Therapy

Part 1

A/N: Hi, sorry, this is kind of a reupload or more of a rearranging of content. This used to be in "Getting what you want" but it became a real story so it is it's own entity now. 
/N 

"And was that the first time you had one of those... episodes" Her eyes were deep blue and her demeanor calm and collected.

Truthfully I didn't even know what to call what happened to me. It was an ordinary day, just like any other, but for some reason things went sideways. I was watching my husband barbecuing from the kitchen while our kids, our perfect kids, were playing in the garden. This was not new, this was not out of the ordinary but all of a sudden my lungs stopped working. From the day we are born our bodies simply know what to do, but all of a sudden it forgot, it forgot how to breathe. I became very aware of each breath. I started to panic. Small black sports appeared in my peripheral vision and I knew that this was it. My lungs had failed for one reason or another and I was dying. I slid down the cabinets that had kept me upright and I was on the cold tiled floor.

"I don't know" I answered. It was the truth. I had never experienced 'that' before but I was unsure because of what they told me at the hospital later that same night. They called it a panic attack.

When I was a child I used to have these blackouts. When school got too hard or whenever dad would scream I would just kind of... go blank. When it happened at my 4th grade graduation ceremony my best friend at the time, Andy, told me that I just sat down and stared into the wall. No one had ever told me what happened during my blackouts until then, not until Andy. I was relieved that it wasn't something more embarrassing. I didn't pee myself or collapse convulsing on the floor. He told me that when it happened he sat with me and held my hand until I came back.

He was a funny fish, that boy. Even as children people would remark on what a heartbreaker he would be. There is something really strange in grown people's speculations about children's attractiveness. Andy heard it a lot, but even in our teen years he never cared about any of that. He didn't care about being popular, he didn't care about what others thought about him, he just wanted to be a good person. And he was, he truly was. When we met I was painfully shy and so was he. We were the only two kids that didn't speak in class. One day he sat down next to me and gave me a blueberry from his little lunchbox and from that day on, he was my best friend. It took a couple of weeks before we would actually talk to one another but we would sit in silence and share our fruit and we both agreed, in that silence, that we would be friends.

"A panic attack is often a quite severe reaction to outside factors. It is often memorable" She didn't sound condescending. It was a fact, she was just stating something she knew as a fact.

"That... That specifically never happened before" I clarified.

"But something else did?" The conversation was kept calm and professional.

It was nice talking to someone who didn't know me in the real world. She didn't know who I was or where I came from. All she knew was what she had read in my file and what I had told her. I could be anyone. It struck me that I could lie. I could use this opportunity to become a new me, but what would be the point? I was who I was. Also I don't think lying would be in my best interest seeing how I actually really needed help. This could not happen again.

I was 26 and this would be the event that turned my life around. It was after that first session I decided that I wanted to change, and after the second one I knew that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to do what she was doing. I decided to become a therapist.

My life didn't turn out all that bad. My girls grew into good and kind people. I got a divorce as soon as the youngest flew the coop. It had been a long time coming. Parts of me wish it had happened sooner but dwelling on the choices we made never made anything better, did it? We ended up having a good relationship, at one point we did love each other and we did love our kids so how could we not figure out some way to coexist. I was happy that he was the father of my children but I was also very happy to be out of that loveless marriage.

My life was stable, I dated casually and I loved my job. I couldn't ask for more.

Elenore, my first ever therapist, became a colleague. Years had passed and we had only met in professional settings so it wasn't strange when we started working for the same company. It wasn't strange that I asked her advice at times. It wasn't strange when she referred a patient to me because of their clashing schedules. So I said yes, and there was a new name in my diary: Thursdays, three o'clock, M.R.