The Life of Margarita

“You think you’re better than me.”

Right away, “No.”

“You think you’re smarter than me.”

Dr. Lincoln hesitates. “Not necessarily.”

I consider my point proven.

“What exactly is it you’re afraid of, Maggie?”

The answer conceptualizes in my mind before I can put it into words. You know how sometimes you know what someone is going to say before they say it? It’s like that, but with yourself. Neurons firing off the truth, the true reason I’m afraid, and my consciousness recognizing the threat in that truth and refusing to verbalize it, even to myself. All because what I’m afraid of is being what I am right now, which is supremely mediocre, forever. I’m the middle of the bell curve, as expected. Almost but not quite exceptional. A Minimum Viable Person. Unremarkable. Meaningless.

I’m longing for a paradoxical plot twist in my life where, Surprise! I was actually the hero the whole time, the tortoise beating the hare. I need my mediocrity to be the cornerstone of what will eventually become an inspirational story. You’ve heard them before. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Einstein’s teachers thought he’d never amount to anything. I need people to one day be shocked at how under the radar I once flew. I need that.

I don’t tell Dr. Lincoln this though. Doctor Lincoln. Hearing his title, even in my head, burns me every time. His mere name taunts me as if to say, I’m Doctor Lincoln. And you’re just Maggie. As if he’s some Lord or Duke worthy of a title, and I a commoner, ordinary. Nothing noteworthy.

Instead I sneer and look him dead in the eye. “You think I’m afraid of you? Don’t flatter yourself.”

His gaze doesn’t waver but I know I stung him.

“I don’t think you’re afraid of me, Maggie. I’m asking what it is you’re afraid of.”

Dick.

I make an effort to make my disgusted sigh audible and use my eye roll as an excuse to break eye contact. My eyes fixate instead on his desk, stained mahogany, very Ivy League, cluttered with what I recognize to be a $2000 computer I’m sure he uses as a word processor, this morning’s coffee cup emblazoned with the seal of an elite medical school underscored with the Latin Primum non nocere. First do no harm. A couple of medical journals, this month's copy of Psychology Today, and a sandwich, today’s lunch, quaintly wrapped in brown wax paper and sealed with the branded sticker of the overpriced cafe below his office.

“What comes to mind?”

I hold my focus on the wrapped sandwich and imagine Dr. Lincoln sitting at his desk this afternoon, unwrapping it and typing up notes documenting my session in between bites. That’s always made me feel sad, the image of someone eating alone. I’ve never known why. And despite my disgust for Dr. Lincoln, it makes me feel sorry for him.

“Maggie, can you tell me what it is about other people’s achievements that bothers you so much?”

He’s prodding me but I don’t look up, my eyes steady on the brown paper wrapped sandwich. Focused. I wonder what he writes about me in his notes. I imagine he uses complicated medical jargon to describe my hostility towards him. I’ll bet using big words makes him feel proud of himself. My ears are growing hot and I can feel my cheeks getting flushed. The silence is hurting me; I have to say something.

“You patronize me.”

Dr. Lincoln uncrosses and recrosses his legs. His expression doesn’t change. “Why do you think that, Maggie?”

My eyes don’t move. I wonder what kind of sandwich it is. I imagine him ordering it downstairs at the cafe, and for some reason I imagine him having some particularity like not liking tomatoes and having to specify it, No tomatoes, please, and that makes me sad too. I don’t know why.

“I think you’re very bright, Maggie. And I do like you.”

I feel my eyes get wet and I clench my jaw to stop it, trying to channel my sadness into anger. I try to grow angry that he’s pretending to like me, condescending me, telling me I’m special when I know he doesn’t mean it, he’s just following the psychiatrists’ script.

“I wish you could see that in yourself, Maggie.”

Again my mind is conceptualizing only, no words forming but the truth is there. I know he’s right. I know the problem is me, not him, not the other doctors, not anyone else in the rest of the world. But this doesn’t fit my narrative. It has to be somebody’s fault, it has to be his fault, that I feel like this, that I can’t stop feeling like this. So I don’t let my mind form the words and instead fortify my guard.

“I know what you’re doing,” I spit out the words, combative. “You’re placating me. You have to say that. You can’t tell a patient you’re better than her, even if it’s what you think, even if it’s true. Especially if it’s true. You’re just going through the motions with me and you think I’m not smart enough to realize it.”

“What is it you want me to say, Maggie? Do you want me to tell you you’re right, even if you’re not?”

I’m fuming.

“Because I think you know you’re not.”

That’s it. “Oh you always know, don’t you. You know better than me, don’t you.”

Dr. Lincoln does an impressive job holding it together but I can tell he’s resigned, beaten down by me, and that almost makes me feel sorry for him too. I thought he'd put up more of a fight. We sit in silence, a game of chicken of who will talk first. I won't lose. We sit there until he says, “Our time is just about up.”

I’m crying.

“Let’s pick up here next week,” he says. Without looking at him I walk out the door and let it slam behind me.