-Ish…

As far as crazy goes I’m strictly vanilla. Vanilla essence, even, not quite vanilla bean grade.

When I first sat across from the therapist I expected her to listen to my troubles, provide pithy solutions, then get back to the business of people with real problems.

Instead she gave me a weekly slot with no expiration date. ‘The cheeky bitch,’ I thought. ‘Obviously just wants my money.’

During sessions two and three I waited for the empathetic mask to slip. For her to shout ‘Enough! There’s nothing wrong with you! You’re just being a big baby!’

Instead she said ‘This may take a while to work through. ‘Oh dear,’ I thought. ‘Maybe I really am fucked up.’

I ask a friend. She lists the people we know who are more fucked up than me. There are quite a few.

I’m Bringing Crazy Back

If there’s anywhere you can go about the business of crazy it’s San Francisco.

In a bar on Haight St a stranger opened with: ‘I gots me a glass eye! Nigger!’ (I believed him too – I’m so white I’m practically translucent).

I should have twigged when I started a gratitude journal. And read The Secret. And chanted in the mirror.

Now I’m shelling out $130/session to snivel in front of a stranger - try as I might to maintain the ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ mantra that saw me through the noughties.

My therapist ekes out of me - syllable by costly syllable - my middle-class, white-girl woes.

‘You’re hard and unsentimental’

‘Wouldn’t care if we dropped off the face of the earth’

‘I love you, but…’

‘I really, really, really like you…’

‘And I felt like such a whore’

‘And I couldn’t remember his name’

‘And I didn’t call him. Even though I knew he was dying’

‘And she says he’s a functional alcoholic’

‘And I can’t fix her’

‘And I feel so broken’