THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT

The counsellor was looking at him, like she was waiting for something.  Just sitting there, eyeballing him. He knew she had been talking, mainly to Janet, but now she was looking at him as if he was meant to come up with something. A moment ago his mind had been a movie, a process of pictures, sorting a complication in the workshop, but now he was doing his best to replay her voice, what she had been saying over the last few seconds. Nothing, no words, sentences, questions, nothing that might give him a clue as to what to say.

He could sense that he was meant to contribute something, say something, but her look was more than expectant, it was, more, judgemental. He looked back up at her face and shrugged one shoulder, as he usually did. “Uh, I don’t know, um, I’m not sure”.

The counsellor’s eyes shifted back to Janet, who was rolling her eyes and making those dammed ‘dch’ noises again, but her head was still aimed straight at him.

“Are you with us at all Gordon, are you taking this seriously?  You’re on the brink of losing this relationship and all that goes with it, and I can tell, you’re not even listening.  I really get the impression that you’re not even interested”.

He took a long deep breath, then reactively added to it, held, and released it in jerky spasms.  “I’m sorry, ah, um, she’s said that . . .  Well maybe she should just go, and, that’s best for her”.

He knew he wasn’t making sense with his words, and at a different level he knew he wasn’t making sense of this whole situation either.  Days later his mind would say ‘Go see a counsellor, talk about not talking! Jeeze man!’ but right now it was blank – no words, no thoughts, nothing to say.  How can you say something if there’s no words in your head!’

She was at it again.  “You must have some thoughts on all of this Gordon, you must know how you feel”.  Her voice was softer, she was trying the easy, easy approach.  “Look, I’ll ask Janet to go outside for a while, maybe it’s hard for you to talk with her here, listening.”

“Yea, I’m going out to the car for a smoke.  Good luck!” She took her anger with her, but enough still swirled through his brain where it had been eating at him for months.

He stared at the floor, or at least in that direction, but his eyes saw nothing.  His pulse was up, there was a pressure in his head, but that same blank space stayed – like a white-out. His lips and his mouth were trying to make a word, but nothing came. He hated being so dumb, so stupid, not able to say something useful.  He cared.  Of course he cared – and he was scared, scared of not being what she wanted.  She, Janet, the counsellor, Janet’s mother even, they all wanted words.  “Say something, anything!  Just say something!” And the more they yelled, the more they demanded, the less he could find anything to say.

All these years they had told him how caring, how sensitive he was.  How wonderfully creative and artistic he was, and how successful he could be – ‘if he just got on with it, stopped being such a damned perfectionist, and got his stuff out there on the market’.

He knew he had stuffed up, lost some good clients and a lot of money, but he couldn’t put stuff out there if it wasn’t ‘right’.  Hours and hours at night after day, he worked and worked but couldn’t get it right, not right enough to be happy with it.  He was tired, grumpy and depressed.  He kept away from the booze, ’cause that had cost him his last relationship, but now the energy drinks were eating into his gut with a pain that gave him nightmares at night.

Way back in his school days a teacher had told him “Either you’ll find a good woman who will be the making of you, or you’ll be the most brilliantly creative no-hoper on the street.” The bastard was right both ways.

“She’s a lovely woman”, she’d started again “and she’s lucky to have you.”

‘Same old, same ol . . .’ Gordan lifted one eyebrow and looked up, warily at the counselor. ‘Is she for real?’ 

“You’re surprised to hear me say that, aren’t you?”

‘Yep, for real’ he thought, but just looked at her, and said nothing.  It was his turn to just look, and wait, to see what she would say next.

”Just like there’s all sorts of women” she began slowly, ”there’s all sorts of men. In this business, relationship counselling, you get to see the whole range.  And although I had a bit of a go at you back there, I know that this ‘talk it all through’ stuff doesn’t really suit men as much as it seems to suit women.  But Janet needed to hear me challenge you like that.  She needs to know that I am not just going to give you an easy 'out'. She needs to know that I am giving you as big a challenge as I have given her.  That surprises you doesn’t it?  You thought I was on her side, yes?  No, it’s not for me to take sides, my job is to help the two of you find a way to meet each other without loss.”

She paused, thinking her way to her next offering. 

“My husband isn’t always as convinced of the value of counselling as I am.  The other night he challenged me on what I do.  He said, in almost these words, ‘Women seem to be born with a brain that is wired for talking.  They talk more than men, they use more words than men to say the same thing, and they deal with their problems by talking them out – usually all at the same time.’  You can see he is a bit of a cynic.”  She raised both her eyebrows in mock resignation.  “But then he stunned me.  He said, ‘Listen to the words, the words in the old sayings.  If men have a problem they ‘work it out’”. She stopped. “Just think what you do if there is something bothering you – do you go and chat to your hairdresser?”

‘Not bloody likely’ he thought, and they both grinned at the thought of it.

“No, I bet you ‘work it out’.  You stick your problem into the farthest back corner of your mind – your unconscious mind – and you go and do some man-work – and while you ‘work it out’, so does your unconscious brain. You just work, and you let your system deal with it, while you do the things that your masculinity makes you good at. At least that is my husband’s take on it, and I wonder if he’s not got a point”.

“The hard part is, that in this world full of PC rules and stuff, people tend to think that, except for the wobbly bits, men and women are basically the same – that their brains work the same.”

He was grateful for her pause, as he reflected on a hundred ways that that applied.

“But it is so obvious that our brain wiring is different, and as in this case, hugely different.  Janet wants to do it the woman way, and she expects that you can, and will do it the same way, by talking it through, over, and out.  When that doesn’t work for you, she thinks you are avoiding, denying, being obstinate, playing power-games, playing silence games – there are all sorts of explanations for it.  The real danger is that we choose to believe the explanation that suits us best. That’s a normal thing to do, but it is dangerous.”

She was speaking slowly, as if she was thinking through what she was saying for the first time. This worked for him, and he was suddenly aware that he was following her train of thought, that he understood what she was saying - for him a rare experience.

He nodded, and slowly some words came. “The more she talks, asks questions, wants answers, the harder it is for me.”

“For you to, what?” she probed.

“To talk, to find words, to tell her things.  I know she wants me to talk, and sometimes I can, a bit, but when I can’t she just thinks I’m making it difficult.”

“Tell me if this is not my business, but did you hate school, and, did you find learning to read and write really hard?”

“Sort of, ’cause at school I was really dumb.”  His head dropped, and he whispered to the floor, “and I still hate reading, can’t hardly write at all.”

She let the silence linger out. 

“And yet you are known as one of the most creatively successful artists in your field”.

“But, that doesn’t stop me from being dumb.”

“True, but difficulty with language doesn’t actually mean that you are dumb either.  My husband is an extraordinarily intelligent man, develops high-tech security systems for industry, but when his mum writes to him he has to get me to read her letters.  He can read the technical stuff, but not novels or anything that has emotional content.  He says it is his personal form of dyslexia.”

Janet’s less-than-gentle knock on the door abruptly stopped the conversation.

“I want you two to go home now, and I will see each of you on your own next time.  In the meantime, just one instruction; No questions or discussion between you about today’s session. Gordon, same time next week then?”

He nodded, “Yeah, I’d like that”.