The Great Therapy Rush
The day I decided to join the TherapyCorp™ waiting list, I'd spent four hours trapped in my apartment's vestibule, unable to decide if I should hold the door for a neighbor who was still technically visible but realistically too far away. We'd performed an awkward distance-closing dance until the sun set and we both retreated to our respective homes, defeated. This was the moment I realized I needed professional help.
In our post-social world, getting therapy had become as competitive as finding a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan during the 1980s. Every morning, I joined the desperate masses outside TherapyCorp's gleaming glass building, all of us performing our careful choreography of avoiding physical contact while simultaneously trying to be first in line. We were like a flash mob of introverts, each silently convinced that everyone else had mastered the art of waiting in line while we alone were doing it wrong.
"You haven't made it inside yet?" my sister Amy's voice crackled through the speakerphone I refused to hold near my actual ear. She'd already scored an appointment, having successfully disguised herself as a ficus and slowly inched her way through the lobby over the course of several weeks. "The waiting room is like Studio 54 for the emotionally stunted. Yesterday, a man in a Brooks Brothers suit tried to bribe the receptionist with his childhood stamp collection and a promise to never make accidental eye contact with her again."
At night, I'd lie awake cataloging my failed attempts at human connection. There was the time I'd responded "you too" when the dental hygienist said "open wide," and the afternoon I spent trapped in a revolving door because I couldn't face the possibility of emerging at the same time as another person. These moments collected like dust bunnies under the bed of my consciousness, multiplying when I wasn't looking.
My father, ever the pragmatist, had suggested I try the black market therapy sessions held in the basement of his local grocery store. "They're just like real therapists," he insisted, "but instead of credentials, they have convincing hand gestures and motivational posters they bought at garage sales." This from a man who once spent six weeks talking exclusively through a sock puppet because he'd run out of small talk at a family reunion. Still, I understood his desperation. In a world where basic human interaction had become an Olympic sport, we were all looking for shortcuts to emotional gold.
The situation reached its peak during the Great Communication Workshop Riot of '47. Someone started a rumor about a seminar on "How to End Phone Calls Without Faking Your Own Death," and the resulting stampede looked like Black Friday meets group therapy. I watched as people threw their self-help books at each other while simultaneously apologizing for their poor throwing form and offering to pay for any emotional damages incurred.
Three months into my daily pilgrimage, I'd memorized every crack in the sidewalk outside TherapyCorp, named all the plants in the lobby (visible through the windows I pressed my nose against each morning), and developed an elaborate fantasy about what lay beyond those automatic doors. I imagined rooms where people learned to maintain eye contact without imagining their conversation partner in underwear, and miracle workers who could teach you how to end a chat without pretending your house was on fire.
Last week, Amy called to tell me she'd graduated from her first round of therapy. "I ordered coffee without crying," she whispered triumphantly. "I only said 'I'm sorry' twice when they spelled my name wrong." Her progress sparked something in me – not hope exactly, but its anxious cousin who shows up late to parties and immediately regrets coming.
Perhaps someday I too would make it through those automatic doors, past the security guards with their well-meaning interpretive dance commands. Until then, I'd continue my daily pilgrimage, armed with conversation starter cards I'd bought from a street vendor who promised they were only slightly stolen. After all, in a world where loneliness has become our shared language, maybe the real therapy lies in knowing we're all just trying to navigate our way back to each other – one whispered "I'm sorry" at a time.
For now, though, I'll keep practicing my small talk with houseplants, perfecting my "phone battery dying" sound effects, and waiting outside TherapyCorp's doors. Because sometimes the most human thing we can do is admit we need help learning how to be human again.
