In a truly bizarre coincidence, all the therapists you’ve ever had just happened to be at the same hotel bar during a psychologists’ convention. None of them is quite sure how the topic of your mental well-being came up, but they all agreed on one thing: you’re an extremely weird person. They’re well aware that discussing you was very likely a HIPAA violation, but once they realized they’d all had you as a patient at different times in your life, they couldn’t help it. You’re just that strange. Like, deeply odd.
“You know, I really thought they’d grow out of it,” the therapist your parents sent you to in grade school after that thing that happened in fourth grade with the other kids said, “but no, they’re just as weird as an adult as they were as a child. If not weirder.”
“I’m surprised they’re still dressing the way they used to,” the therapist you saw in high school in their basement office who you had those dreams about where you were on a date with them but then they turned into your mother but also your first-grade teacher. “I mean, who wears that? It’s just not a normal thing to do.”
For a moment during the conversation, a hush came over their area of the bar. Your therapist from your early 20s had just asked your current one if you’re still doing that thing with your nose when you get upset.
“Totally,” your current therapist responded, and they all reacted with a outcry of chagrin.
“So weird!” the therapist you had three video sessions with early in the pandemic and then dropped exclaimed.
For most of the evening, your various therapists caught each other up on your work prospects, your dating habits, and your odd choices in hairstyles. They took great delight in comparing notes on the way you’ve changed the story you tell about yourself in early sessions and all the things you’ve left out over the years.
“I can’t believe you haven’t heard the story about their father and the cat urine!” your high school therapist shouted gleefully at your current therapist. “That’s a classic!” Your young adult therapists nodded in agreement.
“It’s funny,” the therapist you had in your early 20s and with whom you shared aspirations of actually marrying the person you were in a doomed relationship with at the time said, “a lot of people say they feel like everyone except them was given an instruction manual to life, and I always tell them they’re doing just fine. But with this person, it really seems like they just don’t get it!”
“Most of the time, I can come up with a diagnosis when there’s something wrong,” your current therapist said, “but with them, I can’t think of anything. They’re just weird!”
All of your other therapists nodded in agreement. Soon after, they discovered that, in another extremely unlikely coincidence, the therapists of all the people you’ve ever dated just so happened to be at the other end of the bar. And boy did they have a lot to say.
