She looked at my calendar first. Not the pretty colour-coded one I keep for work, the actual one on my phone that I never bother hiding because I figure she’s seen worse. Tuesday: three pitches due, two Zoom calls I already knew I’d mute and vape through, a Substack draft I hadn’t started. Wednesday: train to some panel in town I only said yes to because the other journos in The Coven were going and I couldn’t stand the idea of them talking about me behind my back. Thursday blank except for “write the bloody thing.” Friday I had blocked out for “admin” which everyone knows means staring at the wall and refreshing likes.
Then she asked about sleep. I told her the truth because lying to a therapist feels like extra work and I’m already knackered. Four hours if I’m lucky. Sometimes two. The 3 a.m. slot is when the ideas come or the rage comes, same difference most nights. I’ll be in bed with the cherry vape going and the laptop glowing and suddenly it’s light outside and I’ve written two thousand words that might actually be good or might be complete melt material I’ll have to delete later.
She asked about the Red Bulls next. I said six before noon on a bad day, four on a good one. Oat-milk flat whites in between because I’m not an animal. She didn’t write anything down. She just sat there in that quiet little room in Stoke Newington with the sad plant in the corner and the box of tissues I never use, and she sighed.
Not a big dramatic sigh. Not the kind you do when you’re properly fed up. Just this small, tired sound like she’d finally run out of new ways to say the same thing. That was the moment I knew she’d given up.
I’d been seeing her for fourteen months by then. Started because my editor at the time (lovely woman, proper Guardian type) noticed I was sending emails at 3:17 a.m. with subject lines like “URGENT PLEASE READ THIS I SWEAR IT’S IMPORTANT” and suggested I “talk to someone.” I picked the first name that came up on the NHS list who had availability. Didn’t even check reviews. That’s how I do most things.
At first she was all bright ideas. Sleep hygiene. I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my coffee. Have you met journalism, I said. Have you met the news cycle. Have you met me. She talked about boundaries. I told her the last time I tried a boundary a source ghosted me and the story went to someone else and I spent two days checking their view count like a nutter. She suggested cutting the energy drinks. I said I’d think about it and then bought a four-pack on the way home.
We did the usual rounds. Childhood stuff, the council estate, why I still go home every other weekend even though the train makes me want to scream. Mum’s roast, the way she looks at my face and knows immediately I’ve been surviving on vape and spite. Class stuff. Why I still feel like I have to be twice as loud and twice as quick as the privately educated lot or they’ll clock me as the girl from Basildon who got lucky. All of it true. All of it already living in my head rent-free without her help.
The work talk was harder. She wanted to know why I couldn’t just switch off. I tried to explain the particular flavour of panic that hits when you see another journalist’s thread doing numbers and yours is sitting there with forty-seven likes and a comment from your uncle saying “bit angry today love.” It’s not even about the money half the time. It’s the proof. Proof I exist. Proof the kid who used to nick extra chips from the chip shop because there were five of us and only one portion is now the one people quote.
She’d nod and do that therapist thing where they wait for you to fill the silence. I’d fill it with stories. The night I wrote a piece about some Tory’s latest mess while sitting on the bathroom floor because the Wi-Fi was better in there. The morning I realised I’d been wearing the same hoodie for four days and my blue nail polish was chipped to hell and I still went on camera anyway because the algorithm doesn’t care if you look like a wreck. The time I impulse-posted something so sharp I had to delete it before the sun came up and then spent the next week wondering if anyone had screenshotted it.
She never told me I was broken. That would have been easier, somehow. She just kept offering the same tools and I kept leaving them on the table.
The session with the sigh happened on a Thursday. I’d come straight from a Tesco run. Emergency wine, a meal deal I wasn’t going to eat, another sleeve of Red Bull because the fridge was empty. I was still in the slouchy grey hoodie I live in, hair in a bun that had given up halfway through the night, glasses slightly smudged. Bare feet in my trainers because I couldn’t be bothered with socks. Classic me.
She asked how the week had been. I said fine, which is journalist for “I haven’t slept properly since Sunday and I’m running on fumes and leftover outrage.” Then she asked to see the calendar. I handed the phone over like it was evidence.
She scrolled. Slow. I watched her face. No judgement, just this quiet inventory. Meetings stacked on meetings. Deadlines I’d already missed in my head. The little note I’d written to myself on Monday: “do not tweet after midnight you absolute melt.” I had tweeted after midnight on Tuesday, Wednesday and that very morning.
