Dancing to his tunes

04| Session

Looking up at the time with teary eyes, she realized she had a virtual meeting with her psychiatrist Dr Yazdani in half an hour and this time she truly looked forward to the session.  Dr Yazdani was undoubtedly an amazing psychiatrist and like many times, this time too she had itched to look him up on the Telepsychiatry website and check out his profile just to know what he looked like and who he was however, like always she refrained from doing so. Because at the same time, as weird as it was, she didn't want to know who she was talking to and divulging all her secrets out too, she didn't want a face to that psychiatrist of hers and she didn't want him to know who she was either for she found talking to her psychiatrist anonymously more comfortable. Moreover, she was glad he understood and took her up as a patient despite her condition of remaining completely anonymous. She joined the session with her video switched off and heard the cheerful voice of Dr Yazdani.

"Hey Anna! How has it been going so far? Dr. Yazdani, her psychiatrist for the past year, greeted. 

"Hello! It's going a bit rough and well the medicines you prescribed seem not to work lately doctor. I just can't help but fall in the pit of depression and my sleep cycle is also disturbed to an extent that there are days when I can't get a wink of sleep. My emotions are all over the place and my focus is dwindling. At times I wish to burst out open at the slightest of the problems while other times I am raging over if things don't go my way."

"Can you tell me for how long you have been specifically noticing this shift in your mood and if in this period your diet and exercise has been affected?"

"I've been feeling like this for almost a month but since a couple of weeks they've gotten hard to manage. There have been days when my meals and my trip to the gym have been skipped."

"Have you tried doing something to curb it? Maybe take more pills or go out with friends to have a fun time?"

"No I didn't take more pills than were prescribed though, I admit to wanting to do it and I don't drink alcohol or do drugs so it isn't the booze interacting with my medicines and decreasing its efficacy."

"Alright. Did some specific event happen a couple of weeks ago which triggered this behavior?"

"Yeah, a ghost from the past resurfaced," she said after a long pause.

"Wish to talk about it? If not, perfectly understandable. We'll discuss something else."

"My ex-husband happened. I don't know what he is upto now but he clearly is meddling in my affairs and is becoming hard to avoid. He would brazenly try to strike conversations with me, humiliate me at any given opportunity and rub in my face how much of a failure I am. It's crazy how after everything he has done to me, the sadist in him isn't satisfied. He just doesn't stop and I don't understand what he wants now. He has taken everything from me, my confidence, my dignity, my assets, my reputation, what more can he possibly want now? The worst thing is that he has it all while I have nothing left. His life is perfect while mine is in shambles. He went unscathed while I can't even trust my shadow let alone someone else. Tell me doc, what should I do to stop feeling miserable and a total failure every time he is in the same room as me? How do I avoid him and his scorns? His brazeness irks me, I want to hurt him in every way possible. I wish for him to get a taste of his own medicine. I left his life three years ago, didn't even take revenge yet, again he popped up in my life to ruin the little bit of sanity left in me. What do I do to numb it all? She had haplessly sobbed by the end of the sentence and had hated herself for crying and pleading in front of another human. This wasn't her but she had no other choice but to vent it out and it was better her faceless psychiatrist than her family for she had burdened her family with miseries and disappointments of a lifetime. Apart from her family, Dr Yazdani was the only one who knew what Aaron had done to her 3 years ago and as much as she hated to admit, she had started trusting that shrink. 

"Anna there is nothing wrong with you feeling this way, all your emotions are justified and I know you'll probably hate me for saying this but there is no point resisting these emotions and trying to suppress them. Whatever, happened to you was not your fault, it didn't happen to you because you were stupid or naive or gullilble. Everyone trusts their spouses, we humans have no other option but to trust our family, so if our family betrays us how is it our fault? He was stupid to throw away your trust for everything in life can be retrieved but never trust. And you may feel like it doesn't matter to him but what I reckon from your narrative is that he is someone who thrives on attention and miseries. You aren't a failure even if he makes you feel this way. Failures and successes are nothing but perceptions and you get to define them however, you like. Being bad at something only means you have so much more room for improvement, your canvas is blank and you get to fill it with all the colors you like unlike those whose canvas is crowded and saturation point nearer. My mother once told me that its better to have a smart enemy than a dumb friend for that enemy will not only teach me to be one step ahead and keep me on my toes but will also make me realize that humans aren't just black or white but an entire spectrum of colors whose various shades reflect their stories. Since you can't avoid your ex-husband, I'd suggest you think of him as a learning tool and try to learn and adopt his business ways because even if he is an abominable human being, he probably is a good businessman."

"The only think he'll teach me is to become a traitor, a hypocrite and a manupilative condescending foul player which I don't want to become."

"And I truly admire you for trying hard not to become all those aforementioned adjectives. You ran away from his life three years ago not because you were a coward but because you didn't wish to be swayed away by your feelings of vengeance. Very few people can do it Anna, not everyone is as mature and brave enough like you to back out. Many don't realize that revenge is what makes an oppressed an oppressor and as much as they try to justify their actions, even they know it in their heart that they have invariably become the people they've hated and vouched to never be like. What I advised you is very diificult to follow through and if you can't do it, its okay. Please dont beat yourself up for it."

"Hmm"

"I'm prescribing a multivitamin to you and I'd want you to hit the gym regularly. As of now, I'm not increasing your dose, but your next appointment is of next week however, if during this week you feel like you can't handle your emotions or you feel aggressive, call me between 4-5 pm PST and I'll either increase your dose or change the medicine. Do you wish to ask anything?"

"No thanks doc."

"I think its all for this session. Never underestimate your strength Anna. See you next week. Take care. "

"You too, bye."

The session with Dr Yazdani had left her feeling frustrated. However, many times he repeated that she wasn't to blame for her gullibility or that she was admirable she would never believe it to be true. She was plain stupid, had she been smarter she would have been able to see through his lies and had prevented from making a fool of herself. Moreover, she was a coward just like Aaron said, she didn't fight tooth and nail for her company, didn't take revenge from him instead ran away and hid in Pakistan, far away from him so that everyday she wasn't reminded of her foolishness, of her incompetence and her ruination. Maybe in his world, coward victims like her were admirable but in the corporate world wolves like Aaron, were lauded. He didn't understand that in her world and esp. Aaron's life trust, truthfulness and all those moral values had no place. He didn't care a bit about trust, had he cared he wouldn't have broken hers so ruthlessly or at least would have been remorseful. She was angry that he didn't even increase her dose, or prescribe another medicine. She wondered how despite so many years of failures she isn't immune to them, and often have multiple breakdowns. The regrets, the anger and the hopelessness gave her a pounding headache. so she took a painkiller and decided to take a nap to combat the exhaustion of the day.