I sit down and open my client notes. I select Leah’s file and enter ‘no show’ under today’s date. I scroll back up through my own notes from the last few weeks to make sure I haven’t overlooked anything of importance, but there’s nothing. I still can’t quite believe she didn’t come today. I feel a pang of sadness at the thought of how unfinished our course of therapy feels. I really believed I could help Leah, and that our bond was strong and transformational, similar to my own bond with Ingvild, when I first came to therapy and found that it had the power to change lives.

Leah is one of those clients I always look forward to seeing, and it’s because she’s eager to grow, she really wants to learn about herself. She believes in trying to become whole. Like you, she’ll say. It seems to me like she believed in this possible wholeness all along, that she trusts in therapy, unlike some clients, who resist every step of the way. They question everything, applying their own limited understanding of amateur psychology based on having read one self-help book to everything I say. Oh, so you are referring to reparenting, they might randomly ask. Or, yeah, this is definitely an ego response to underlying rejection issues. Frankly, it’s annoying.

Leah’s different. She listens as much as she speaks. She feels the spaces between us and seems to understand the unconditional trust I’ve tried to build there.

I shut the computer down and make sure everything in the office is in its right place. I feel a need to get out of here so strong it’s physical, so I blow out the candle on the windowsill, put my winter jacket on, then shut the door behind me.

12

Kristina