19⎜The Clinic
I stared up at the boxy building, apprehension practically coursing through my veins like it was blood. There wasn’t a single cell in my body that wanted to be here, yet I was. I would’ve much rather spent another two hours enduring one of my math teacher’s random anecdotes that had nothing to do with math, like I had been doing a mere fifteen minutes before. That lady could talk, and I always found it odd how she would spiral into tales about her first three marriages, when she should’ve been addressing numbers. I had never had a math teacher who was so easily sidetracked, so it was definitely a new experience for me.
The structure before me was practically taunting me with the words engraved at the top: Stanford Student Counseling Clinic. People were passing by me, too wrapped up in their own problems to even give me a second glance. I could see the doors clearly—they were right in front of me, yet they felt so far away. I didn’t want to be here.
After briefly weighing out all the plausible pros and cons to either leaving or staying, my feet made the decision for me, remaining glued to the stairs before the clinic. With heavy steps, I somehow found myself facing the door, and opened it, walking in with an immediate sense of dread. I hated this. I really did.
I dragged my legs over to the reception desk, a woman in maybe her mid twenties or so sitting behind a window that didn’t have glass in it. She was dully picking at her nails, uninterested in all that was occurring around her, and didn’t notice me as I walked up. I forced a cough, grasping her attention. Her head shot up and she stared at me with the same tedium that she had possessed moments prior, only now she actually knew that I existed.
“Can I help you?” she said the phrase in a way that probably wasn’t supposed to sound as depressing as it did.
“Uh, I called earlier. I just needed someone to talk to. I was told to show up here around now,” I gulped, scratching the back of my neck in unease.
“Name?” she sighed, glancing down at something.
“Eric. Eric Wilson.”
“Well, Eric, just take a seat in the waiting area, and then someone should be available shortly,” she told me, pointing over to a collection of cushioned seats where an assemblage of Stanford students were seated, all in their own worlds.
“Thanks,” I nodded at her, and then mutely approached the seating area. Unfortunately, there were no seats next to unoccupied ones, so I ended up sitting beside a girl who was biting her nails nervously, and a relatively safe-looking dude. He had headphones on, and his eyes were shut.
I allowed my eyes to wander around the space, taking in everyone. There were about twelve chairs or so, arranged in an upside-down U, so that there were sets of four chairs parallel to each other, and a row of three chairs at the top. All but about two chairs were now filled, and it was a diverse group of people that were here, as should’ve been expected at a mental health clinic.
Anxious minutes passed by, and people got called, the occupiers of the seats rotating every few minutes. I was on edge, for I didn’t even want to be here in the first place. After the meeting with Grant a few days ago, I hadn’t really been doing too well from a mental standpoint. Seeing the pot and having it so close to me was a scary thing. Most addicts if put in the same situation would gladly accept the weed, completely overlooking how far they had come. For a split second it had crossed my mind to try it once again, but then I remembered how blatantly not fun rehab was, and it reminded me of why I had quit in the first place: I wanted to get my life back together.
I had called my mom again about a day after the incident, telling her that I had been distracted and that I just wanted to talk to her. She told me that though she was my mother, this was something she couldn’t (aka didn’t want to) deal with. Thus, I was forced to sign up for a nice session at the Stanford Student Counseling Clinic, which was how I ended where I was now. I didn’t want to be here, but I knew that I had to be.
“Eric Wilson?” a feminine voice called, jolting me from my thoughts. I looked up, and saw a girl with a clipboard in hand, about a few years older than me.
“That’s me,” I said, getting up from my chair so the next person could take it. I walked over to the girl, and she sent me a soft smile. Immediately, my eyes flew to her strange choice of attire—that being a turtleneck and slacks. We were in California. I was wearing shorts and a tank top. It was hot out. Her outfit didn’t exactly seem weather appropriate in, well, the slightest.
“Well, Eric, just follow me please,” she told me with an encouraging glance. I nodded mutely, going behind her as she directed me through a hallway of white tiles and florescent lighting. We came to a door in about the middle of the corridor, and she casually opened it, gesturing for me to enter as well.
The room was pretty simple. Just like the building in which it was located, the basic shape was a cube. There was a desk in the center, separating two chairs, and that was basically it. A small window was parallel to the doorway, and something about the minimalism made me feel comfortable. This place didn’t belong to anyone in particular, and there had probably been hundreds (if not thousands) of other students who came here in this exact room to work out their own issues. I wasn’t alone.
“Eric, if you could just take a seat, that’d be great!” the lady said, pointing over to the chair opposite the desk. I obliged, sitting down cautiously as she did the same. She didn’t exactly look like psychologist, but then again, there wasn’t really a distinct look for every therapist in the world. Something about her, though—it just seemed…new, maybe? As if she was a novice in the field. I decided to ask her about it.
“Are you a certified psychologist?” I questioned.
“I’m a third year doctoral student,” she told me. “So, not quite yet, but hopefully once I’ve given my dissertation, I’ll become one.” I nodded, accepting the answer. “So Eric, what brought you in here today?”
