Therapy is a Phone Call Away

When I first met my therapist it was emotional to say the least. For years I had searched for someone to just listen to my story, to hear the words I poured from my soul. I needed someone to help me patch together my memories that were shattered on the floor of my soul. My initial visit was just the basics, pouring out the most important traumas. What were the most important ones when I had so many to tell? I think it was just what was gnawing at my consciousness at that time. She cried the more I told her. She was a human, another person, who saw me. She didn’t see the mess I was but the woman who needed desperate help with a tangled web of yarn that was life.

The second time we met she told me I didn’t look like someone who needed therapy. She said the way I carried myself, dressed, and spoke gave the illusion of a well put-together person. It gave her a chance to teach me not to judge on appearances alone but it left me reeling with more questions than answers. It gave me something bigger than my mouth to chew on.

I wouldn’t say I’m fashionable but I am a paralegal by trade and dress business casual for the most part. My way of clothing myself is one to force myself in to feeling confident. I’ll add heels and lipstick just to butter myself up in to a better mood in a heartbeat. But does the way I present really hide my deep rooted issues? I want to say yes but we all know about book covers.

Once I part my lips and vomit my darkest secrets, you know. You can clearly see that the Calvin Klein dresses and designer shoes are just a show. One I act in very well. That’s really what I am. An actress who puts on a play every single day of the five day work week. Slipping in to a snazzy outfit doesn’t make me any more tolerable or any less ill; it just gives me enough walk to back my talk. And talk I do.

I was quiet for the bulk of my childhood to avoid the wrath of the queen and king that were my parents, so now all of the sentences I wanted to string together then are falling out now. It’s unhealthy and toxic. Who sits down and wants to hear all of that? Not many people. Knowing ones past can come with time but the deepest wounds don’t need to be bared in the initial meeting. You need a game plan.

That takes years of persistence and a stubbornness to make it through. It won’t ever matter how you display yourself on the shelf to humanity, if your inside is broken it will become apparent. I hope one day my rotten inside can match my bubbly façade. I pray that in the future I can meet someone and not have to put together a role sewn together just for them. I want to be just okay. Perfect is far from achievable with my scars but I want the designer woman to have better topics to discuss. I want to feel a sense of normalcy. I want to be judged and that assumption be correct. I want those things for myself and if it takes perfecting my vocabulary; dressing down in the cutest dresses; having every lip stain Etude House makes to lull myself to a better me… you’ll be damn sure I’ll be all on board. I’m tired of being fake on the outside, I need it all to match in one pretty little package. One little bow, all for me.

Before therapy when I was in a terrible spiral. Photo by: Nuckols Photography