by Lila Zimmerman, MFT

PROOF OF LIFE

I’ve been working with Simon for nine months. He reminds me of this in today’s session, expressing both how fast it’s gone and how long it’s been. He’s often affronted by time going by, proof of life. Of course, nine months is a vital period of time to punctuate but neither of us point out the obvious. Simon is the kind of patient who would appear in a seminal analytic text, his language dripping with metaphor. I always think, ‘No one really talks like that,’ but Simon does. It’s all living and dying and vomit with him. He identifies as being dead but is invested in the painful project of coming alive.

Like Ferenczi’s (1929) “unwelcome child,” Simon struggles to stake a claim in his own life. He was allowed to be born but not taught to be alive. His parents couldn’t raise him, preoccupied as they were with their own deadness. Our nine month treatment has been gestational, morning sickness and all. Simon often complains of stomach pain and is tortured by the possibility that he might be sick on my carpet. He holds his stomach and folds over his knees, “It would make such a mess.” It’s not lost on him that to be alive is to make a mess. He holds up his hand to me as if to say, “I know, I know, you don’t have to say it.”

Something about the way he performs his own therapy casts me in a role I feel proud of. He anticipates my expert interpretations and hands them to me like cherry pits. It’s easy to be his good mother—he’s teaching me how so that when he’s born, any day now, I’ll have all the information I need. Sometimes I think he’s looking for a redo, but can’t leave it up to chance.

On the way to a dance performance I meet a friend for dinner. At a tiny Nepali restaurant across from the theater, we’re served sizzling bowls of lamb vindaloo. We blow and slurp and raise our eyebrows at each other to say, “hot hot hot!” A trail of glossy broth runs down my friend’s chin and she smiles, wiping it away with the back of her hand, smudging it further. So messy. 

The dance is anarchic. The dancers appear as if nude, the lighting lending them a ghostly dimension. The jazz band is raucous and swinging and the dancers are all hips and dips, energetic, uniform, libidinal.

One of the dancers stands out. He is wild and alive, clawing his way to the front, his hands grasping upwards, casting long shadows. His shoulders press back, his hips forward. He is writhing. I cannot keep my eyes off him and realize as they start to pool with tears I’m watching him as Simon. Simon from the couch with the aching belly. I watch him as he leaps across the stage with the rest of them, expertly executing each step. It is beautiful to watch him dance.