Sleep next. I told her about the 3 a.m. window. How the flat goes quiet enough that I can hear the foxes outside and that’s when my brain decides it’s time to dismantle the patriarchy in 280 characters or less. How I tell myself I’ll just do one thread and then it’s light and I’ve got a crick in my neck and the vape is empty.
Then the drinks. I listed them without thinking. First one in the kitchen while the kettle boils. Second on the way to the Overground. Third at the desk because the first two hadn’t kicked in. Fourth because the third made my hands shake and I needed to even it out. She didn’t flinch. She’d heard versions of this before.
That’s when the sigh came. Small. Almost polite. Like she’d reached the end of the script and there was nothing left to add.
I felt it in my chest more than I heard it. Not shame exactly. More like recognition. She’d seen the pattern clear as day and decided there was no point pretending a new worksheet or a breathing exercise was going to fix a woman who treats burnout like a personality trait.
I made a joke. Something about how at least I’m consistent. She smiled the tired smile of someone who’s heard every joke in the book. We talked a bit more. Surface stuff. How the Coven group chat had been extra feral that week. How I’d live-tweeted Love Island again and somehow turned a row about a recoupling into a thread about internalised misogyny that did numbers. She asked if I ever just watched something without turning it into content. I said no and we both knew it was true.
When the fifty minutes were up I put my trainers back on, thanked her, and walked out into the grey Stoke Newington afternoon. I bought another Red Bull from the corner shop before I even reached the station. Drank it on the platform. Posted a quick thing about how therapy is great until it isn’t. Got thirty-two likes in ten minutes. Felt nothing.
That night I sat on the rug in the living room, cross-legged, blue nails tapping the laptop. The sigh kept playing in my head like a loop I couldn’t turn off. Not accusing. Just there. Proof that even the professional whose job it is to believe people can change had looked at the evidence and quietly packed it in.
I thought about booking the next session and didn’t. Not out of anger. Out of honesty. What would we even talk about? The same calendar. The same four hours of sleep. The same six cans before noon. I’d walk in looking exactly the same and she’d have to find a new way to sigh.
Mum noticed the next Sunday. I was home for roast, same as always. She took one look at my face while I was peeling potatoes and said I looked peaky. I told her I was fine. She did that mum thing where she doesn’t push but she also doesn’t believe you. Later she packed me a Tupperware of leftovers “for the week” like I wasn’t a grown woman with a fridge. I ate it on the train back to Hackney and felt twelve years old again.
The job didn’t slow down. It never does. Another pitch. Another thread. Another night where I told myself I’d stop at midnight and then it was 3:17 a.m. and I was still going. The Coven kept the voice notes coming. Someone leaked something, someone else had a meltdown about a colleague’s take, I added my two penn’orth and felt briefly useful.
I still check the likes. Still feel that little spike when a piece lands and that little dip when it doesn’t. Still treat the outrage like fuel because the alternative is sitting with the quiet and I don’t know how to do that yet.
The sigh lives in my head rent-free. Not as a lecture. As a fact. Someone whose entire job is to help people get better looked at the full picture of my life and decided there was nothing left to say. That’s not nothing. That’s data.
I haven’t gone back. I tell myself I’ll find a new one when things calm down. Things never calm down. I bought a bigger pack of Red Bull last week because it worked out cheaper. I still vape in the bath with the Kindle or the laptop balanced on the side. I still write the 3 a.m. threads and delete half of them before breakfast.
Some mornings I catch myself in the bathroom mirror, messy bun, chipped blue polish, the same hoodie, and I think about that quiet sound she made. Then I make the flat white, crack the first can, and get on with it. The work is still there. The news is still terrible. The algorithm is still hungry.
I don’t know if that’s giving up or just carrying on. Probably both. The kid from the estate who learned early that you keep moving or you get left behind is still running the show. The therapist saw it clear as day. I see it too. I just haven’t worked out the next bit yet.
Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Tonight I’ll probably be up again when the foxes start. Laptop open. Vape going. Another sentence that might turn into something or might just be noise. The sigh will be there in the background, not loud, just present. Reminding me that even the person paid to believe in change had to stop believing in mine.
That’s where we are. That’s the whole story. No neat ending. No lesson learned. Just a woman in a hoodie in Hackney who knows exactly how this looks and does it anyway.