Spoiler: that was not what he was implying [Self-harm CW]

[breathedout]

My new therapist, doing intake: Have you ever had a period when you were in danger of harming yourself?
Me: Yes, that time we were just talking about during my first year of college.
Him: So that would have been 19? 18?
Me, GENUINELY MYSTIFIED: Are you... implying I graduated from high school the year of the Armistice with Germany?

Comments

[eatingcroutons]

😂

[tellitslant]

There's a 'living in the past' joke to be made here somewhere.

[breathedout]

Ahahahaha yes. I mean guilty as charged, but I didn't expect to be called out on it at my first ever appointment with this guy! LOL

[thatyourefuse]

/dyyyyying

Well, IME you can learn an awful lot about a new therp the first time one of those really idiosyncratic miscommunications happens, anyway!

[breathedout]

Yes! It's true. I really liked him, actually, and his humor around that slight miscommunication was part of it.

[virtual_particle]

I misread this in the same way for a fraction of a second. (1918? Whaaat?) And I spend a lot less time thinking about WWI than you do.

I've never heard anyone use that phrasing instead of the usual "You would have been [age]?"

[breathedout]

I kind of think he started to phrase it as a question about the year ("That would have been [2001]?") but then realized he'd started out wrong and did an incomplete save by just switching to ages mid-sentence. Very confusing! We laughed about it, though.

[chestnut_pod]

What a time to enter college!

[breathedout]

I mean, better than nineteen FOURTEEN, I guess!

[magnetic_pole]

Ha! My guess is he started off confident in his math, had a moment of doubt, and remembered he'd gotten into this field specifically because he was a humanities type and was nimble enough verbally to avoid too much on-the-spot calculation. :) M.

ETA: Hope he's a good one, by the way! Always hard finding someone.

[breathedout]

LOL yes, this is pretty much my guess as well. And thanks! It was, by far, the most productive-feeling start to a therapy relationship I have ever experienced, so hopefully it will continue in the same vein.

[sylvaine]

😂😂😂

[clarasteam]

*snorts*

it does sound as if he changed tack half way through the question...

[teaforlupin]

Lol!!!

[pennypaperbrain]

This makes me love you. I have not done that thing, but there are things in the vicinity of that thing and I am sure that I have done them.

[breathedout]

<3

[fatalism_and_villainy]

pfffffft

[oulfis]

This level of “simultaneously embedded in another frame of reference” is what I love about developing a historical passion. I have had more miscommunications regarding “the late 90s” than I can count, but I usually enjoy the feeling like the 1790s are only 30 years in the past. Though usually people aren’t implying that I am 230 years old.

[breathedout]

Ahahahaha yes, this is a good point. Also I love the implication that people sometimes are implying that you're 230 years old. You make a very approachable and well-disposed-toward-humanity immortal, which is a type we should see more of in fiction!