I had a meeting with my counselor last week. So all of you who kept gently (and by the way could you be more obvious?) suggesting that I go see someone, I am—although I am loath to admit it. There is something delightful to a slight narcissist (and of course I am or I wouldn’t have a blog) about having a captive audience…even if I have to pay her. But then again, I haven’t received her bill yet.

She handed me a list of stressful events and had me circle the ones that had happened to me since January 2009. The directions said to circle all that had happened in the last two years, but I think she wanted to narrow the scope of this particular exercise so limited it to the last 9 months.

Instead of scoring it like the directions said, she handed it back to me and asked me to look over the list and tell her how I felt about what I saw. I studied it for a few minutes and then said,

“Well, my first thought is that life could be worse.”

She laughed.

I continued, “I know that’s not the answer you were looking for, but my first instinct is to say that it could be much, much worse based upon this list of bad things. I know you were looking for me to say that my life has been really stressful though.”

She nodded. Then asked, “How could it be worse?”

“Well, at least my spouse didn’t die and/or I didn’t get divorced."

I don't remember how she redirected the conversation--which she has to do often because I tend to go off on long tangents (can you tell?)

If we were scripted charaters in a TV show like Gossip Girl or Dawson's Creek where the characters have unusually extensive vocabularies and are always witty she would have responded,

"Touché."