merely players

oftentimes, when i'm done seeing a client, and i walk them to the front door to say goodbye, i get a fleeting feeling that they're suddenly going to break out of whatever role they were playing, smile broadly, start giving me comments on how i did or what i could have said that might have been better. but of course they don't. they walk out the door, and back into their lives, the same ones they've been telling me about, lives that are real, full of misery and pain and hopelessness. and once they've left the clinic and gone out that door, the hope that all i've learned is just a heartbreaking story, a tragedy conjured from air, vanishes along with them.