Yeah, I started therapy, which already feels like a sentence that should come with a disclaimer, because I didn’t start because of any one dramatic collapse or flaming wreckage or moment where someone had to gently take a glass out of my hand and say, “Maybe talk to a professional,” no, this was more… preventative, aspirational, like emotional flossing, like when your car isn’t making a noise yet but you can feel the brakes watching you, silently disappointed, and you think, okay, maybe I address this now before it starts screaming on the highway. That was me. General maintenance. A tune-up. A vibe check for the soul. So I go looking for a therapist and I land on this practice called “Inner Bloom,” which should have been my first red flag, because in hindsight that sounds less like mental healthcare and more like either a tantric yoga retreat or a euphemism for vaginal rejuvenation, but at the time I was like, sure, growth, flowers, feelings, whatever, I click the button, I book the session, I commit, and suddenly I’m sitting there thinking, wow, look at me, a person who addresses things instead of just developing a new personality flaw around them. The therapist’s name is Theo. Just Theo. No last name energy. And immediately my brain goes, no one named Theo has ever said, “Repress your emotions and go into accounting.” This is not a man who owns a spreadsheet. This is a man who owns feelings. He opens the door, and I almost walk back out, not because he did anything wrong, but because Theo is… tall, and freckled, and soft-spoken, and has this whole look like he writes poetry about abandoned teacups and means it, like there’s a notebook somewhere filled with careful observations about light and loss, and I sit down, delicately, crossing my legs in a way that suggests I’m either extremely polite or about to confess to something deeply inappropriate—which, in fairness, I absolutely am—and before he even says a word my brain, fully unhelpful, fully feral, just goes, you could absolutely wreck him, and I have to blink, physically blink, like I can reboot myself if I try hard enough, and I think, not the goal, brain, focus, we are here for healing, not destruction, and then he says, very calmly, very professionally, “What brings you here today?” and I hear myself answer, without pause, “Poor impulse control and a knack for ruining things that feel like they matter,” which is, frankly, the most honest sentence I’ve said out loud in a while, and he smiles, just a small, understanding smile, and something inside me melts like butter left out too long, and suddenly I’m aware of my posture and my tone and the fact that I am making eye contact like it’s a competitive sport, and I try to steer it back toward sanity, toward symptoms, toward goals, toward something that could be written in a file without raising eyebrows, and he nods at everything I say like I’m brilliant and tragic and also maybe a sex goddess, which I know, intellectually, is his job, active listening, validation, therapeutic presence, I get it, I really do, but it is also… working, aggressively so, and by the end of the session I walk out with this strange, buzzing certainty that I am either on the brink of real emotional growth or I have accidentally seduced my therapist through sheer force of personality, and honestly, it might be both, and that feels like a very Tallulah outcome.

So week two, right, I walk in feeling brave, which should have been my first warning sign, because any time I describe myself as brave what I really mean is under-supervised. I’m upright in the chair, posture of a person who has read exactly one self-help article and taken it personally, eyes wide, hands doing that fluttery thing like they’re trying to catch my thoughts before they escape my mouth and ruin my reputation, and I tell myself—very deliberately—Tallulah, this is therapy. This is a sacred space. This is where we are open. Honest. Vulnerable. Hydrated. Emotionally hydrated. Which, in retrospect, was optimistic. And then I open. Not gently. Not thoughtfully. I open like a floodgate with boundary issues and a weak lock, and the water is already halfway down the street before I even realize I’ve touched the handle. I start with what I believe, in that moment, is a harmless anecdote, a charming little icebreaker, a fun humanizing detail, which is the time I accidentally sexted my gynecologist. And yes, okay, that sentence alone should have tipped me off that I was not easing into anything, but still, context matters. It was a mistake. A genuine, logistical error. And in my defense—and I stand by this—they have the same name as the guy I was seeing at the time. Dr. Chase. Same name. Same first name, same last name, same little mental folder in my brain labeled people I text when I shouldn’t be awake. So is it really my fault that Chase-with-the-speculum saw more than he bargained for? I don’t think so. I think that’s a clerical error at best. A systems failure. A lesson in why phones should come with sobriety tests. There’s a beat after I say this, where I’m waiting for concern, or horror, or at least a gentle redirection, but instead Theo laughs. And this is dangerous. Because one laugh—just one—and something in me flips. Like a switch. Or a trapdoor. I turn into a one-woman cabaret of emotional striptease, sequins flying, spotlight on my worst decisions, and suddenly I’m not just sharing, I’m performing. The words start coming out faster than my internal editor can tackle them to the ground. I’m talking about my unresolved daddy issues, the kind you could diagram with arrows and footnotes. I’m talking about my erotic art exhibit—yes, the real one—titled Do Not Date This Woman, which I swear