What We Left Behind

My mind keeps returning to an image of myself sitting in my chair at the office—my therapist chair—in March 2023. Only the dim winter sun and the murmur of passing cars filtered in through the window on my left. Inside, the air purifier hummed. The couch across from me had been left empty when my patient stood to leave a few minutes before. I had closed the door behind her, then moved to my desk to retrieve my phone. Anticipating an unscheduled hour, I'd returned to my chair and lit up the screen, searching without thinking.

There's something faintly shameful and off-kilter about this memory, though it's also banal. Recalling it, I feel the emptiness of the room, the quiet after the vivacity of my previous patient. A moment before, we had been intent on her concerns about the future: her conflicting desires, her sense of powerlessness in the face of larger economic and political forces, her self-doubt, her hopes. The pandemic had upended her life in ways that she'd mostly welcomed, even as the virus scared her. She'd begun to question the premises of her life more deeply than ever before and to feel profound uncertainty about her next phase. Our hour together had been rich and full, if somewhat difficult. And then she was gone.

Years ago, I would have turned to my notebook to scribble a few phrases from the session. But in this memory, I turned to the phone instead, and the separation from her was handled through diversion instead of reflection. It had become a habit. On that afternoon, though, sitting in my chair, I became aware of a feeling of dissonance as I scrolled, and I pulled my attention away from the screen, back into myself. I experienced a sense of loneliness and the vague wish for human contact that had been pushing my search.

That's where the shame came in: shame about my need for contact and the way I was seeking it, shame that I had abandoned my patient and my work so quickly and impulsively. Judgments were surfacing about what I'm