Today’s score – 15%

The appointment is made and locked in. I won’t move it. The familiar worries return – will I like the counsellor? Will I feel they fully comprehend the things affecting me? Will they make suggestions I want to roll my eyes at? How long and hard will I cry? Because I know I will. 

I have young, grown-up children now but they are here in relay teams, two of the three still for the most part living at home (for the moment). I do love having them around and it also gives no privacy. I have been well used to, over a lifetime, filing my feelings to keep life rolling. Giving my tears a ticket and letting them know they are welcome to pop up when its their turn. Invariably they have lost interest when their number is called.

But the dam remains. And when the time arrives, its always messy. I cry messily. My face bulges and reddens. I get swollen eyelids, a swollen nose, a monster headache, as well as blotches and each lasts for hours.

Oh how I utterly dread the walk out of the counselling room, back into everyday life, pulling on a smile and going out onto the street in the middle of town. Facing traffic, and people, and really wishing to crawl under the privacy cocoon of a duvet. I have a loose plan. The counsellor’s office is not far from a huge gallery. I should be able to walk in without contact, walk around, be reasonably ignored. I could sit staring at a painting and pretend to be lost in thought, while composing myself, letting the immediate blotchmageddon recede slightly.

And so that is the plan.

Love from 

The room above the garage

A Moodscope member