The Seville Situation

The time chance brought me face to face with my decisions... and my therapist.

Illustration by Jess Smart Smiley

It’s been four years since I last talked to my therapist, and I’m still questioning my decision to end our sessions after six years of therapy back home in New York City. So she is the last person I thought I’d see on this hot summer night in Spain. But here she is, dressed up casually, without her puffy white shirt and coat, in a restaurant just a few streets down from the iconic Gothic cathedral in the center of Seville.

I watch her quietly from my table on the other side of the restaurant. I’m alone and she’s engaged in a lively conversation with a handsome man about her age; they are both in their mid-fifties. From what I can see of their expressions, her male companion is definitely more animated.

I hear the waiter ask me something in Spanish, but I simply nod in a sign of compliance with whatever he says. I’m too busy with my own thoughts — my own state of wonderment, of shock.

Things may seem to happen without any intended consequence or are indepe…