Like a breakup. Except, she took notes.

Currently listening to: My Dick – Mickey Avalon. If you haven't heard it already, you should. It was in Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay and it's hilarious.

I've been gone a while, I know. It's bad blogger protocol, I suck. Under some misguided need to keep radio-silence (blog-silence?) until I had something less depressing to say, I've been incommunicado. 'Less depressing than what', you say? Really, the less said about my two week emotional downswing, the food-based fallout and the mountain of green I smoked to numb myself, the better. But now, look! It's a long 'un.

My final weekly therapist appointment has left me upswinging quite nicely, on the other hand. The weather as I was leaving was very appropriate too, uncharacteristically sunny and warm for the current season and birds sang as I lit my cigarette – it all felt very 'brand new day, and I’m turning over a new leaf', you know? I had a pleasantly empty stomach and a bounce in my step.

Even if I weren't diving headlong in to what could legitimately be referred to as a 'relapse', you know, if you bandy words like that about, I think that it might have been time to cut the bulllshit with my current therapist (henceforth referred to as P, probably) and explain to her that it just wasn’t working out. I should have prefaced this bit by mentioning that I am a prolific joker, but I’m mentioning it now; If a situation gets a bit... uncomfortable, or if a question hits a tad too close to home, my first instinct is to fire off a quick (and usually sarcastic) joke. I chuckle, they chuckle, the tension is usually broken and we move on. It's a defence mechanism, I know that. The similarities between me and Chandler are frequently noted. But CHRIST, every time a reflex-joke would pop out – and let it be said now, it happened fucking often – she would nod, write it down on her little pad then ask me to explain why I said that. And really, there are only so many ways, or indeed times, you can say, 'It was a joke. Remember how I do that?' before the literal beating of your head against a wall becomes preferable to the figurative, right?

A few weeks back, struck all deer-in-headlights when she turned her Expectant Therapist Eyes and asked me a question about my 'feelings' that I didn’t quite understand, I started comparing my lack of answers to a box with the word Answers written on it. But when you open the box, it's empty. Devoid of anything useful. I kept wittering on, filling the silence. Maybe it contains a lone tangerine, or something, to really drive home the lack of answers. And, bless her, she drew the box on her sheet of paper, labelled it answers and wrote 'tangerine' in it. Then asked 'Why a tangerine?' And for a moment, I was left flapping in the proverbial breeze, staring at her in amazed confusion. But of course, I explained that the tangerine wasn't important, it was a metaphorical tangerine anyway, it could have been a sharpener, for gods sake. But in that moment, I couldn’t help but lose most of my respect for her and her abilities to 'cure me'. Or take her that seriously, to be honest.

SO. Today, I’m not ashamed to say, I took some amusement in informing her that I would not be coming back. She accurately pointed out that this was reminiscent of my need to take control of situations. I agreed, it really is. And I enjoyed that facet of the experience, I like having control. But that is not the point.

The point, is the level of GUILT P laid on me. I mean, I was expecting some resistance, obviously. Words like 'relapse' were deployed, as well as 'healthy weight' and 'unhealthy patterns', they bounced off my anorexia energy shield though, so I’m holding strong. (DING! Video Game Geek) But they were discarded as offensive weapons surprisingly quickly, less than 10 minutes into a 45 minute appointment.

A quick change of tactics and she turned on the Disappointed Therapist Eyes, she spoke (at length) about how far I'd come in such a short time, and how sad it was that I was throwing all that progress away, and how she hoped that it had nothing to do with any personal feelings regarding her. In the internal struggle against the urge to quip that it partly was because she seemed apparently humourless (because the wrong thing to say is always so much funnier than the right thing, isn’t it?), near the end, bucking under the combined pressure of her guilt-trip and my need to joke, I began to compulsively reassure her that this wasn't a reflection on our relationship as therapist-patient and bargain with monthly follow-up appointments in attempts to get her to turn off those goddamn EYES.

I can't handle her eyes. They're so wide and earnest and fucking inquisitive and GOD, at the best of times they make me want to put a physical barrier between me and them so she can't see into my soul and know that I’m lying to her about my intake. But when she turned on the silent disappointed therapist face I was at a fucking loss.

And so, monthly follow ups. Because I am powerless against her eyes. I decided in the stairwell that after one or two of those I might be able to work up to never seeing her again. Ever. Meanwhile, I’m looking into some sort of antidote to her powers.

I’m optimistic.

NOTE: To Elle, you commented on a previous post love, but I can't find any way to reply on your profile. It IS possible that I'm being blogger-illiterate though, I wouldn't rule it out. Help me out?