Fridays are always for therapy sessions, even though I really don’t want mine today. I don’t feel ready for it. Moreover, I feel confused. Tired. Alone. Still, I log dutifully on Skype to see my therapist’s face, comforting on the other side of the screen. Although only over screen, still, I feel like she is with me. Even perhaps, beside me.
She smiles at me, “How are you?” she asks.
“Not good,” I say, burying my face in my hands.
Then I start to unravel, as I always do, in front of her caring eyes as they cuddle me in theirs’, giving me all the space I ever needed but never got, all the time I needed but never got, to spill out my real thoughts, my real feelings, my real emotions. From the inside out. I pause, she carries on listening. Giving me space again to gather my inners before I let them breathe in some more of the outside air.
“I just don’t feel like Myself,” I say. “I just don’t feel like Me.”
I feel her eyes on me as I continue, until I grind to a halt again, to wipe my teary eyes away, and wait (again).
She pauses, then:
One question (it’s always that one question):
“Who are you living for, Alice? Your parents, or Yourself?”
I pause too, then:
One answer:
“Myself.”
I say: firmly, resolutely.
“Myself.”
Another pause, then, something spills out of me, unforeseen, unknown, still, now, known:
“I do what the f**k I want,” I say, quietly.
“Louder,” she says. “Say it louder.”
I do what the f**k I want, I say, a little louder, (still not too loud; I am still quite cautious.)
“Louder,” she says. “Say it louder.”
So, I take one very long, very deep breath and say, more definitely than the past two times: “I DO WHAT THE F*** I WANT!”
That’s when My Heart said: “Yes, yes, yes – finally, I can hear YOU SPEAK.”
I Am Alice 