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even have to go to her office: hey, I’m doing great—what’s the point? I think up all sorts of reasons why I shouldn’t drive, and once I’m in the car I convince myself that Frau Drescher is a bad therapist—that she overestimates the value of her couch and psychoanalysis. What the hell is analysis anyway? I do it, but I still have no idea what it’s about. Will I get some kind of certificate at the end? Like the report you get after a blood test? A psychological report? That would be useful—I could give it to my husband as a sort of instruction manual, and later my daughter could read it, too. It would make all of our lives easier. I’ll ask Frau Drescher. She thinks that my assessments and criticisms of her as I drive to her office are also part of the therapy. Great, that really puts me at ease. I feel better already.
I try to follow every rule of the road—I have to avoid an accident at any cost. Not necessarily because I don’t want to die—in fact sometimes I feel like an old woman who thinks it would be nice to have peace and quiet, the ultimate peace and quiet—but because I have a child. That gives me added worth. I can’t do that to my daughter. Cannot get killed or injured. Which is why I’m such a careful driver. I let everyone in, but especially women. It’s a chance to contradict any accusations of cattiness, even in traffic. I drive very defensively and leave plenty of space between me and the car in front of me. I avoid all mistakes and keep all the things I learned in driving school at age eighteen in the front of my mind—all in order to survive and to avoid killing anyone else. Because of my past, even just driving across town to my therapy session is a life-and-death scenario.
I get out of the car in the parking lot. I take all my valuables with me because, oddly enough, my therapist has her office in a bad part of town. And her office is on the eleventh floor. Which for me is a catastrophe. I’ve told her a million times that I don’t like it. She needs to get a new ground-floor office somewhere else. That would be much nicer. She laughs at me and says, “You’ll have to get over it, Frau Kiehl, because the practice is staying put.”
And then she wants to sit peacefully and discuss my fear of heights and of elevators, my fear of fire and smoke. I’m also afraid that such a tall building might collapse while I’m in it. When I walk into the high-rise I talk to myself. “I can’t believe I have to get on this elevator because of Frau Drescher. I just can’t believe it.” I usually smell smoke or gas in the lobby. That’s a funny old habit of mine—it’s because my mother found her own mother in front of the oven with the gas on. She had taken sleeping tablets and also drugged her young son, whom she wanted to take with her. But not my mother, who was also just a kid at the time. Who knows why? That was the big drama in our family—at least until the car accident overwhelmed everything else. So I sniff my way around the lobby like an animal, searching for the source of the dangerous odor. For most other people, hearing is the sense that most frequently sets off their alarm bells. In my case, it’s my sense of smell. Because I just know that my family will be snuffed out by fire, smoke, or gas. That’s probably also the reason I avoid smokers like the plague. They trigger a flight instinct in me. Whenever I smell a lit cigarette I think something is on fire and cringe with fear. Just for a second, of course, but it’s still enough to make my heart jump and cause a jolt of adrenaline. Very unpleasant.
When I step into the elevator to go up to my therapist’s office, it really does smell like smoke. Some nicotine-addicted asshole must have lit up on the way down for a cigarette break. Most smokers just can’t wait. I stand there and think something’s on fire. And before I realize it’s just the remains of cigarette smoke I get so scared that I feel like I’ve aged several years. That’s why I hate all smokers—they spread the smell of death. It clings to their hair and their clothes and hangs in the air wherever they go.
When I look at the digital number panel in the elevator, I can see what floor it’s come down from. It sends another shiver of fear down my spine. The building is that high? The eleventh floor is not even the top floor. Often the elevator has come from much higher up than that. And I wonder, Do I really want to do this to myself? All the things that can happen on the way up. It could get stuck and catch on fire, and I’d be trapped, burning up in this tin can. The floor would get too hot to stand on, so I’d sit down; but the skin and flesh of my ass would burn, so I’d stand up again and that’s when I’d see the smoke snaking into the elevator carriage. I scream for as long as I can still get air, the smoke stings my throat, burns my vocal chords. I’m coughing and my voice gets thinner. I push the emergency button over and over. Nothing happens. In a mortal panic, I climb onto the top of the elevator carriage to try to get some air—but everything is shrouded in dark smoke. I’m in a smokehouse, unable to escape. Nobody is going to save me, and I can’t even scream any longer. I cry, and then lay myself down to die atop the glowing elevator. I think of my daughter and don’t want to die. Then I black out.
That’s the way it plays out in my head every time I have to ride up those eleven floors to see my fucking therapist, who insists on having her practice all the way up there. And I stare the whole time at the sign in the elevator that represents all my fears: in case of fire, do not use elevator. I can definitely agree to that. But what happens if a fire breaks out when I’m already using the elevator? Didn’t anybody think of that? Of course not. When I reach the eleventh floor and, miracle of miracles, the doors open normally, I march out like a survivor. A passerby might think from my demeanor that I’m relaxed and happy. But then comes the next problem. Someone on her floor smokes in his apartment. We’re eleven floors above the earth and he’s playing with our lives! The building seems to sway. I tell my therapist all the time that the foundations aren’t solid. You can tell when it’s windy. When it’s windy I can feel the way we’re all swaying inside the building.
Once in a while I encounter someone in the hallway on the eleventh floor. When that happens I’m immediately diverted from the frightening images swirling in my head. Because I suddenly think, So that’s what my therapist’s patients look like? Though of course there’s no guarantee that the person has come from her office. I get upset that she even has other patients. I read in a biography of Brian Wilson that he had his therapist live with him. What a good idea! That would be my dream—to have Frau Drescher at home, all to myself!
I’m totally convinced that I simply couldn’t live without her. But I want to be her only patient. I know only monotheism—from my mother, of course. She never taught me anything else. It’s always mother’s fault. I’m sure someday my child will think I’m to blame for everything, too. That’s just the way it works.
I try to glean as much information as possible in the few seconds during which I can actually see my therapist. She shrouds herself in a mysterious cloud of noninformation. She says I should know as little as possible about her. All I know about her is what I can see. And what little she divulges. Which is next to fucking nothing. Particularly in comparison to what I divulge about myself. It’s not fair. But I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to be with therapy. I’m not meant to understand—I don’t have a degree in it, after all.
My soon-to-be-former best friend also briefly went to a therapist—though naturally she didn’t do it very intensively or for very long because otherwise she would actually have had to do some soul-searching. But she went to a therapist that every one of her friends—except me—also went to. What a sick idea. My therapist thinks so, too. You can’t talk openly in a situation like that. What if you had a problem with one of your friends? The whole idea behind therapy is that the therapist doesn’t know the people you are talking about. That way the therapist can’t have an opinion about them independent of yours—her information is limited to what the patient says. If you’re insanely jealous about all your therapist’s other patients, just imagine what it would be like if you constantly ran into your friends coming out of her office. “Oh, hi, I was just talking to your therapist about your abortion! Oh, sorry, you hadn’t told her yet? That explains a lot!”
Aha, I think to myself in the hallway, looking at a person who must be another patient, she takes on boring-looking patients, too, eh? She does it with any old person! Hopefully that person’s psychological issues are more interesting than his clothes! The patient doesn’t make eye contact with me. How uncool. Hey, we’re all fucked in the head, don’t worry about it. But you’ve got to be able to meet my gaze when I say a friendly hello.
Perhaps