By Alexandra Taggart

PART 1: My Mind Is Moving

A Very Peculiar Notion Of Interior Decoration

Right before I leave my apartment, I have the terrific urge to rearrange the furniture. Not just once but repeatedly over the course of some weeks. Moving a dresser, a side table, a futon. Today the lamp looks better over here. Tomorrow–who knows?

It’s 2010, and I’m living in a 600-square-foot apartment in New York City, the city of my birth. The number of pieces I own is scant, yet I feel that just before I leave for work, a doctor’s appointment, or dinner with friends, I must refine their positioning.

Something isn’t right. Something is definitely off.

There’s, I know, disharmony in my environment. Yet remedying this always takes longer than expected: the furniture, for instance, is seemingly heavier on some days. On other days, the proportions are eerily elusive. I’m almost certain that the rocking chair will fit in this corner, but as it happens, my assessment feels like Van Gogh’s “Bedroom in Arles” (below). As a result, I find myself standing, dumbfounded, in the middle of the room while I uneasily scan the space for Plan B.

To Be Or Not To Be Woody Allen

Though I’ve been doing this last-minute, feverish rearranging on a regular basis for some time, the job always seems to toss me a wild card, with the unintended double consequence that (a) I’m never done and (b) I’m inevitably late for everything. First just 15 minutes, then an hour or more. Time is as nebulous as my design plans.

After, naturally, arriving late to my appointment, I express consternation to my therapist, who looks at me soberly and says, “Just set a timer for 15 minutes before you need to leave.”

I consider her suggestion by imagining a scenario in which I do just that: I give myself a time budget for rearranging furniture before being obliged to go anywhere. Her assumption is that this is just another mundane task making up a modern person’s daily routine–something akin to flossing, getting dressed, reading the news, or eating breakfast.

However, somewhere deep down, I know this shouldn’t be happening.

“I’m not here to manage a behavior like this for the rest of my life,” I think. I want to know that there’s something beyond, or higher than, my limited, disturbed way of thinking, which is making furniture-rearranging at inopportune times not only possible but also hypnotically captivating.

Yet because I’m unable to think clearly, I can’t, in 2010, articulate any of this. All I can muster is: “I’m looking for another perspective.” My therapist’s reply, as sober as her initial suggestion, is: “That’s not what I offer.”

And that, for me, was the end of therapy.

* * *

You can read the rest of Alexandra’s essay (for free) on Substack.