A Room of Their Own by Rakefet Yarden (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

unit. We were all sitting in a big hall full of plastic chairs. There was a table on the side with coffee and Styrofoam cups, pastries, and diced vegetables. We, and the Israeli government, were probably the last people stuck with that kind of snack selection. I looked around, trying to understand why everyone seemed so embarrassed, as though they’d been caught naked, making great efforts to hide, conceal themselves. Gal, one of the new students, brought up a case for the first time, and she was understandably excited,. Reality check: They were about to devour her. I was tense and becoming rigid, and not entirely sure why I was feeling that way. Once all of the administration announcements were made, Dr. Zuckerman handed the microphone to Gal. She cleared her throat, blushed slightly, and started gently weaving the tale of the bond created between her and one of the patients. I was sure that she’d been preparing the case description for at least a week. She described a very young and extremely scarred woman who’d been raised in institutions and developed chronic anorexia over the years. This was her fourth hospitalization at the unit. Their bond wasn’t simple, and the treatment wasn’t going anywhere.

“What do you think her disorder is?” Dr. Zuckerman interrupted her, commencing a glorious comeback to his stage.

“What?” Gal muttered, surprised.

“What is her disorder?” he repeated.

And right before our bewildered eyes, and with a huge grin, he pulled it out, as though from a hat. “Borderline Personality Disorder.”

Why don’t we just call her hysterical and get it over and done with, I thought to myself. After all, it had worked for a long time back when male therapists treated female patients. We’ll soon be sending her to stand in the corner with her face to the wall − or better yet, ship her over to the closed ward for isolation. I nodded politely as I listened to my thoughts.

Rock. Paper. Scissors. Shoot.

“Complex PTSD,” I suggested.

“I don’t think so,” he dismissed me. I guess he went for scissors, then. “We haven’t heard about any trauma.”

We haven’t heard about anything yet, I thought to myself. And besides, doesn’t getting raised in institutions count as trauma? Over the years, I’d learned to fight my battles using my opponents’ language: an eye for an eye, diagnosis for diagnosis. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A person suffering and recoiling, or attacking in order to defend themselves − that’s what you call a personality disorder? Would you find it easy to get rid of your potbelly and stop smoking just because your doctor told you to do it? Then why is she deemed crazy and you’re deemed a doctor? Maybe we should better understand what she’s been through and how she got to where she is now, instead of assuming that she was born this way − with a disorder and opposition to changes?

“It’s unclear where this sudden aggression of yours has come from,” my supervisors and mentors have told me over the years. It’s been on its way for a long time, I always want to reply.

I remained quiet and kept a hollow little smile while rebellion sizzled within me. Nausea. A pungent smell of something rotting. I tried to keep it inside. Stop it, Rotem, you’re getting yourself into trouble.

“Why is it suddenly so important what her disorder is?” I finally lashed out.

A heavy silence descended over the room while everyone looked over to see who this social worker was who dared to second-guess Dr. Zuckerman and the esteemed medical institution he’s been carrying on his back like a wrinkled old turtle.

But I feel that I was actually relatively gentle. What I really wanted to ask was “And how would you diagnose yourself, Dr. Zuckerman? Dismissia? A frozen heart? You tell me.”

They waited a few months until the end of the year, and then they fired me. “You’re undoubtedly brilliant with the patients. You know how to be with them within their hardships and pain, and yet you still demand that they make progress − and you show them how to do it, which is why we’d kept hoping and waiting until now. But, with your supervisors . . . well . . . not so much,” Dr. Zuckerman said at my review board hearing.

It took me a few months to recover, to set up my own clinic and choose mentors and partners on my own. I found warm-hearted psychiatrists who support the path of healing.

And then Dani came along, carrying a heavy bag of diagnosis on her back, an heirloom from her many hospitalizations, lacking even a single ounce of self-attentiveness or compassion for herself – which is precisely what I needed to rev myself up and get going.

Dani

The stomach pains that came back drove me out to a nighttime walk with Miko. The cold ocean breeze seemed to melt the pains, making them a bit more bearable. We’d walked along the shoreline for quite a while, and when we turned into the city streets in order to turn back, Miko pulled me to his favorite spot. I found myself at the dog park near Gordon Beach. Far. How conniving, Miko, I thought to myself. But you’re cute and you deserve it, putting up with my nighttime whims, cooperating, and even giving me the impression that you’re enjoying yourself and pleased with my bizarre ideas, even though I’d pulled you out of your warm bed. A true friend, like I always say.

I closed the gate behind us and took off Miko’s leash. It was a little past midnight, and we were alone in the dog park, obviously. Miko scouted for dog scents, trying to figure out who’d been there before him and what they had to say.

While busying myself with the curious Miko as well as my stomach ache, which refused to leave me, I heard the gate open.

A tall, thin guy dressed in a gray sweatsuit, looking as though he’d just been pulled out of bed, entered