Just maybe the truth is safe here.

I calculated the other day I've had no less than 18 shrinks. Yeah for real. I've been fully obsessed with a couple of them. Like obsessed, it takes all my restraint not ot stalk them. I think about them constantly, and have imaginary conversations with them all day long. I've sometimes seen more than one at a time. Sometimes they know about each other, sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a marriage counsellor. Sometimes it's a therapist, a social worker and a counsellor. I guess I'm kind of a therapy junkie. I don't know how I'd go without someone giving me their regular undivided attention, rescuing me, intrigued by me, filled with compassion toward me, laughing and crying with me. I make a fascinating client, a favourite even, but one thing I've worked out clear and simple. When I lie, they love me. When I don't, they can't get rid of me fast enough.

I don't lie to everyone, in fact if you don't know me too well, you can trust every word I say, but if you wedge your way in, get hooked, my story will start. It's filled with parts of my history, and the rest? well that I call my her-story.

I also don't lie about everything. If I'm undercharged at the supermarket, I'll give the money back. If I'm upset with you, I'll tell you so. I really do have a high IQ, and a couple of degrees and have travelled the world. But I have this one particular story I've lived and breathed, and almost always believed. Until recently, I took some anti-psychotic medication. My head cleared. I saw the story was just a story.

I did the bravest thing of my entire life, and told someone I'd been sitting opposite for almost two years pouring out the contents of my factured soul, that almost everything they knew or suspected about me isn't. It was the most terrifying moment of my life. Then I told my best friend to whome I have been feeding spoilers to my story since out 16 years friendship began, it's not true. I lied. Then I went and told an old shrink I had seen almost weekly for seven years that all of that, all of that, wasn't true. I told another dear friend who has waded through endless pages of prolific emails for eigtht years, reading my story. Over a game of pool in a bar I told a random new friend of only couple of weeks, who has never heard my story, that I'd been living a lie all this time.

I haven't told my husband yet.

I don't really know how to live without my story.

But I guess I'm doing that, here and now.

It's terrifying.

Isynia Mind