In a room with a huge photograph of Paris and another photograph of the pedestrian part of a suspension bridge, a woman with light brown, bobbed hair, scanned the room thinking of how she would start the conversation off with her psychiatrist. Her eyes kept returning to a window, which she couldn’t see out of.

“ So how have you been Carol?”

“Okay.” Carol said, although she wanted to say, “I am feeling crap today. I don’t feel as crap as I did before I started taking antidepressants but my old mindset is back again.”

“ How is Eleni?” the psychiatrist asked with his calm voice and relaxed posture.

“Eleni is stressed as usual. We are going to see universities this summer to see where she wants to study in the UK.” Carol commented but thought “ Eleni is always biting my head off. It hurts sometimes the way she treats me and sometimes I think she thinks I am her own personal servant.”

“I wish she didn’t see everything in black and white. I hope she grows out of it because life is grey. It’s very, very grey. Eleni is not very forgiving when I get things wrong-” Carol continued.

“What about Tina?” her psychiatrist asked.

“ She’s fine but she is quiet as usual.”but what Carol wanted to say was, "I’m worried that Tina would suffer in silence instead of asking for help if she has problems. Have I caused Tina mental anguish when I was at the bottom of the ocean where my emotions were concerned?Or when I barely made it up to the surface to breathe air?

“Why can’t I say these words to you? Why can’t I explain how guilty I feel for what emotional damage I could have caused my girls?”

“How’s your father?” he asked again.

“My dad is fine. He’s found some friends.He goes to church and he’s met a lot of people there.” she said this while thinking “He drives me crazy sometimes by the way he worshipped and still worships my mum.

“She was nowhere near perfect. She thought she was perfect that’s why she used to be so angry at some people and life. My mother couldn’t understand her faults. She never wanted to. She wouldn’t accept responsibility for what she had done wrong in life. She didn’t know that emotional abuse was abuse as well. She didn’t even understand that she was emotionally abusing my brother and I. To her only physical abuse existed, there was no other way to mentally affect a child. It was beyond her comprehension. Truthfully, my mother needed to be in therapy but there is no way that she understood that she needed this.Even if she talked to a psychiatrist she would have only heard what she wanted to hear. I suppose all narcissists are like that.”

“Have you been doing any exercise lately?” he asked again

“I’ve been going to Pilates three times a week”

“What about swimming?”

“I have done a little swimming.” Carol said but didn’t want to admit that she had only been once this month. It was September and school had started and she had to walk Tina halfway to school because Tina was afraid a stray dog might bite her. It meant that Carol found it hard to motivate herself to go straight after she walked Tina to school. Not only that, Carol was always trying to push Eleni out of the door to prevent the latter being late for school. Sometimes she ended up driving Eleni because Eleni was so late. She would later find out this was because Eleni had dyslexia and found it difficult to plan her time and did not understand the concept of time. Eleni always thought she had more time than she did!

A lot of the time Carol got into a routine and before she knew it was time to make lunch. She knew that swimming had to be slotted in before she started doing household chores. It was a good way to wake her up before starting housework and make the latter easier to do, but Carol needed actual determination to change her routine until it became second nature. The sea is near Carol and when she goes for a swim, she is amazed about how wonderful and beautiful nature is. It just makes her feel like it is good to be alive. It makes her realise how lucky she is to live near the sea and the fact it doesn’t take that much of her day to be able to enjoy nature. So why couldn’t she motivate herself to change her routine? Carol just didn’t know why she couldn’t inspire herself.

Carol is so lucky to go and see a beautiful view of blue clear water and see fish swimming round her feet as she wades out to swim. It isn’t exactly free to swim because she still has to drive there but when she arrives there it is so peaceful. It calms her. It doesn’t smell like chlorine and the sea is clean and unpolluted. Carol knows that she should do it more often because it makes her feel better but at the moment she feels guilty because she doesn’t adjust her routine to suit her needs. She also feels like she is failing her doctor. Carol feels like she is failing her psychiatrist by not doing something to help herself.

“And doctor, do I deserve to be happy? I have been a stay at home mother who has done odd jobs here and there but none of them have been steady and mostly I have worked from home. Am I as good as everyone else? What about my past sins, shouldn't I pay for them?”she thought to herself. Carol knew she should say these thoughts out loud but she couldn’t say this to her doctor. She worried he would be shocked. Carol didn’t want to go into all that stuff about her mother and father and maybe even a bit about her brother. It’s the past and Carol believes that it is better for her to work through it on her own.

Carol didn’t know if she told her psychiatrist that she is writing a diary from time to time. Maybe she had, maybe she hadn’t, she couldn’t remember. She writes the diary when she becomes really anxious, when something bothers her or when the past is haunting and hurting her or she is in the middle of a panic attack. Writing her diary was also to help her work through her feelings for her mother, father and brother and how she felt about her mother dying of cancer. It contained the feelings that she really felt about her mother’s death. It didn’t have feelings the other people told her to have or feelings that she expected her father or brother thought she should have.

Eleni said that she

Eleni

is journaling and that it is different from writing a diary. Eleni told Carol to google it. Carol googled it and found it was the same thing. She was tired of everyone saying to Google it as if Google was the answer to every question you could possibly have. Sometimes Google just didn’t cut it. It wasn’t always easy to control your emotions. Even by reading articles in psychology that could be found on Google sometimes she felt that she couldn’t get right.

“ Swimming is great when I am there because I can enjoy nature and where I go swimming it’s like being on an island. It’s beautiful. I feel very lucky when I am there and so glad I live in Greece,” Carol said after a pause of unexpressed thoughts.

“ Yeah, it’s great isn’t it so promise me you’ll do more swimming,” the psychiatrist said.

“ Ok, I’ll try,” Carol said weakly and unenthusiastically, wondering whether she would be able to keep that promise to herself or her doctor. She knew that she always wanted to please everyone. But sometimes Carol felt like rebelling and saying no I can’t do that. And she felt like saying I have to do things my way because that helps me to cope and be happy. She also wanted to say that she was tired of trying to live up to everyone’s expectations.

“Ok, let’s go into the other room.” the doctor said, ushering her out of his office.

He led her to his receptionist’s office and talked to the receptionist in Greek.

“ Send my regards to your family. See you next time. I want to see you in a month’s time,” the doctor said to Carol.

Carol stayed with the receptionist as the doctor left the room to go to his next patient. Carol waited for a prescription for her antidepressants which she needed because her brain doesn’t produce enough serotonin. She was still disappointed with herself for not saying all she needed to say but she also thought that some things were better unsaid. Carol knew that she was a woman of contradicting emotions and every day she had to try over and over again to feel happy inside of herself.