Kathleen

'Hi Monique, I'm Kathleen, I'll be seeing you today.'

Spoken with those softly-softly spifer web-words of someone trying ever so hard to be unconfronting. 

I'm not sure how the professionals do it, but they must train their voices; take classes to make their voices form the words differently. They seem to weigh less in the air, how feathers glide over the skin so breifly like they were never there. 

"Ok, great, it's good to meet you." I said, my words so much less subtle as I try to hide the sound of her words grating against my mind with their emblemished senstivity. Meek like knives.

The room Kathleen lead me into was airless, and by a great leap of progress in design, the windows don't open.

The chairs were fake blue suede; boxing and square. 

After explainantions of legal matters and the signing of concent, Kathleen asked the envitable,

"So tell me why you have come to see a psychologist - what sort of problems are you wanting to discuss here."

I cringed at the word 'problem'. Perhaps they were not problems at all, perhaps they were just perspective that I wished to change, habits that need guiding, thoughts that needed tidying. Problems sounds so grave. Problems sounds like that needed solutions, and solutions are a lot like conclusions-find-the-answer-and-put-it-in-a-box-move-on-it's-fixed-now. I don't see the  world like that. I just want to go on a journey inside myself and take Kathleen with me, so that we could both try to understand myself a little better.

Within five  minute of me explaining, in tangents and wall-of-words styling, I knew it was not I who was meeting Kathleen, but she who was meeting me.