Everything I’m Afraid Will Happen If I Cry in Front of My Therapist
I won’t be able to pull it together by the end of the appointment. My eyes will be red when I return to work, and my coworkers will start a secret group chat. They take bets on how shitty my life is that week based on the redness in my eyes.
I’ll have just spent $150 to have a breakdown when I could have done that for free, in my apartment, with ice cream.
My therapist will feel sorry for me when actually my life is great. I’m not sad. This is a random physiological response. She will try to get me to explain why I cried. I will feel like there is some correct answer, but I won’t be able to figure it out. I will feel pressure to perform.
My therapist will realize that this is the first time I’ve cried in front of a health professional. She’ll think that what we talked about is a breakthrough even though I also cried during Lego Movie 2. She’ll somehow trace every tear back to my mother, including the ones caused by onion-cutting and watching aging dog stories on YouTube.
I’ll be vulnerable, and vulnerable people are more likely to be murdered.
She will think that she’s cracked me and write about my case in a book. My case study will become required reading in all psychology programs worldwide. My therapist will receive fan mail from aspiring therapists. The session will stop being about me.
Fellow patients will burst into the room, shouting “one of us” and carry me away. We will form a cult of criers and become professional sobbers at funerals around the world.
When I return from the session, the salt from my tears will hospitalize my boyfriend who is allergic to displays of emotion and also salt.
Once I start, I won’t be able to stop crying. I’ll cry out all the water in my body, turning into a living raisin. Scientists will study me as the world’s first human-to-fruit transformation.
My gaping hole of despair creates a literal black hole in the office that sucks in my therapist and spits out random alternate-dimension therapists for the remainder of my session. Each therapist bills me for their time so an hour-long session results in 60 independent bills none of which insurance will cover.
I might learn something so real about myself that I transcend this plane of existence. I’ll become a being of pure self-awareness and start radiating pure wisdom. Everyone I look at instantly understands the meaning of life, quits their job, and moves to the mountains to contemplate existence. The global economy collapses. I’m forced to wear horse blinders to contain my enlightened gaze and save society.
And worse, after all that, I’ll probably lose my sense of humor.