was ironic but also maybe a cry for help. I’m talking about the pegging incident, and I don’t just say it, I demonstrate it, which is when my hands really betray me, because apparently they have memories too and would like to contribute. At some point, without planning it, without rehearsal, I hear myself say, very calmly, very sincerely, “I think I use sex like a crash-test dummy for emotional intimacy.” And there’s a pause. A real one. The kind where you could hear a pen drop or a coping mechanism collapse. Then I add, because apparently I’m incapable of letting sincerity sit unaccompanied, “…with better underwear.” And Theo—bless him—doesn’t even flinch. He just nods. Calm. Serene. Like a monk who has seen some things but has made peace with all of them. And somehow that makes it worse. Because if he’d reacted, if he’d gasped or blinked or gently suggested we pivot, I might have slowed down. But no. His composure is fuel. I spiral harder. Faster. I am now fully committed to telling the truth, the whole truth, and several metaphors I have not tested in advance. By the end of the session I am sweating, spiritually and otherwise, and I hear myself ask—because why not, we’re already here—“Is it normal to process trauma through sarcasm and strap-ons?” And he pauses. A professional pause. A measured pause. The kind that means he is selecting words carefully from a drawer labeled things that will not get me sued. And then he says, very gently, “It’s not uncommon.” Which I know. I know. That is therapist code. That is the verbal equivalent of patting my shoulder and thinking, you are deeply unhinged, but I legally cannot say that out loud.

So. Week three. And I say that the way you say week three when it already feels like a season finale, when patterns have emerged, when the furniture has absorbed secrets. I walk in, sit down in the chair that still doesn’t quite agree with my spine, and instead of easing into it, instead of talking about my sleep schedule or my coffee intake or the way I overthink punctuation in text messages, I just say it. I say, “We need to talk about the dream,” and the moment the words leave my mouth I know there is no graceful exit from this sentence, no emergency hatch in the ceiling, no fire drill scheduled for emotional emergencies. Theo adjusts his glasses. Which is a small movement, really, a nothing gesture, but in this context it feels ceremonial, like a priest straightening his stole or a man bracing himself before opening a door marked Do Not Enter Unless You’re Ready. He looks intrigued. He looks concerned. There is a third possibility hovering in the room that I refuse to label definitively, because I am a grown woman and I do not need to speculate out loud about my therapist’s internal weather, so let’s just say: unconfirmed. I keep going, because if you stop now you die. That’s the rule. I say, very clearly, because clarity feels important at moments like this, “In the dream, I was on a gondola.” Already bad. Already Italy has entered the chat. “You were the gondolier.” Worse. “Shirtless.” Catastrophic. “Quoting Carl Jung.” In Italian. Which I do not speak, by the way, so this was my subconscious free-associating accents and authority figures with confidence I do not possess. I pause, because I have learned that pauses are supposed to help. They do not help. And then I add, because my brain has no internal editor once the gates are down, “And then you pulled a paddle out of nowhere—like some kind of divine sex oracle—and you said, ‘Your transference has been very, very naughty.’” He does not smile. Which, honestly, is professional of him. Instead, he says, in the exact tone one might use to describe weather patterns or filing systems, “Dreams often reflect unconscious processing.” Unconscious processing. Right. So what I am hearing is that I am processing my trust issues through erotic metaphors involving European watercraft and my therapist’s abs. Fantastic. Love that for me. Glad we found a language my psyche enjoys. I tell him, because I feel the need to establish precedent, that I’ve had erotic dreams before. This is not new. This is not a sudden outbreak. There was one with a mime once, which raised a lot of questions about silence and consent that I did not pursue. But this one—this one felt personal. Directed. Like it had notes. Like it knew my deductible. Theo shifts in his chair. He is still composed. He remains, visually, a man doing his job. But I swear I see his left eye twitch, just a fraction, just enough for my brain to latch onto it like a raccoon finding a shiny object in the trash. And before I can stop myself, before the last remaining adult in my head can grab the microphone, I say, “For the record, in the dream, you were very emotionally available.” I say this as if it is a compliment. As if I am offering him a Yelp review. He says, “That’s good.” Which is, objectively, the correct response. And I say, without hesitation, without reflection, without mercy, “It’s the most erotic thing anyone’s ever been.” And then there is silence. Not awkward silence. Not heavy silence. Just that blank, museum-grade quiet where you can hear the building breathe and every thought you’ve ever had lines up to be judged. And then—and this is the moment where future me will want to reach back through time and gently close my mouth with her hand—I say the thing I should not say. I say, “Would it help the therapeutic process if I just got naked and yelled about my childhood?” Theo blinks. Once. Slowly. Like a man rebooting. And that’s when it hits me, finally, mercifully, with absolute clarity: this is no longer therapy. This is performance art. And I am apparently both the artist and the installation.

