“Aren’t you just a tiny bit triggered?” her fiancé asked, bewildered.
“My triggers are covered in wet sand,” she’d said, “because my head is a giant cement mixer.”
“So, you do have feelings,” her fiancé said. “They’re just buried. In cement. Maybe it’s time you start breaking up the cement.”
“With what, a jackhammer?”
“How about a psychologist?”
So, Greta had taken another stab at therapy. After hearing her whole story, which had taken ten weeks to tell, the shrink diagnosed her with emotional detachment disorder, which seemed like a stretch to Greta, who preferred to think of it as “poise” on a bad day, “grace” on a good one, and, when she was feeling full of herself, “serenity.” He’d made several over-the-top recommendations: hot yoga, hypnosis, primal screaming, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing （EMDR）， acupuncture, and swing-dancing lessons. He also recommended she quit caffeine and nicotine.
Instead, Greta quit therapy. Then she quit her job, ended her relationship, moved across the country, and switched careers. Years ago, she’d worked for a “document preparation company.” The job had entailed transcribing audio for high-tech businesses, scientists doing qualitative research, journalists, professors, and psychologists. She’d held on to the equipment all these years because she’d genuinely enjoyed the eavesdropping aspect, the isolation of working from home, the not speaking for many hours at a time. She’d been a listener all her life and tended to surround herself with people in love with their own voices. It didn’t bother her that the work required very little skill and could be easily performed by robots or software. When she’d landed in Hudson, she emailed the six shrinks in town and offered her transcription services. Only Om responded.
Now secrets were fed directly into her ears, without any of the piped-in music or body pain. In fact, Greta barely moved these days. Only her fingers moved, and not very fast. Although by no means an excellent typist, she was semidiscreet, and because Hudson was so one-horse and gossipy, discretion was everything. She’d signed what looked like a pretty official confidentiality agreement, so she was forbidden to talk shit about Om’s clients. Not that she wanted to—she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker, and she barely left the house. She typically waited until midafternoon to get started and then worked until bedtime. They talked, she typed, nighty-night.
So far, Big Swiss was unlike Om’s other clients. She lacked their habit of tacking a question mark to the end of every sentence, even when asking an actual question. She never exclaimed. When she sneezed, she said “achoo” in the same way she said “hello” and “thank you.” She spoke slowly, enunciating every word, at the exact speed Greta typed, so it felt as though they were performing a piece of music together, something improvy and out-there, at a concert with no audience. Greta rarely had to rewind for another listen, or give up altogether and type [INDISCERNIBLE], which she hated doing. There had been some [SIGHING], [SNEEZING], and [THROAT-CLEARING] on the part of Big Swiss, but Om didn’t want any of that in the transcripts. Nor was Greta allowed to include a [WEIGHTY SILENCE] or any of the many [PAUSES], and no [WHIMPERING]. For some reason, Om’s style sheet permitted [WHISTLING], [SINGING], and [APPLAUSE], even though no one did those things in therapy, along with [LAUGHING] and [CRYING]. Oh, and [FIRE-BREATHING], which he sometimes did with clients who were open to kundalini, one of his passions.
Om’s first session with a client tended to run at least five to seven minutes longer than usual, but his first session with Big Swiss was a full fifteen minutes shorter. This was how Greta knew Big Swiss was beautiful—Om had forgotten to hit the record button. Either that, or he’d erased the first fifteen minutes, which wasn’t like him. Also, his voice had dropped an octave, and he kept fidgeting with his pen.
OM:?While you were talking about your aura, I thought I detected a faint accent. Where are you from originally?
FEW:?Where do you imagine I’m from?
OM:?Hang on, let me think. You’re from… the Midwest somewhere. Not Illinois. Not Ohio. No, not Nebraska—
FEW:?Don’t hurt yourself. I’ll just tell you. I was born in—
OM:?Wait, I got it. Michigan!
FEW:?No.
OM:?You’re originally from Wisconsin.
FEW:?Wrong.
OM:?Minnesota?
FEW:?I’m from S—
OM:?South Dakota.
FEW:?Switzerland.
OM:?That’s why you’re so tall and blond!
FEW:?Switzerland. Not Sweden.
OM:?It’s funny, I grew up listening to ABBA on cassette—
FEW:?Swiss, I repeat. Not Swedish. Swiss. Like the cheese.
OM:?Aren’t there a lot of tall, blue-eyed blondes in Switzerland?
FEW:?There are many. But most Swiss people are brunettes of average height, and my eyes are gray.
OM:?So they are. Remind me what else Switzerland is famous for.
FEW:?Cheese, chocolate. Suicide, I guess.
OM:?Is everyone killing themselves in Switzerland?
FEW:?Well, it’s legal. Suicide tourism is big there right now.
OM:?Are you, or have you ever been, suicidal?
FEW:?No.
OM:?How long have you lived in Hudson?
FEW:?I don’t live in Hudson. I live on the other side of the river. I moved to the US for college.
OM: ?Your voice is very unusual—and interesting—and I’m wondering, do you sing? Are you a singer?
FEW:?I’m told my voice is like a blade. When I pick out pastries at the bakery, it sounds like I’m ordering someone’s execution.
OM:?Says who?
FEW: ?Various people. My mother says my voice loosens the teeth in her head.
OM:?Wow. What a curious thing to tell your daughter.
FEW:?She’s been saying that to me for years.
OM:?I’m wondering if you see your trauma as being part of your… aura.
FEW:?No.
OM:?The word “aura” is present in the word “trauma,” I just realized.
FEW:?If anything, something in my aura may have caused the trauma. Or in any case, my aura made the trauma worse.
“What trauma?” Greta said out loud.
OM:?Don’t you think you might be uncomfortable with people near your face because of what happened?
“What?” Greta said.
FEW:?You want me to say yes. You seem to want cause and effect.
OM:?Well, it is a real thing. You must have been affected in some way. Can we talk a little bit about how your trauma has affected your relationships?
FEW:?Can we stop using the word “trauma”？
OM:?Why?
FEW:?I don’t use what happened to me as an excuse.
OM:?An excuse for what?
FEW:?Laziness or inertia. I don’t use it to explain my own rage or aggression. I’m not attached to my suffering. I’m not attached to what happened to me. I don’t believe it explains everything about me, because I haven’t made it part of my identity. I’m a worker, not a wallower. I would never call myself a “survivor.” I’m just—I’m not one of these trauma people.
OM:?What’s a trauma person?
FEW:?Someone who can’t stop saying the word “trauma.” Trauma people are almost as unbearable to me as Trump people. If you try suggesting that they let go of their suffering, their victimhood, they act retraumatized. It’s like, yes, what happened to you is shitty, I’m not denying that, but why do you keep rolling around in your own shit? If they stopped doing that for two seconds and got over themselves, even a little, they might actually become who they were meant to be.