How long do you wait before its telling is neither a betrayal nor a humorous anecdote, despite its inherent and obvious ironies (despite the fact that it actually is funny), but is rather a reasonably considered part of the fabric of your own story and therefore demands to be told, that is, if someone were apt to make such a demand, like your publisher who is paying you for a book of personal essays? All right, so my therapist went nuts. There, I said it. Her life fell apart and she crinkled and crumbled slowly before my eyes until I knew, for sure, that I was cured. She’d always been odd. She’d always been messy and bohemian, an earth mother in loose triangular velvet dresses and elaborate beaded necklaces. She wore large, buggy glasses and had long center-parted mussed hair. Her office was crammed with classic therapist voodoo: a large and valuable photograph of a famous poet on one wall, a Tibetan blanket on another, two corduroy club chairs, a couch, plenty of books, and a vast collection of exotic-looking figurines that in time came to include those small rubber promotional dolls that come with Happy Meals at McDonald’s.
