I've been feeling sad recently. Particularly last night and today. Besieged by bad memories. I've been doing a lot of crying.

I came into T's room full of anxiety. He said I seemed frustrated. I knew what it was - it was the effort of trying to hold in all the sadness. I think I felt that if I let it go it would be too much for either of us to handle... and yet trying to hold it in didn't seem like a great plan either.

We sat for quite a while in sadness. I was clutching my favourite feather elephant cushion to my chest and sobbing quietly. I made the half-joking comment that at least if we sat in silence for fifty minutes it might feel like a long time instead of being over far too quickly. T said he was happy just to sit with me.

We sat a bit longer.

I said I was sad. He asked what the sadness was about. I said I didn't know. Everything, maybe. I couldn't find the words. He said he couldn't work out if I wanted him to leave me alone or not. I said I didn't want him to leave me alone... I wanted him to make everything better. He said he wasn't sure he could do that. I said he definitely couldn't. I cried some more.

He asked if I'd like to try to explore my sadness in a different way, and gestured towards the sand tray. I said yes - okay. I wasn't sure but I figured it was worth a try.

He got the sand tray set up in front of me... while he did this I was curled in a tight ball, knees to my chest, gripping the cushion, shaking slightly with sobbing. For some reason I felt extremely vulnerable.

I swirled my hand around in the sand as soon as I had the chance. I like how it feels - cold and smooth and gently tickly. It was calming.

I said I didn't know what to do, where to start. He said not to think about it, to just pick some objects I was drawn to and put them in the tray.

There was a sweet, dumpy little girl clutching a puppy and a kitten in her arms. I put her in the middle of the tray. Then I surrounded her with things - monsters, mysterious obstacles, spiky things, foliage right in front of her face so she couldn't see. Then I balanced a little dragon on her head.

Then I found my soul frog (who I used in a previous sand tray) and buried her.

T asked me about it a bit... I said the girl was me - innocent, pure me. Little me. He asked about the dragon on my head, asked what words I would use to describe it... I said it was spiky and sinister. He asked what it feels like to have a dragon on my head. I said... I think I said tiring.

I paused. He asked what I was thinking.

I said I was thinking about a conversation I'd had with a friend the night before. My friend had talked about how being pregnant had been difficult for them, and I said I had found it difficult too - I was sick a lot.



I said if I could vomit up all my bad memories that's what they'd look like.

T asked if that's what all the stuff surrounding me in the sand was - the bad memories. I said yes, that's what a lot of it is. Some of it is stuff that's going on right now.

T asked me to change the sand tray - make it how I would like it to be. First I went to bury the 'bad things'... then I realised that was no good, that's what I try to do most of the time anyway and it doesn't work - they're still there, lurking. So I lined them up in a neat row, made a slight incline with the sand opposite them, and placed little Luc there looking across. Then I dug up the soul frog and put her by little Luc's side.

T asked how it felt to look at that. I started to say I felt sad, because that's how I wanted things to be and they weren't that way... But then T pointed out that I was smiling. I said... now they're over there in a line like that those objects don't look so scary, so horrible, so threatening. They look... interesting. They look like a journey to take, an adventure to have.

I started to feel happier looking at the scene in front of me.

T asked me to find some 'allies' to join soul frog and little Luc... I looked in the basket and very quickly knew what to choose... I rather triumphantly picked them out, placed them flanking the girl and the frog, and grinned. Dinosaurs!

We talked a bit about the dinosaurs. T asked how I would describe them. I said... brave and curious. He asked if that's how I'd like to be about the prospect of exploring some of my bad memories with him. I said yes. Then I got kind of smiley again and he asked what I was thinking...

I said I thought the dinosaur on the left was him.

He smiled... and said that he was ready to be 'courageously curious' (a combination of words which he had some trouble pronouncing) with me if I wanted to explore. Then he said he'd back off too if I wanted him to - that we could do it at my pace.

I got my phone out to take a picture of the tray and T asked if he could take one too. He took one from directly above, and showed it to me, and I said... no, that's not right, you have to see it from my angle.

Then there was a weird moment where I thought - oh, he might sit next to me, oh, what if he thinks I'm trying to get him to sit next to me, oh no - and so I leapt off the sofa still clutching my cushion and gave him space to take a picture.

He asked what title I'd give the scene. After some discussion I settled on calling it "Assessing the Situation".

Then I took the sand tray apart. We still had twenty minutes left. We spoke about my partner - again. I said that I'd found it a great relief to spend the previous session telling him all the resentments I held that I couldn't tell anyone else. Sharing all the pain and sadness and anger that I'm holding on to. But that whenever I talk to him about how bad things with my partner are, I feel more attached to him.

He said "I think you really don't like being alone."

I was surprised - it's true, incredibly true. But I didn't know where it had come from, why he'd said that. I said "...yes...?"

He said he thought that the more I distance myself from my partner, the more I think about leaving, the more attached I get to him.

I said... yeah, that makes sense.

He said... something about how he'd try to help me, by being 'transparently honest' (a phrase I raised my eyebrows at - 'cos I don't believe he's as transparently honest as he claims to be) - he said that his being that way would challenge the fantasies I have about him.

I don't think that's true. The more honest he is with me the more I love him. It's not that simple.

But I didn't say that. He saw the sceptical expression on my face and said "ah... you don't agree?" and we laughed, and I said "I have a minute and a half left."

...and then I curled up on the sofa and watched my last ninety seconds tick away, trying to crystallise that moment of being there with him, trying to commit the smell and the temperature and the texture of the cushions to memory.