New client. 26. Erratic. Former military. Possible PTSD.
He wore camouflage Army Service fatigues and cited story after story about how everyone he meets feels sorry for him once they learn of his military background.
As he droned on, I kept glancing down at the accordion file currently holding all my client notes—each set now distinct and perfectly organized (as mentioned), ready to be typed up and compiled systematically.
Distracted and quite unimpressed, I was already certain this appointment would bring no future business or value.
For once, I let myself be as direct and honest as I felt like being.
Perhaps I should leave this part out of my notes (it is surely no reflection of the workings of my Method); yet I am choosing to include it just for comparison.
ME:
“You know they really don’t feel sorry for you at all, right?
“You’re just another human being to them.
“They probably respect you when they see the uniform, or at least they might feel obligated to.
“But that’s it, really.
“The rest is…”
My concentration was too far gone even to bring my sentence to a close, its conclusion clear enough already.
I forget what happened next.
I think he got mad and left.
In truth, I missed Ray.
I still do.
Like a good puzzle or some offense, I find I cannot keep myself from dissecting and reworking Ray’s case from every possible angle.
Ray has revealed the true potential of my Method more than any other client.
Even before our last session, I knew his absence would leave something of a massive, aching void.
Did I help Ray?
Allowing my eyes to run yet again along the bullet-point sequences of our recorded dialogues, I must conclude that Ray indeed benefited in learning to approach and sort through his negative emotions.
If he has not yet fully realized how the church he felt so hurt by was essentially his source of care and strength all along, he soon will.
Again, Ray has certainly helped me.
I hope he has helped you as well.
How has Ray helped me?
Well, I was wrong about him for a long time, I can admit that now.
My assumption from the beginning was that Ray saw his visions as akin to special revelations from on high.
Yet though always sincere, he never actually considered his particular perspective to be all that important or profound.
He was not trying to wow me or the world with pearls of artful, exclusive wisdom.
I was so glad he took the time to repeat his final words about the fog until at last I understood.
Ray’s fog was never meant to stand for something unknown and scary, but rather something in the way—something to hide [from] the unknown.
And Ray never wanted to see the fog, that is important.
If you had shown me Ray’s completed case file back around the time I left college, I would have immediately connected his way of refusing to fix meanings or cover for uncertainty to my own burgeoning distaste for needless hifalutin terms.
My Method, born of just my unusual way of seeing things, functioned even then exactly as Ray’s representations: showing without interpreting, and revealing without need of extra defining explanations.
Yet somewhere along the line, I must have gotten ever so slightly lured off course in directions of hypocrisy or irony.
The culmination: I actually blamed my Method for convincing me there was no way I could be real.
Ever so desperate to fix meanings…
I now find it all rather funny.
Ray had said quite plainly, of course, that the fog makes us think what we see in it is all there is to see.
Considering the whole purpose and function of my Method (as revealed in these notes), I hear Ray’s voice in my thoughts again, repeating, “So, so ironic!”
Of course, our having met still seems too extraordinary to be a coincidence.
What could have caused our lives and perspectives to connect so perfectly at just the right time?
Let me be not quite the first or last to say: I don’t know.
I still find myself wondering how someone like Ray could exist.
Funnily enough, it is through Ray that I have learned to live with the remaining mystery Ray himself embodies and leaves behind.
I would love it if we could meet at least weekly for the rest of our lives.
In the end, I feel good that we have both seen definite, measurable progress.
Just now, I poured myself a fresh, steaming cup of coffee.
I am settled in and ready for a day or more of slowly, carefully typing out my notes (to create what you are reading now).
I don't know anything 