Dear Dr. J.,

This is very strange. Sometimes when I've done something I find difficult to talk about, I'll write it down, so I can take all the time I need to think about what I want you to know and not panic. Often it doesn't work like that. I'll tell myself that I don't need to rush anything, but then I'll think too hard about what to write and get het up and panicky and scared of what you'll think of me and then I'm angry at myself for chickening out of writing anything at all so I stick two fingers up at myself and write the first thing that goes through my head and then when I've finished writing I'm so utterly embarrassed by how much of a moronic freak I must come across as that I tear the page from my notebook and refuse to look at it until I'm in your waiting room and it's too late to write anything else and so I show you what I wrote and I'm always afraid to look at you when you read it because, even now I've been seeing you for, what, three months, I'm still self-conscious of what you think of me. Despite your being professionally impartial, I still worry what you think of me. That's another major difference between you and my diary. A friend asked me a couple of weeks ago what it's like having a therapist, and I told him that it's a funny kind of relationship, because I only ever meet you in the context of telling you everything I never tell anybody else, and I just have to trust that, outside office hours, you don't care. That would be the best thing.

You said once how you feel that it's always you doing the talking. Sorry. I'll try and be more open. It's just hard when you're the only one who knows all that's going on. You tell me to try opening up to some people. Well, I have, with mixed responses. One person didn't want to know at all. Another was deliberately dense. Another was surprisingly helpful, in a very passive, non-judgmental way. Maybe I'll try telling someone like Mum, or maybe my sister. Maybe not.

Thank you for your patience. I really do want to be normal.

Katherine