moving the moon
I once watched K surf the Pacific Ocean while I burned with fever and ate an almond croissant, brushed its buttery flakes from my skin. There’s a fog that rolls into the beach in Tofino, on Vancouver Island, that feels like fever itself—not burning or hot but total, despite its obvious ephemerality. The zipper on K’s wetsuit was bright orange.
When you surf anywhere, you have to wait for the waves. If there’s nothing to ride, there’s nothing to ride. The moon moves the tides — and what can you do about the moon?
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On a gray and sharp Friday night, my therapist RJ said: “Stress is a loss of control.”
I was sitting across from him, arms crossed, face stony because I knew what was coming for me.
“You have to accept what you cannot control if you want to experience less stress,” RJ said. “You have to process what you cannot do anything about.”
I had come to the session because I wanted to be less. Less exhausted. Less on edge. Less tearful. Less jaw clenched.
“NO,” I said. “I have accepted ENOUGH. I have accepted even the UNACCEPTABLE.”
“Then you can be angry,” RJ said implacably. “But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
The thing about a good therapist that you trust is that they can be infuriating. The good thing about a therapist that you trust is that they let you be infuriated.
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