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Precariously she perched at the edge of my couch. She plaintively glanced at me and then averted her gaze, determinedly avoiding further eye contact. I was transformed into a voyeuristic participant (an oxymoron, but an apt description of the experience of being kept outside and pulled inside, simultaneously holding both perspectives in mind—the analyst's paradoxical position). We were dancing at the edges of a complex story of intrigue and subterfuge. I had entered into a delicate balance between her desperate wish to revitalize an otherwise disintegrating life and her dread of hopeless submission to further devitalization. The risks were sharply etched into the pattern that emerged between us. We were entangled in the choreography of an old lifeless dance. She: vigilantly attentive to any misstep in this carefully practiced routine that might begin her agonizing disassembly. I: alert for small spaces in which vitalizing steps might emerge without destabilizing us.
At the end of the session, she bolted out the door. I realized that my breathing had become shallow and tempered. I had been gripped by the recognition
that any intense movement could send shock waves through the room, undoing her and us … ending our dance at the beginning. I felt that had been her experience in so many relationships before me. Now an inextricable player, I wrote my version of her patchwork story:
I live my life in pieces—
ragged,
jagged,
frayed,
splayed,
quilted.
Piecemeal I venture into the world
Running for cover or for a cover—