What Rhymes With Orange

Years ago, I went to see a medical intuitive, which is someone who uses their psychic abilities to figure out what’s physically wrong with you. At the time, I was having a physical problem and no doctor had been able to say what exactly it was or how to address it. I hoped this person would be able to tell me what to do.

I don’t recall exactly what the problem was. It was so long ago, and there have been so many weird physical issues since then. But if I were to imagine now what it was that would have sent me to her, it would be this sensation that I would get every so often that “something was off.” It was a feeling of being in my body but also not being in my body.

I once tried to describe it to a neurologist by saying, “Sometimes, I’ll be standing on the curb, ready to cross the street, and I just keep looking left and then right, then left again, then right again, not really able to trust whether there are no cars coming.” I explained how I would finally step off the curb into the street simply hoping that I had looked “enough,” that it was safe.

I remember the neurologist asking me if I was having suicidal thoughts, as if this weird feeling of mine had something to do with wanting to throw myself into traffic. I don’t think I’d ever felt so misunderstood in my life.

This feeling wasn’t really dizziness, but sometimes I called it that because it had that same quality of not feeling grounded. Like the world and I were not really in sync. You know how if you’re watching a movie and the actor’s lips are not completely matching the words they are saying, that lag is all you can pay attention to? That’s what it felt like.

This feeling would come and go, with no apparent reason. It might last two hour or two days. No one really seemed to understand it. No one could give it a name.

After years of these very occasional episodes, a friend told me about Mrs. D. “She’ll be able to tell you what kind of doctor to see,” my friend said. So, I went.

Mrs. D was about an hour’s drive on the highway, then a while longer on smaller roads past giant fields of cows or horses, and then down a bumpy dirt road. Her little house was at the end. She walked me into a room with a wooden writing desk and chair, and another upholstered chair right beside it. The desk was up against a window and there were a few pieces of art on the wall, including an abstract painting with the hand-rendered words across the bottom: WHAT RHYMES WITH ORANGE.

She took a seat at the desk and smoothed out her oversize clothing, the light from the window on her shoulder-length white hair. I sat next to her and tried to explain my problem. I remember starting to cry as I spoke, which was something that would happen all the time. I would see some new practitioner and the whole trip there, I would coach myself, “Do not cry when you talk. Do not cry.” Yet as soon as I started talking about what was wrong with me, I would cry.

“I’m sorry. I cry easily,” I’d always say, which is truly an understatement. Then I’d say my piece while at the same time trying to read the other person’s face – trying to assess what they are thinking about this crying girl-woman in front of them.

When I finished explaining my weird episodes to Mrs. D, she put a few sheets of unlined paper in front of her on the desk and picked up a fancy pen. She sat looking out the window for a time and then started writing. Sometimes she would ask questions, like, “Become? Are you saying ‘become’? Is that what you mean?”

I hadn’t said anything, so I was like, “What?”

She paid no attention to me and asked something else, like, “Now? Are you talking about now or in general?”

And I said, “Excuse me?”

Somehow, she let me know that she wasn’t talking to me, though I can’t recall exactly how.

I said, “Am I supposed to be doing something?”

She said, “No. You can just relax there.”

So I just took in the room. The religious iconography on the wall. Maybe there was a braided rug. Maybe the walls were knotty pine.

Maybe not.

It was all so long ago.

After a short time, she said, “This has never happened to me in all my years of doing this, but they are telling me that you should go on some kind of medicine for a time. Like an antidepressant.”

“Who told you?” I said.

“Your Team of Healers,” she said.

“I’m supposed to take Prozac?” I said.

“They didn’t say Prozac specifically,” she said. “But something. For a short time. They’ve never told me anything like this before. They usually tell me that the person should stop taking medication.”

“I don’t want to take antidepressants,” I said.

“Well, that’s all they told me to tell you,” she said.

“Can you tell them I don’t want to take Prozac?” I said.

She looked out the window and spoke on my behalf, then turned back to me and said, “They don’t have anything more to say.”

Then she said she was not going to charge me anything for the session, and I left.

I’m not sure yet why I’m telling you this story. When I sat in my morning meditation practice the other day, this is the story I was told to start with. This story, in this way.

For me, writing usually ends up being a place where I think I’m here to write about something for one reason, and it turns out I’m really here for something completely different.

I'm surprised that this might be where a bigger story begins.

I’m slightly worried that you will read this story and say to yourself, “Yeah, this is not really for me.”

I would understand that. But I also want you to stay.