Last week when we had our big legal meeting, T brought in an armload of flowers for me and my H that he picked from his garden. (I wrote about this in another thread.) I still have them in my house. T laid these flowers on the big legal table at our meeting. As we assembled them into vases, a number of little brown ants scurried over the table. They were going all over. Since T had brought the flowers, he said he would take care of the ants. He killed them one at a time by squashing them with his finger. This went on even after we started our meeting--when another ant would come out of nowhere, T would get it. There was something kind of disturbing to me about T killing the ants. I am a lover of animals, plants, any living thing. I am the type who finds a bug in the house and carefully carries it outside. Yeah, I've killed bugs in my life, but I don't do it lightly. Anyway, seeing T kill all those ants so readily was somehow at odds with the man I have imagined him to be. I know that is stupid, and they are just ants, but I didn't like seeing T killing stuff!

To top it off, I have had this fantasy a number of times that I am an ant in T's office. If you are a Star Trek fan, you may remember the Deep Space Nine series. In it there is a character named Odo, who is a shape-shifter. He can assume the shape of any creature or even inanimate objects and then people don't realize he is there. He might be a rock, or a bird, or an ant. Anyway, I have had this recurring fantasy that I am a shape-shifter and can stay in T's office by posing as an object or animal. I think I just find it comforting to be in his presence and want to be with him more than my 50 minutes a week, and this would allow me to. Also, I am curious about what he talks to other clients about. This fantasy was more common earlier in my therapy, when I was really attaching strongly. In my fantasy, I most often change into an ant, and hide on T's desk underneath papers or behind his computer. I deliberately didn't choose to be a fly, as they buzz around and can annoy people, and I was worried T would swat at me and get me. So I chose to be an unobtrusive ant. And now I see T in real life killing ants rather cavalierly. It makes me not feel safe anymore to be an ant in his office.

I know, I know, this is so pathetic and dumb. But I just can't shake the image of T squashing the ants with his finger.