A Butterfly That Lives One Day. Vignette From Practice

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The case is described with the permission of the client. The name and some details have been changed.

- I don’t know why I came to you. My friend recommended, she runs to you from Ventspils. It's a long way to chat. So I arrived. Maybe because there is nothing to do … I guess what you will tell me.

- And what?

- Well, I have a midlife crisis and all that … Maybe this is so. Where do I begin?

- Why would you like to?

- I dont know. Ask me…

- What do you want me to ask you?

- Well, you have some standard questions …

To be honest, I have some, not quite standard, but quite ordinary ones, which I ask clients at the beginning of the first meeting. However, in this situation, I understood that I would have time to ask them, but not now, not as a formality that would pleasantly distract from something more important.

- You came to me from another city, spent two and a half hours of your time, and will spend the same amount on the way back, plus an hour of time here and payment so that I could ask you some standard questions?

- No. I do not want. I don't know what I want at all. From you, from this consultation …

- Is this situation somewhat similar to your life?

Alla (let's call her that here) nods. Then he starts talking. And already almost without pauses, without expecting questions and practically without looking at me. She talks about how she was married twice (“she left both times”), that for the last three years she has been living with a man, but officially does not want to be his wife (“You know, apparently, it’s a bad omen for me”), which works remotely and in a flexible schedule (“I don’t want to be tied”), which does not maintain contact with parents living in another country …

“Yes, and I have cancer,” she says almost at the door, “But that's okay. I have reconciled with him and live."

At the next meeting, I return to the phrase thrown at the door.

- Last time, in passing, "at the door", you said that you are sick with cancer …

- I live with cancer. I have been under observation for six years. At first, when I found out, I thought, well, that's it. It was not scary. Or I didn’t feel fear, didn’t let it take over me. Only it was terribly insulting why it was so early. And now I realized that not so soon. My cancer generally helps me - it reminds me all the time - live in the moment, live "here and now." Although I am not much different from you - you do not know when you will die either. Maybe earlier than me.

- May be.

- Yes, and it was after I found out my diagnosis that I began to live for real. I got divorced then for the first time. She took up tango. Whirlwind romances began - no looking back, no doubts, everything is like the last time. I married my second husband two months after we met - and what to lose. True, we divorced quickly. Yes, and I changed jobs. Now I take various orders that I can fulfill in a short time. I work over the Internet. I've reviewed a lot. I used to want to buy an apartment, but now I live perfectly in a rented apartment. Why burden yourself?

- I hear that in your life there are so many temporary, even short-term …

- The truth is that there is nothing permanent in life.

For several sessions, Alla shared her attitude to life, her philosophy of “living in one day,” to which she came with her illness and which she considered the only true one. But the feeling of meaninglessness, not understanding what she really wanted, became more and more obvious.

- I understand that being able to live "here and now" is right, I live this way, but all these joys of one day, a week - they make no sense. They cease to be joys.

- You chose philosophy when you thought that you would not live for long, the philosophy of one day, but fate has given you six years and may be giving you many more years.

Alla was silent. Then she said quietly: "I'm tired of being a one-day butterfly."

Subsequent meetings we talked about Alla's life in perspective. Accustomed to looking at her life in "cross-sections", Alla shared how strange such a forgotten "longitudinal" look is to her. “How difficult it is to be in every moment at the same time, but also to see the integrity. It looks like a road on which you go to something, and not just like that, but without forgetting to consider the details of the landscape."

Alla began to share her dreams, for example, a strong desire to have children, which, due to the fact that she "forbade" herself to plan and think about the future, she ousted. "But I could have adopted a child for some years already … Although, who knows if they will allow me with my diagnosis" (Alla could not have her own children).

“And you know, it’s probably time for me to start looking for my apartment, or maybe I’ll go completely crazy and agree to get married a third time,” she smiled at parting.

We said goodbye to Alla. And eight months later, I received a warm email from her from Barcelona. Among other things, she wrote: “… my third potential husband, by the time of my consent, changed his mind. Here it is, the tragedy of untimeliness)) But that's nothing. After all, otherwise I would not have ended up in my beloved Spain - I fell in love again. And last week I signed an agreement on the purchase of a small apartment here, near the sea - after all, if you choose something longer, then with good landscapes for "here and now".