The Waiting List

Eighteen months. That’s what they said. Eighteen months for therapy. As if trauma has a pause button and I could just hold everything together until 2027.

I called the GP. Which took three weeks to get an appointment for. Sat in a room with a doctor who had ten minutes and gave me eight of them. Described thirteen years of coercive control in the time it takes to boil a kettle. Cried. Apologised for crying. Was told not to apologise. Was given a referral.

And then. The waiting list. Eighteen months. For talking therapy. For the thing that might help me process the thing that broke me. Eighteen months of holding it together with caffeine and the shower and the notes app and the four minutes between conditioner and towel.

The system is not built for people like me. It’s built for throughput. For numbers. For ticking boxes that say “referred” and “on list” and “waiting” as if waiting is a neutral state rather than an active endurance test being performed by a woman who is also running a business and raising two children and trying not to fall apart in Tesco.

I fell apart in Tesco once. Tinned tomatoes aisle. Nothing triggered it. Or everything triggered it. The fluorescent lighting and the normal people doing normal things and the overwhelming, crushing awareness that I was standing in a supermarket pretending to be one of them while carrying something inside me that none of them could see.

I left the trolley in the aisle. Went to the car. Sat there for fifteen minutes. Drove home. Ordered food delivery. Added £4.99 I couldn’t afford to the weekly shop because the alternative was going back in there and I couldn’t go back in there. Not today.

Eighteen months. They said it like it was reasonable. Like people in crisis can be stored for a year and a half without deteriorating. Like the human mind has a shelf life that extends to 2027 if you keep it refrigerated.

Mine doesn’t. Mine is spoiling in real time. Every month on that list is a month of coping mechanisms held together with tape. Every week is another shower cry. Every day is another performance of fine that gets a little less convincing.

I’m still on the list. Still waiting. Still holding.

But the tape is getting thin.

And Tesco still feels like a minefield.