Tag Archives: Isla Dennes

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“I have nothing. No husband. No friends. No life. Nothing. I might as well be dead!”

Through a veil of tears, I stared at the wilting rubber plant in the corner and tried to pretend I was anywhere but there. I don’t think I could have been any more mortified. I sounded like a hack Shakespearean actor.

Crossing her arms over her matronly bosom, Margarita pushed a fresh box of tissues toward me before settling back in her chair. She didn’t appear the least bit put out by my hysterics and I wondered what it would take to get some kind of reaction from her. Talk about detached. Fifty minutes into our first session and she hadn’t even opened her mouth to impart any words of life-altering wisdom? For all I knew, she could be compiling her week’s menus and their subsequent shopping list in her head. Was it possible my father had stumbled across the only deaf-mute therapist in the country?

“Therapy. I still can’t believe I’m here,” I mumbled tearfully. Had I not been so totally consumed by my own misery, I would have been burning up with shame. “Who goes to therapy, anyway?” I cried, ignoring the frown appearing on Margarita’s face. “I’ll tell you who—celebrities, bored middle-aged housewives, people who’ve taken to curling up in corners and sucking their thumbs. Total nutters, that’s who! Not me.”

This had to be a mistake. I didn’t belong there. I didn’t want to belong there. I wanted to have my life back. But the very act of coming to therapy was in itself an admission I had failed at being a grown-up and was in need of rescuing.

On the drive there, I’d made a promise to myself not to get all caught up in that whole touchy-feely crap. Sure, I might have been led dazed and blinking from the dark recesses of my room?and my mind for that matter?clutching a ratty old stuffed rabbit, my normally well-behaved shoulder-length mousy-brown hair long gone wild and my usually striking blue eyes dulled and barely recognizable. But make no mistake, I was there for one reason and one reason only, and that was to get Dad off my back and, in the process, prove to him what a complete waste of everyone’s time and money this was. Alas, once I’d settled into that arse-numbing chair?no sign of a comfy leather couch, much to my disappointment?the silence, combined with the sympathy emanating from every pore of Margarita’s round face, had triggered something in my brain—the blabbing switch. Before I could stop it, my runaway mouth had embarked on a journey of its own, climaxing in my recent outburst, still hovering in the air between us like a bad smell no one wants to acknowledge.

God, what have I done? Unfortunately, I couldn’t take it all back now. I looked expectantly across to the Beige Linen Oracle—as she was from that moment christened—for any sign she’d come up with the magical solution for my ruined life. I’d done my bit. Surely it was up to her now to sort out this mess? But no, she merely stared back expectantly.

Waiting for exactly what, I wondered? A complete mental breakdown? By this time, I was little alarmed. Am I a lost cause? Maybe I really was losing my mind. Great, this is all I need. If it wasn’t bad enough to be a twenty-six-year-old recently discarded wife, on top of that I was doomed to suffer the additional humiliation of losing the plot, going la-la, floundering in the emotional cesspool of life without a float.