“What’s your name?” I asked, aware that I was deflecting. Over the summer, I did that a lot during therapy sessions, according to Dr. Clarke. I didn’t like all the attention on me, so would try to avert the conversation in any way I could.
“Cynthia,” she told me with a sigh. “Have you been to therapy before?”
“Yeah,” I said lightly, “I was in rehab over the summer and had to go then.”
“Rehab,” she mumbled, reviewing the word in her mind. “Why?”
“Drugs,” I answered. It was her turn to nod.
“Is that why you’re here today?”
“I was at a frat, got offered some weed, and I’m trying to cope with it,” I replied instead of answering “yes” or “no.” She eyed me carefully, silently prompting me to go on. “I’m sober now, and really don’t want to go back to being the person I was.”
“When you were offered the, uh, drugs, were you tempted to accept?” she questioned.
“Yeah, but I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want to regress.”
She made a muffled sound in her throat, and then resumed the talk. “Well, you don’t have to, you know.”
“I know. It just…wasn’t the experience I wanted to have.”
“Uh huh. So, you just wanted to talk to someone?” I nodded. “Well, Eric, even though I’m sure you’ve done this in the past, tell me some of the reasons that you liked pot so much in the first place.”
“It allowed me to not me be,” I replied almost instantly following the words that had exited her mouth. “I could just let go and it was a constant that I had in my life. Like…a release.”
“Hmmm,” she said with turn of her head that she would probably continue to perfect for the next twenty years of her career. “What else in your life is a constant?”
“Well, football was, but then I quit.”
“Why?”
“Pressure. Expectations. Image.”
“What did you replace it with?”
“Honestly?” I asked, sheepishly rubbing my neck in nervousness. She nodded with only a flick of her eyes. “Sleep, school, and the gym.”
“You work out a lot?”
“Have you seem my biceps?” She had. I was wearing a tank top.
“Please just answer the question.”
“Every morning.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah. I like the routine.”
“And it’s a constant?”
“It is.”
“I’m assuming you have a lot of friends?” she supposed incorrectly, shifting her hands in her lap in a fidgeting manner. I averted my eyes from her moving hands back to her face, and just shook my head.
“Not really,” I sighed. “There’s my roommate and my roommate’s girlfriend, but we aren’t really friends. Then there’s my roommate’s girlfriend’s roommate, who I guess I’m friends with.”
“Name?”
“Kay.” She jotted something down on a sticky note.
“Continue.”
“Then there’s Kay’s boyfriend, Houston, who would probably qualify as being my friend,” I paused, thinking it over for a moment. Houston and I were probably just friends by default, but that was how some friendships started out, so I was fine by that. “And then there’s Scott and Ari—Houston and Kay’s best friends. That’s really it.” She scribbled more down on the yellow square in front of her.
“So…four friends?” she assessed skeptically.
“Just some advice, Cynthia,” I began as politely as I could, “when you become a real therapist, I wouldn’t judge your clients. It’s probably not the best thing in the world for business.” She opened her mouth to object, but I continued. “I know I look like the type of guy who probably has an entire entourage following him around, but honestly, I didn’t want that. I like being alone most of the time.”
“Do you like being lonely?” She dropped her judgmental stance.
“No,” I thought it over, “not really.”
“And who in your group of friends would you say you’re closest to?”
“Well, none of them, really. Kay has Houston, and Ari has Scott.”
“Ari and Scott are together?”
“Not officially, but I think they are.”
“Hmmm…” She wrote more down. “So even in your friend group, you’re still alone?”
“Yeah, but I don’t mind.”
“Why?”
“I’m good at being alone.”
“No one should be alone, Eric.” She had attempted to conjure up a wise tone like that of a Tibetan monk or something, though all I heard was the attempt. It wasn’t convincing. She was just a student, merely trying to act like the teacher.
“That doesn’t mean it’s the reality, though,” I retorted back, longing for a session with Dr. Clarke full of sports analogies that I understood and actually liked.
“After you were offered the, um,” she clearly wasn’t entirely confortable using the terminology, “pot, what did you do?”
“I left and called my mom.”
“Do you always call your mom in crises?”
“I trust her, and she’ll always be on my side.”
“Is there anyone else that you’d feel comfortable going to for help?”
“Not really.”
“What about your dad?”
“No,” I said sharply, not even wanting to dwell on the possibility. If I needed help with anything related to drugs, my dad would just hold it against me, bringing football up and telling me that I shouldn’t have quit. He loved me and I knew that, and I also knew that he just wanted what was best for me, so I couldn’t really blame him for not being overly gung-ho about the whole “Eric-Wilson-is-a-drug-addict” thing.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Cynthia went on, her pace good. She wasn’t prolonging anything more than it needed to be, and she was still leaving time for me to think, without being too fast.
“Is that relevant?”
“Eric,” she sighed, “I’m not hitting on you. You’re probably five or six years younger than me. Just answer the question.”
