Happy New Year

She looked back at herself in the mirror and at the perfect life the person staring back from it was living. She had the prefect career, loving husband, the cutest daughter in the world and a great life to go with them. She really had no reason to complain, but then she never did anyways. She always used to say that there was no point, and if there was then complaints would be the cure to all evils. She had a great year professionally as a fledgling psychiatrist and she couldn’t wait to get done with her last patient on the last day of the year. She looked at her appointments and the name that stared up from it seemed kind of unfamiliar. New patients were always difficult and one should always wait till the third meeting before getting down to the resolving the issues she recalled. As soon as the clock struck 3 there was a knock on the door as her last patient entered through the door.

Happy New Year, I hope I am not late.
You are early for the former and late for the latter
Well I am sorry I walked in without an appointment
You don’t have an appointment, I am sorry I am supposed to see someone at this time. Maybe you can call up and set up something for the next week.
You mind if I just wait around for a while.
I don’t see the point because I won’t be taking any more patients today.
Consider it a favor, and besides I am sure you can give me a session in case your last patient doesn’t show up.
Well only if you insist.

He was pretty insistent alright. The patient didn’t show up and she had her first ever session with him. He was a very successful businessman who had lost his direction since he had lost his fiancée and girlfriend for 2 years, about 2 months back. She was also to discover that he didn’t have any reason in the whole wide world why he needed to be visiting a psychiatrist. All he had a deep rooted fear of loneliness and didn’t want to be alone on a day like the New Year’s Eve. So he had just set out from his home and walked around over the streets till he ended up on her doorstep. Of course he didn’t tell her this himself, he was too proud for that. She had realized that right away as he stumbled his way through one lie after another just delaying the session hoping to procrastinate the inevitable fearful of the loneliness that had become his only friend and his worst enemy. However she could see him standing over some invisible ledge and that if she let him know that she was on to his lies it probably would have been the last straw. Whether it was out of pity, sympathy or empathy she didn’t know but she let him stay on that day as they chatted for over an hour not as a patient and doctor but just friends.

She didn’t see him again and this odd meeting resigned itself to some recess of her mind. She went on with her life meeting more people helping them with their problems and mending more lives. She had always considered it as what she was born to do and being a natural listener helped. She had never been short on empathy and that was a natural ally as she treated her patients. But all the sorrow slowly and slowly starting seeping into her life sub consciously as all the doctor patients talks made their way to her home. She began leading an affected life. There were days at a stretch when she felt low or inexplicable reasons an undesirable off-shoot of her empathetic nature probably. Her personal life went through mini-crises as her husband tried to keep persuading her into leaving her job. He felt it was taking a huge toll on her, eating out a piece of her after every patient she met and as she continued to live on harbored emotions. However she couldn’t even imagine such a world.

It was exactly a year later but right on New Year’s Eve he was back. She let him through without an appointment this time; she wasn’t having as many people coming in nowadays anyways. She told him she looked in much better shape and he told her he wished he could say about her. She caught up with his life, they laughed, she almost cried. She told him she had always known that she had known why he had come in and he said he knew she had. Time flew as they chatted up like two old friends and before she knew it was time for him to go. Almost thankfully he uttered no thank you and went off just as he had come in the first time.

Her life slowly began to fall to pieces. She tried to distance her professional life from her personal one taking in lesser patients but she couldn’t stop doing in altogether. There lay a gap in what she wanted to do and what she had to do to and her life slowly and slowly fell right through it. She went through a phase of depression where when she was actually asked to stop practicing altogether. She somehow continued with her life and ear passed by. She did surprise herself when she found there was a part of her that was waiting for him on New Year’s Eve. However he didn’t show up as was the routine for the past two years and the next year after that. Meanwhile gradually there was a space building up in her married life which was finally split wide apart by an ugly divorce. She moved out to her parent’s place for a while continuing her practice from there. However soon she felt even more of a failure matching up to life’s lofty standards and she moved back to her old house.

She started practicing again and slowly and slowly her patients began to roll in. But with that rolled back the grief and slowly permeated her life again. She never had many friends to speak of and after her parent’s death in a car accident she got very lonely. She started drinking and court even limited her visits with her daughter to a bare minimum on the account of her manic depression and drinking problems. One day she sat back in her room and realized that she didn’t find life worth living anymore. Loneliness had become her only friend and her worst enemy. She didn’t have a cause worth dying for but then she didn’t have one worth living for either. She sat back in her favorite chair bottle of pills in hand wondering if there was a lonelier person on the place of this earth. Just as she was about to pop the pills into her mouth she was kinda startled by a knock on the door.

Happy New Year, I hope I am not late.
You are early for the former and late for the latter

And they chatted up like old friends again. The equations might have changed but there weren’t supposed to be any in friendship were there?