The waiting room

Greta was sitting, alone, on a long narrow bench. The time seemed long and the silence oppressive. The padded door held back all sound. She reached out but no sound came, not even muffled voices. She then turned to the gilt bronze library clock from the Empire period. Was it stopped or was it the time that didn't pass anymore? Thoughts were racing through her head, a maelstrom of contradictory images and feelings. Something was holding her hostage, something that was invading her consciousness.

She needed to calm down, to fix her attention on the clock. She had known this waiting room for a long time. She knew each painting, each object and their respective places. But had she ever really looked at them? She realized that she sat in the same place every time, every time in the same way. She was still and the only thing that differentiated her from them was the stream of thoughts that assailed her.

Then she carefully observed the clock and the characters that decorated it. What did they represent? Often the scenes chosen evoked mythological stories mixing men and gods. But here it was a child sitting on the clock. On one side the mother was holding the child with one hand and on the other a little girl, perhaps her sister, was desperately reaching for it. To pass the time she imagined a story. The mother seemed calm, the child carefree and the little girl impatient and carried away by her desire. Perhaps even anger would eventually arise, cries, tears. Impatience and patience, desire and temperance, perhaps these were allegories.

Suddenly Greta understood that these characters were living inside her, and perhaps others that she did not know. Perhaps her thoughts were just their whispering, coming from the depths beyond her consciousness. She suddenly felt that she should not try to reject them. On the contrary, she felt that she should go to meet them, even if it would be unpleasant for her.

After all, she thought, there is no consciousness without pain, and one becomes luminous only by plunging into one's own darkness. For one cannot see the light without the shadow. One cannot perceive silence without noise. One cannot reach wisdom without madness.

She thought she heard the ticking of the clock but it was just in her consciousness that a click had just occurred. A vague smile lit up her face and at the same moment the door opened. The figure of the psychoanalyst appeared against the light. She got up for her session, but they both knew it had already started.