1. Before your first appointment, you are nervous as fuck.
Especially if this is your first time going to therapy, you don't know what to expect. Will you vomit the first time you open your mouth? Sob for 45 minutes straight? WHO KNOWS. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IN THERAPY.
2. You're afraid you'll have to lie down on a couch and talk to some bald guy.
3. But in reality you'll just be sitting on a couch talking to a bald guy.
"Mmm hmm, but how does that make you feel?"
4. In the beginning, you do a lot of awkward staring and sitting in silence before you actually manage to say anything.
5. But then you notice that after you finish a sentence, they just awkwardly stare at you and don't say anything.
6. And you're just like...
7. And yet they just keep staring.
8. Soon, ugly crying about your childhood in front of a relative stranger quickly becomes part of your weekly routine.
9. Sometimes they ask you to explain shit that you have no words to describe or explain.
I JUST DON'T KNOW, OK?
10. And sometimes their explanations for things are so mind-boggling that you're just like:
11. When you're mid-sob but your time is up so you have to walk out of your therapist's office looking like this.
12. Or when you can tell they're trying their best to stifle a yawn, but are failing miserably.
13. When you don't feel like having to explain that no, you can't go to the pub because you have AN APPOINTMENT WITH YOUR THERAPIST.
14. When you say something you think is pretty insightful and revealing, and they don't write it down.
15. Or when you make a throwaway comment about never really liking your grandmother much and they write that down.
16. You spend a lot of time staring at the bland items they've used to furnish their office.
17. The stupid house plant you stare at while talking about how that made you feel.
18. Or the horrid abstract art you concentrate on when you're trying not to have a panic attack and it only makes it worse because LOOK AT IT.
19. You also stare a lot at the coat they've hung up somewhere in the office, like it's a clue to who they are in real life.
20. You also speculate a lot about your therapist's personal life. If they're single, or if they have any pets. But most important, if they talk about you at the pub with their friends.
21. Until one day, you spot them in the wild.
22. And they notice you've seen them.
23. You awkwardly acknowledge each other's existence, and then swiftly move in opposite directions.
24. You wonder about your therapist's other patients, and if there's anyone with similar issues who you could be friends with.
25. You regularly check out and speculate about the other patients in the lobby, waiting for something like this to happen.
26. And you've definitely checked Tinder in the waiting room, increasing the chances that you'll meet someone totally normal.
27. But ultimately, even though it can be rough and awkward AF, it is nice to have someone to talk to.
