Yesterday I walked along a tree-lined avenue in north London. Enormous sycamore trees dropping leaves the size of dinner plates lined the way. It was a clean, cold day, my fingers tucked into gloves and my nose freezing and pink. The ancient church across the way tolled its bells at noon, and in the winter frost the sound of them carried and carried, so far and long that someone far out of London must raise their head and wonder for whom the bell tolls.

My boots scuffling, I passed pile after pile of the enormous sycamore leaves, and with a swing of an ankle I sent a huge pile swirling into the air, paper-like and curled they took to the air with a jump before settling back onto the sidewalk. I have been watching those leaves every time I walk through that neighborhood, and every time I have wanted to bend down and pick one up, to touch the veins of leaves in my fingers, to hold the woody stem in my hand. I have never done it, and I don't know why.

The houses, stately and Georgian, are silent and calming as I continue walking. I look up at the windows of the houses and try to imagine who lives there. Is it a young family, the childrens' Wellington boots slung frustratingly in the hallway? Is it a working professional couple, and he comes home smelling of bank money and nuzzles her neck as the stir fries the bok choy, hoping he's washed off the other smells before making it home? Is it the same set-up as my therapists', in that it's a home shared by psychotherapists, who each have made an area their working area, and in these areas they sit and face the broken and ready the superglue?

Walking along, I look up in a window at a movement and see a man, huddled under a thick purple blanket, rocking back and forth in front of the enormous windows. He looks at me, still rocking the rocking of the manic, the crazy, the lost. I know that rocking. I've done that rocking. I stop for a minute as he rocks and look up at him. I smile at him, and he sees me but doesn't stop rocking. I know how he is. We're all looking for a way to get away from ourselves. His rocking is the only way he can think of right now, to soothe, to escape. We're all looking for a way to get away from ourselves, and this way keeps it at bay.

I walk on, my boots quiet on the sidewalk. I have O Holy Night in my head, playing on an endless loop, and when I am not careful the words come out of my lips as I quietly sing my way to therapy. I pass a man mixing concrete and spreading it near the curb and I catch myself and stop just in time to not be heard. When I get to the house that I know, I make my way to the steps. I am greeted by a Swedish woman, another therapist, and she tells me that my therapist is still with his other person, would I mind waiting in the lounge?

I walk into the lounge, feeling like I'm somewhere I'm not supposed to be-the interior of a surgeon's car. The kitchen of Dr. Henry. The filing room of an accountant. The walls are adorned with pictures and posters in Swedish and I interpret them readily. My own therapist spends part of his time in Sweden, treating people there, although he is English and his base is English. In a rocking chair by the large windows a thick tabby cat sits, tensely regarding me. I make my way to the cat and gently stroke its head, its neck, its chin. The cat, ears back and tense, obliges me with a purr and angles her face up for better access from my fingers, while never easing up on the springing feeling in the shoulders, the ready to run instinct.

My therapist comes in. 'I see you're making a friend,' he says kindly. 'It's unusual, she doesn't let people touch her much. She was mistreated in her last home and now is not trusting, she doesn't believe in people.'

I look at the cat. 'I know the feeling, doc.' I reply.

We go up to his loft office, full of clean light and Swedish-influenced pale pine. He has lit advent calendars and the area has a waft of magnolia from them. I sit on the couches and we talk.

I have been seeing him for a few months now. Every session I go, I am glad I did. Every session I talk, I feel better for letting the cork out. We talk about my current battle with the food, about my self-disgust and creepy loathing. We then talk about other things and begin to link them together. My mind starts spinning as I start to see that there are things at play, things at work, things underneath that I had never thought about. You don't think about these things as you understand them to be fact. Blue is blue. The sun comes up. I am utterly deficient. These truths I hold to be self-evident, and I don't think about them as the world is full of options, facts don't need thoughts spared on them.

And then my therapist sits forward and looks me in the eye. He smiles gently. And he utters one sentence that somehow collapses me into a torrent of sobs. He utters one sentence that, for the first time in my life, enters my head and sinks in. His one sentence explodes the boundary of my carefully defended world, my brick walls suffer a crack in their foundation, and all the truths I knew to be self-evident are now up for grabs.

I sob hysterically on his couch, and he hands me tissues. 'This is the beginning,' he says.

He asks me how I feel, and I tell him the truth-I feel utterly exhausted. Completely and totally shattered, and I don't understand, understand anything. I feel as though the only thing I can do is sleep, that the only thing I should do is sleep. He tells me it's important I try not to think about things just now. He may have opened the box for me, but I can't deal with some of the things inside of it on my own.

And that this is only the first box.

He tells me to walk back to the tube station slowly, and I oblige him. I walk as though my hips are disjointed. I walk watching the ground, the trees, the sky, unable to focus my eyes on anything specific. I walk with eyes full of tears. I walk as though I am a child, and in some way, I suppose I am.

I stop and pick up a large sycamore leaf, larger than my hand and tinged with brown. I hold it in my hand and make it dance on the air. When I pass the Rocking Man's house I look up and see he's still there, the purple blanket still over his head, his rocking still in tact. He looks at me and I look at him, and I am still crying. I hold up my leaf to show him, and he cocks his head, still rocking, and looks at it.

Then I walk on and go home, feeling like an exhausted empty confused vessel who just found out that blue isn't blue, it's yellow.

And I have the large sycamore leaf on my desk to prove it.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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