“No,” I said evenly, “I don’t.”
“So you don’t have a girlfriend. Okay. Within your friends, is there anyone you would feel comfortable going to?”
I closed my eyes briefly, mentally reviewing who my alleged friends were and how they would each react to me coming out as a drug addict (once an addict, always an addict). Kay and Houston were completely out of the question. They were too good. Scott had probably gone down the path of pot once or twice in his youth, but I didn’t really feel close enough to tell him. And then there was Ari. Ari Remon…
“Maybe,” I finally responded, the single term drawn out.
“Huh…” she trailed off, her vision fixed to the small window and what lay beyond. “Well, Eric,” I had a hunch that a revelation she deemed brilliant was about to spout from her mouth, “I think what you need is to find something or someone that can be a constant, and maybe take the place of drugs in your life,” I had to hand it to her: it wasn’t that unintelligent of a comment. “Maybe a girlfriend, or a best friend, or just someone you feel good around. Find that constant that’s better than all the pot in the world. Does that make sense?” She questioned herself a bit at the end, being unsure if what she was telling me was complete bullshit or not. Just for the record, it was not.
“Here’s another pointer to becoming a psychologist, Cynthia: if you give good advice, don’t doubt yourself,” I told her, though out of the two of us, she knew more about the psychological sphere than I. “And yeah, it makes sense. Find a constant that’s a replacement for the drugs.”
“Exactly! Like working out and school and sleeping, but maybe find it in a person—someone you can talk to,” she said with a content smile. I nodded, understanding the task. “Now, remember, I’m just a doctoral student, so you can either go take what I suggest or leave it—”
“Cynthia,” I stopped her midsentence, “you’re doing fine, and all I wanted was someone to talk to about all of this, so thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She grinned. Her eyes flickered down to her wrist, widening as she abruptly stood up from the chair. “It appears as though our time is up, Eric,” she laughed uncomfortably. “Here, we have shorter sessions, but if you need to come back any time, I’d be glad to meet with you again.”
I also stood from my chair, coming to about the same height as Cynthia. She was pretty tall. “Thanks, but I probably won’t be back here,” I said.
“Well, it was nice to meet you, and I hope that I could be of at least some form of help,” she returned, sticking her hand out to me. I put my own up to hers, and then we shook, dropping our hands back to their respective places moments later.
“I think you did,” I determined. She didn’t say anything more, but merely lead me out of the small office/room, and back out to the white hallway, where she stayed with me until we reached the waiting area. It looked the same as when I had first entered it—nothing out of the ordinary. College students were still anxiously waiting with their phones, iPads, and laptops at their immediate disposals, needing something—anything to distract from the fact that they were at the clinic.
My eyes roamed over the people, until they locked with a pair of deep brown ones that had this perpetually melancholy quality about them that always intrigued me, yet also dissuaded me from asking anything too personal. Their despondency aside, they were still beautiful. My stomach tightened a bit as I realized what seeing those eyes here, at the clinic, actually meant: they had also seen my eyes here, but more importantly, me. It wasn’t necessarily that I was embarrassed about coming, but the aftershock and the questions that had the possibility to arise from my presence were what worried me. I wasn’t ready to own up to having an addiction here—at Stanford.
“Ari!” Cynthia called from beside me. I couldn’t move. I just stared, allowing so many distant thoughts to collide about in my mind.
The brown-eyed girl shot up from her respective seat, and I looked away for a brief moment. She walked over to where I was still standing with Cynthia, and shot me a hesitant smile. I returned it, just as tentatively. “So, uh,” I began with a gulp, “I still don’t get why people don’t use both your first and last name.” It was a lame way to start an awkward conversation, but it was better than silence—anything was. I was referring back to one of the things we had talked about during that night with the moon, and hopefully she would remember, instead of thinking that the reason I was here was because I happened to be insane.
She sent me a small smirk, and allowed her dark eyes to roll. “Because saying ‘Ari’ sounds so much better than the long and tedious ‘Ari Remon,’ Mr. Eric Wilson,” she told me, though the only thing my ears could pick up on was the rain. It was such an odd thing to compare to someone’s voice, but with the way that she spoke, nothing else seemed to be a fitting affinity. Rain. That was honestly the only thing that I knew that could accurately describe her distinct tone. It was raw, cold, gray, sullen, mysterious, steady, calm, and just Ari.
“If that’s your story, Ari Pomegranate,” I grinned.
“I’m going to text you,” was the last thing that Ari Remon said to me before walking away with Cynthia. No parting greeting or even the casual, “It was nice seeing you!” but I didn’t expect anything different from this particular girl.
I just stood there, immobile, in the Stanford Student Counseling Clinic for a brief moment as I thought about what had just occurred: I had come to the clinic. I had met with Cynthia. I had been told to find a constant. And then I saw Ari. Quite the interesting way to spend an afternoon, and I was more than sure that my evening would be consumed by overanalyzing it as I ate pizza.