Laura's window

So I started therapy today. Husband even took the day off work so he could pick up Sproglet and I could make the appointment. Her name is Laura - isn't that a nice girl, calm lady, I'm gonna relax the hell out of you, kind of name?

I didn't choose her - she is the therapist that deals with folk at my Dr's surgery - so I kinda got her through default. If I didn't like her I don't have to accept her - but she is lots older, with a kindly face and a gentle manner and a reassuring line of questions and most importantly she has these wonderful trees just outside her office window, that brush their heavy rustling branches against the pane as I talk, in a hypnotising rhythmic motion. I feel better seeing some green - don't ask me why.

And boy did she ask me some questions that I just didn't have the answer to. What would happen if I went a bit out there crazy, and just for once, went to bed without making sure all the cushions were straight and puffed out on the ridiculously expensive, but needs plumping daily, sofa? I didn't know... What if, I just let things go - what would happen - would the freakin sky fall in? Maybe, I'm not sure; but if I don't know - then why do I do it in the first place??

What if eh, I didn't have to be relentlessly racing through my life from one huge goal to the other - always having to do more, better, faster? What would I do if I just stopped? For a just a moment. Breathed. Relaxed. Just was. I've never really done it. My idea of doing it is going to the movies but technically that isn't the same. Why I am so goddamn driven - but not necessarily in a good way. Good way: Get jobs that I want. Bad way: house has to be in order, tidy and did I say in order? Why can't anyone else - namely Husband - see what needs to be done and do it - now!! Why can't he see what I see? What invisibly screams at me to be seen?

We went back in time - all those sad old tales you have said drunkenly and soberly so many times that you almost think they can't be real anymore - like some urban myth. The tears bubble up and spill when you realise that this is all because you are anxious. You were anxious. You can't remember a day in your life when you were not full of anxiety and you didn't even know it.

It is exhausting being in my head. I often wish I wasn't. Not in some woeful suicidal fashion - just that I wish I could not have to be doing. I could stand still and appreciate where I am and with whom. I try to do this sometimes - I am so busy trying to have this moment, I'm thinking about the moment way too much and it has to be a moment, and the essence of having to be a moment means it automatically isn't one.

The good old NHS give me 7 free sessions - whenever the hell I can fit them, god only knows. I have 6 to go... I'm really wondering where this will take me. I'm hoping to a calmer place.

Like the one just outside Laura's window.