I'm Shira Erlichman and this is The Slowdown.

Three days a week, I sat on Claudius' couch, where we exchanged pleasantries before digging

in.

She didn't take my insurance, but offered to see me for 25 bucks a session out of pocket

for God knows what reason.

How are you, she'd ask, as I set my things down.

Fine, I'd say.

But all the while I was thinking, how am I?

How am I even here?

One day, when again she asked with a breeze in her voice, how are you?

I sighed.

Do you mind not asking me how I am?

I preferred sitting in silence than having to fling another fine, good, or okay.

I had just spent six days in a mental hospital.

I'd witnessed my brain burn and collapse, and in the fallout, the people I loved most

were the people I couldn't rely on.

The normal social contract, polite conversation, exchanging niceties, all of that wasn't

for me anymore.

Claudius took me up on my request.

Suddenly, in that room, everything was traded for quiet.

We sat, not in confrontation, but in the sweet fertility of silence.

When it naturally broke, there was space.

...