In May, as per my request, my doctor referred me to see a therapist. Because I'm poor and disabled, I don't have to pay for it, but because I'm poor and disabled I have to wait on lists that go on for months and sometimes years. I started seeing Linda in the middle of November. Her practice is based in the building where I saw my first dentist. Where, as a child, I received eye drops and had to walk home without being able to see anything, wondering if my eyesight would ever return again. It's the same building where, at eighteen, I saw an emergency doctor who told me that I was too fat and in danger of dying and should be ashamed of myself. The first doctor who told me that there was nothing really wrong with me. The first doctor in a series of doctors who led me to believe that I am crazy, instead of in pain. Twelve years later, after having lost ninety pounds and spent twenty thousand Euro in medical bills, and it's all come full circle. I found myself in a therapist's office because I am in fact in pain, and the pain is making me fucking crazy.
I've seen therapists before. Depression has followed me. My oldest childhood friend. I can't remember a time when she wasn't there. Ireland is not a country of action. It's a country of plastering over a problem and hope it goes away. I am the result of a series of false starts. Of medication stopped, of therapy concluded too soon. Of waiting lists. Of referrals left unanswered. We don't talk about our feelings. We laugh off our mental illnesses. All I want for Christmas is some fucking serotonin.
The therapists that I've seen before have left the floor open for me to talk about anything and everything that I want. Athol was the first. I was seventeen. I was bursting at the seams with the need to die, but having to go see Athol once a week, every week, gave me another reason to live. I spent so much time thinking about ways that I could get out of going to see him, that suddenly it had been ten weeks and it wasn't mandatory for me to go anymore. So I didn't.
Then, years later, there was Imelda. A therapist who was mostly retired but worked part-time still. I got to see her at a discounted rate. I learned more about her than she did about me. She was such a wonderful, liberal older woman. A fascinating storyteller. I couldn't bring myself to tell her that I wanted to die because I couldn't bear the way that she would look at me. So I told her that I felt better and we mutually decided to end the sessions.
Linda's different than the ones that came before. She dresses in a business suit and has a fringe. Her room is in the community hospital, and when I sit in the waiting room I feel like I can't breathe for all of the memories that it throws at me. She normally lights 'a nice candle' to make the place smell less like an old hospital. Last week, there was a humidifier that made the room smell like lemon and ginger tea. Linda asks a lot of questions about the nouns in my life - the people, places and things. My routines. My concerns. I'm not allowed to worry because it is an ineffective and unproductive activity. I am allowed to cry because I need to. She tells me to let it out, and my head and throat hurt from the need to cry and the inability to do it in front of another person. Linda gives homework. Healthy ways to express the eight primary emotions. Tell me about a time when you felt empowered. I can use Google, but my own brain refuses to come up with the answers. We talk about worry a lot, because I can't stop worrying, and at first, I think she thought that maybe my pain wasn't as bad as it is. But as we've progressed, she's seen me unable to walk, having had no sleep, unable to sit still or to think or to talk. She asks me who's in charge of my care. She asks me what they've prescribed me. She asks me what's being done for me. Nobody. Nothing. Nothing again. She's trying to understand my chronic illnesses. My fear of doctors. My inaction over my own suffering. My worry. Always my worry. I worry that she'll get upset with me for worrying so much. I can't stop apologising. Linda speaks over me when I make excuses. But what I can't tell Linda because she won't allow me to, is that I'm too tired. She won't take that for an answer, and I know that she's right, but that doesn't mean that I'm any less tired. Linda is practical, and she makes it so that there are very few grey areas. I am sad, but there needs to be a reason for me to be sad. I read recently that sadness can become an addiction, something that we are unwilling to let go of because at our core, maybe we don't want to. I've also read that people who are in pain share a certain set of personality traits. That we brought the pain upon ourselves because of our negative thought patterns, because of our unhealthy thought processes. I know a lot more about pain than Linda does because I have lived it for every waking hour since March of 2017. Linda believes that there is a medication to help me feel better. Linda believes that there is a pill to help me to have restful sleep. Three specialists have told me that I will have to grin and bear it because there is nothing that can be done for me. Linda disagrees.