My therapist’s office is exactly what you might picture if you were to conjure up a vision of a New York therapist’s office. It’s in a large building off of Broadway that houses other offices and apartments, and a preschool on the ground floor. The building is even named after a Saint, which I always thought was fancy but also kind of strange for such an ordinary structure in Manhattan. The security guard is from Cote d’Ivoire and on good days he and I like to speak French together. On bad days I give him a perfunctory wave and head up the spiraling stairs to the second floor office. The floor’s bathroom needs a code for entry, as if the doctors don’t trust that patients can’t enter it without killing themselves. There’s a white noise machine near the door of the office, and one of the doctors who shares the space with mine is named “Margot Tenenbaum.” Really! Every time I go I want to take a picture on my phone but I somehow always end up forgetting.
I started seeing this therapist last summer when I was going through a bad breakup. My medication was off and I was having one of those intense depression spells where I couldn’t really do normal things like get out of bed in the morning or go to work without crying. These dark patches of my life are characterized by things like: the simplest tasks feeling incredibly exhausting, losing huge chunks of time to sleeping and sobbing hysterically, and making about ten calls a day to my unimaginably patient mother. They strike rarely, but when they do, they’re debilitating.