Everything I Know About Love

by Dolly Alderton

“You will never know what I truly think of you,” she said, just as I was about to leave, letting me know she had already sensed how I work. “You might be able to guess from my demeanor if I like you, but you’ll never know exactly what I think of you on a personal level. You need to let go of that thought if we’re going to make any progress.” At first I was filled with an uncomfortable paranoia; then an almost immediate sense of total relief. She was telling me to stop making crap jokes. She was telling me to stop saying sorry for plowing through her Kleenex supply on the table next to me. She was telling me that this was a room where I didn’t have to labor over every word and gesture and anecdote to accommodate her in the hope that she would like me. This woman with no sense of self, no self-regard, no self-esteem—a shapeshifting, people-pleasing presence; a tangled knot of anxiety—was being given permission to just be. She was telling me I was safe to let go in this room just behind Oxford Circus, with the cream carpet and the burgundy sofa.