other files there, of course. A couple of unfinished projects with folder names like Become a Novelist, Be a Better Father and Lose Weight.
I probably would get them off the table if it weren’t for the windstorm that occasionally kicks up in my head. You can see the results of these unfortunately timed episodes as you sit at the desk.
Some of the cabinet drawers are still open, contorted by gusts to the point that they won’t close anymore. In it are the answers to Jeopardy questions no one on the show seems to know, the combination to my junior high school locker, the names of my stuffed animals, the words to Saturday In the Park… and literally millions of other obscure, seemingly useless pieces of information.
At least I think they’re useless. Then the wind kicks up. Drawers are pulled open, files fly through the air and random papers drop onto the desk. And when they do, I simply shake my head, stack them up and look through them to see what they are and where they should go.
Then it happens. As I look through the random topics, new ideas sprout forth. Sometimes they are amazing ideas, other times they are solutions to problems that have been vexing me.
This morning, it was the lyrics I should use to rewrite the song, Under the Boardwalk so that it was more piratey. The blender in my brain started around 5 a.m. on that one.
Oh, and the decision to buy that cool flintlock carbine I saw yesterday or travel to Seattle to see my mother and friends instead. Which one, which one? That popped in about four minutes later. Last night, I was sure it was the gun. But a few more files fell down out of the cabinets that made me think going to Seattle was a better idea. Or a freezer. Sure could use a freezer in the condo. Condo. I should hang that big sail sized poster that I have from Cutthroat Island in the bedroom window to piss off the Home Owners Association.
Yes, and it goes on and on and on. I will be picking up papers in the file room forever it seems.
Perhaps that’s why I just stare blankly at someone when they ask me to clean up after myself. I’ve been doing it all my life. And believe me, it’s a real mess. But it is a mess I am more than happy to live with.
Somewhere in Florida thankful with my brain blender whirring away,
— Robb