There is a simplicity of Americans which could work for or against itself depending on the situation.
With the naivety and lightness of a child, they believed that there is a solution for every problem and everything could be solved and improved for the better and life is as simple as that.
When the therapist, there was a mild shock when I looked at her short, nondescript person for the online photo gave no clue of her height and her air: there was something of a slow drabness about her which, in a way, could be an advantage because it disarmed and no one could be afraid of her. I at once trusted her: she was the wise old sister who no one paid any particular attention to and whose best quality was she listened to your troubles. I settled down to tell her all my thoughts whatsoever without any reserve.
And when the she asked if I had ever had suicidal thoughts, I did not know it was just a format.
I laughed and a line from Camus popped up in my head: “All healthy men have thought of their own suicide.” And I said that I was not eight, of course I have had fleeting thoughts of this kind but I never seriously entertained it. I said that sometimes you wonder what’s the meaning of life and all that and what’s so good about it that we hold fast on to it. Then I, as I imagined most people, shun the thought of death instinctively like it’s morbid, a dicease. Because, I philosophised, we instinctively cling to life and death scares us.
She nodded and wrote down something in her notebook. And I wondered what she wrote. I felt she was making judgements and analyses of me through my words which told something important about me that I could not see myself. I noticed that her boots were dirty and her hair unkempt and her office shabby. I tried to pick up some clues from her eyes and face which were hiding behind her huge glasses, some clues that would tell me something about her and her life, she probably was forty-five? Does she have a husband or children? Since she is a therapist herself, she must know how to be mentally well and happy and all that? How many people’s stories has she listened to? And how many has she messed up? Because I began to detect a nervousness, a hint of excess caustion which could be the aftereffect of some catastrophe. It might, after all, be part of the package of being a therapist. I vaguely concluded.
“Do you have depression?” She asked and again I tried to see her eyes behind her glasses but could not. Though her voice was kind and calm and non judgemental enough.
Oh. I said. Of course I’m not alway happy. I get depressed. Yes. But I wouldn’t say it’s the medical term of depression. I sometimes get depressed and I just couldn’t face the world or face other people. I sleep a lot and I watch lots of movies during those times. And I lose interest in other things. But I would snap out of it in two or three days, at most a week. Then I would be back on the track again and be very active physically and mentally like I generally do.
She wrote down some more words in her notebook. For some reason, this act irritated me a little.
“How long would you say you sleep during this period?” She asked.
“Oh. eight hours, or ten. I don’t know, or more. I mean I simply do not want to get out of bed. You know sometimes you have the feeling that there is no hope in achieving the things you really want to achieve. It’s a fleeting feeling. Still, it’s a feeling.”
“Would you say you could sleep ten to twelve hours during this period?” She asked.
“Sure.”
“How often does it occur?” She asked.
I could not say. Sometimes months, or maybe a year could go by without it happening. But sometimes it happens once every few months. I confessed.
“I have to make a report, an analysis, to the insurance company.” She explained.
I nodded and thought no more of it.
A week or two later. I was to be asked by her questions that made my mad which, in a way, played into her hand.
“Have you had suicidal thought in the last twenty-four hours?” She asked.
“I’m referring you to some therapist who has experience with depression.” She said.
I was, of course, furious and told her to stand off and I was made more mad by her absolute calm tone: she seemed to be convinced that I was mental and suicidal and there was a real possibility of me committing suicide in the next twenty-four hours and I had the chilly feeling of a confirmed patient in an asylum who was trying to persuade the doctor she was not crazy and screamed: “I’m not mad. I’m sane.”
“If you were a hammer, everything is a nail.” I was told when I related my experience.
And I just thought, if Chinese, with the stubbornness of a child, have always been determined to avoid the mentioning of “death” at all cost, Americans are as scared, and the word “suicide” could disturb and upset and set, the sometimes delightfully and occasionally unbelievably simple Americans, into such a panic that it’s almost like a taboo here too.
So next time if I were asked, I know just the right answer for that: “No no no no no. Absolutely not. I’m as happy as oh any laughing girl you see on a commercial.”
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