It started with a flat white and a lie. I told the kids I had a dentist appointment. I told my ex I had work. I didn’t. I just sat in the back of that café by the charity shop, near the plug socket that never works, with a book I wasn’t going to read and a coffee I fully intended to finish before someone asked me for anything.
I didn’t go there to find myself. I went there to remember what it felt like to not be asked questions. That’s the part no one warns you about. The constant small questions. Where’s my sock. Are we out of milk. Have you signed the form. Can I. Will you. Did you. There’s a point where you start hearing your own voice and thinking — I wouldn’t even listen to me anymore.
So yeah, I booked therapy.
Not in a dramatic, “I need help or I’ll fall apart” kind of way. Just in a “if I don’t speak to someone who doesn’t live in my house, I’m going to end up crying in front of the cashier at Fred Meyer again” kind of way. I didn’t even look the therapist up properly. I picked the one with the opening. That’s where I am. At the mercy of who has availability between school drop-off and the shop closing.
First session, she asked me why I was there. I said I didn’t know. Then I cried. Not loudly. Just one of those leaky-faced moments where you can’t find the start of it, and you definitely don’t know how to stop it. She nodded like she’d seen it a thousand times. Probably had. I apologised for crying. For rambling. For taking up space. She wrote something down and said, “You’re not here to be efficient.”
That hit harder than I expected.
I’ve been efficient for years. Efficient at packing lunches. Efficient at smiling at school gates. Efficient at pretending I’m fine when I’m one bad WhatsApp message away from setting fire to the PTA.
She said, “Most women don’t come to therapy because something happened. They come because they’ve been happening to everyone else for too long.”
I didn’t say anything back to that because I was too busy pretending not to cry again.
Anyway. Week three, she gave me a sticky note. Not metaphorically — she actually handed it to me. It said: “It’s okay to disappoint other people if it means not abandoning yourself.”
I didn’t know where to put it, so I stuck it inside the cutlery drawer. I see it when I’m hiding from the kids pretending to look for a whisk.
Since then I’ve been trying to say no more. Quietly. Not with drama. Just — no. No, I can’t make it to the meeting. No, I won’t be joining the costume committee. No, I’m not available that weekend. No, I’m not explaining why. I used to think boundaries were rude. Turns out, they’re the only reason I can still breathe.
The solo coffees are my religion now. Same café. Same dodgy plug. I take a book I never open. I don’t look at my phone. I don’t check in. I don’t post a thing. I just sit there being no one’s mum, no one’s maybe, no one’s plan B. I sit. I drink coffee. I leave.
I’m still tired. Still overwhelmed. Still contemplating moving to Portugal and running a cat sanctuary. But at least now I know I exist. Not just as a mum. As a whole, glitchy, recovering person who deserves peace without earning it.
Don’t tell anyone. Especially not the PTA.