Okay. Okay, Tallulah. Let’s just—let’s just sit with this for a second. Because maybe I crossed a line. Maybe I gently stepped over it, maybe I pole-vaulted it, maybe I saw the line, waved at it, and then built a small, tasteful gazebo directly on top of it. Maybe multiple lines. Maybe I didn’t just cross lines, maybe I connected them, shaded them in, and produced an entire erotic coloring book, carefully themed, alphabetized, and then handed it to my therapist with a wink like this was a perfectly normal thing people do on a Tuesday afternoon. And after the session—after the room, the chair, the careful nodding, the professional calm that now feels suspicious in hindsight—I walk to the nearest café because that’s what you do when your brain is buzzing like it’s been lightly electrocuted, and I order a decaf oat milk latte because I am clearly a person who wants chaos emotionally but boundaries chemically, and I sit down and just… stop. I stare into the foam like it’s going to tell me something. Like the answer is hidden there in the bubbles. Or at least the Wi-Fi password to inner peace. Something. Anything. A sign. A latte-based oracle. And of course my brain doesn’t give me quiet. It gives me a replay. Full highlight reel. Slow motion. Director’s cut. Did I actually say, out loud, in a room designed for healing, “emotional availability is my kink”? Did those words leave my body and enter the world without being stopped by any internal emergency brake? Did I really compare my inner child to a horny possum trapped in a guilt maze, complete with gestures, like I was pitching an animated series that will never get made but absolutely should not have been pitched there? Did I compliment his cuticles. His. Cuticles. Like I was a Victorian lady at a ball trying to flirt within the strict confines of polite society. And the worst part is that there’s no mystery here. No ambiguity. No “maybe I imagined it.” No. Yes. Yes, Tallulah. And… yes. So I take out my phone, because this is how I process shame now, and I google—without hesitation, without irony—“Can you fire your therapist for being too hot?” as if this is a common administrative issue, like changing dentists or canceling a gym membership. And spoiler alert: no. You cannot. But you can ghost him. That’s apparently an option. A terrible, unethical, emotionally immature option. And I consider it. Briefly. I imagine it. The clean break. The dramatic disappearance. The narrative simplicity of vanishing like a misunderstood character at the end of a season. But no. I can’t leave. I’m in too deep. I have unpacked too many boxes and left them open. And honestly—honestly—where else am I going to find someone who listens to me talk about vulva-shaped protest art with a straight face and doesn’t even blink? That’s not transferable. That’s not something you just start over with. So I text a friend, because when in doubt, outsource your sanity. I give her the abridged version, which is still long, and she responds immediately with, “Girl. He’s seen your soul and your Pinterest board. Just embrace it.” And I stare at that sentence for a long time, because it feels uncomfortably accurate, and I text back, “What if my soul is my Pinterest board?” And she doesn’t even hesitate. She sends me a gif of a raccoon eating trash, eyes wild, fully committed to the moment, and says, “Exactly.” And I sit there in the café, foam collapsing slowly like my remaining illusions, and I exhale. Not a dramatic exhale. Just a tired one. The kind that admits defeat without making a scene. So I book next week’s session. I open the calendar. I click the time. I commit. And I make a promise to myself. Next time, less flirting. More healing. And no gondolas.