Breaking news: I am mental

Well, my therapist certainly earned her £45 yesterday, although I suppose it's possible that I was just being brilliantly insightful. Whatever the cause, I don't really care - it was an excellent session and I feel like a new woman, my mood not even dented by a fairly unsettling hangover.

We picked up where we'd left off, with me unable to love someone if their love is consistent. Why can't I respect someone who just straightforward loves me? Because it feels too easy, thickie - you're not even testing me! I'm used to jumping through hoops for love, having to be on top form at all times, having to excel, and then you come along and love me without challenging me, without pushing me to my limits? Well, pah to that. OBViously your standards are rock bottom, my friend, and you're just a teeny bit desperate. Because if you were worthy of my respect, if you really were a valuable human being, you wouldn't just love me so easily. You would have to test me, hard, to see if I was worth your time. High quality people don't give their love to just anyone, you know. The creme de la creme will challenge my loyalty, challenge my commitment. Can I bear it when their attention comes in fits and starts? Of course I can! Will I buy them amazing presents to persuade them that I'm worth their continued affection? Yes, yes I will. How about putting up with it when they don't keep their promises? Fine with me! It just means I have to work harder, which in turn means you'll really love me, and you'll see that I really love you too! Pant, pant!

I'm fully aware how excruciating this sounds. But jeez Louise, it explains so much. Not only does it justify some of my less equal platonic friend choices over the years, and the fact that I've consistently fallen crazy in love for guys who've only given me glimmers of inconsistent, patchy interest, but it also explains why, once I've won a guy over and we've become boyfriend and girlfriend, I have then become so critical of them - partly because I lose respect for them because they seem to be loving me UNcritically, but also because I'm showing them that I love them the only way I know how: by challenging them, testing the level of their love for me and giving them the opportunity to up their game and shine to the max. "You think you love me?" I'm saying. "I've jumped through hoops for you, so you know I'm amazing. But how do I make sure you're high quality goods too? Don't think you can sit on your laurels now, young man. You have to prove it, prove it, prove it. Look! I made you this unbeLIEVably romantic dinner! I bought you this absurdly thoughtful gift! I painted your portrait! I printed out all our emails and got them bound into a hardback book! Top that, motherfucker! Can't? Then I'll highlight your inadequacies until you want to rip out my tongue and feed it to squirrels." So they eventually dump me, and finally I get that yearned-for taste of them not wanting me, so I suddenly decide that they ARE good enough, after all. Cue me begging them to take me back, them refusing, and me spending the next several months thinking the one who got away was The One Who Got Away while my parents and friends sit around going, "But you found him really annoying!"

What a fucking nightmare. Still, at least I now have a comprehensive answer to anyone who shakes their head, looking mystified, and says, "I just don't understand why you're still single!" I don't respect anyone who goes out with me, but on the rare occasions that someone slips through the net, I put them through an insanely rigorous, constant and unending series of tests, 'generously' allowing them occasion after occasion so that they can prove their worth every single day we're together, and then, when they inevitably fail, I criticise them to the point of mutual madness, until they end it, when I suddenly grovel at them to take me back.

Then, as if that wasn't enough to send me barking for The Priory, I realised that my love for mySELF is hot and cold, too. Sometimes I think I'm great - usually when I've got visible evidence that some current target thinks I'm cool. Then, just when I'm getting comfortable, the target loses interest, I realise I'm actually a fraud and a failure, I go off myself and plunge into depression. My self-esteem is totally conditional on my passing all my own tests, one of which is to be loved by someone, but that someone has to love me in a conditional way, otherwise I won't respect them.

If that's not a complex little web of insanity, I don't know what is. But frankly, it feels great to have got it out in the open, to see what we're working with. On the downside, I can't see how I'm going to stop doing any of this. And right now, as my therapist identified last night, I'm going through a very angry stage. Anyone who is breezing through life being uncomplicated is making me very annoyed indeed, because I feel like it's very unfair that I should be the way I am. But hey, que sera sera; at least now I understand it, I have a chance of breaking the habits of a lifetime. And the sun's shining.

Plus, I am fairly certain that I'm better off than Ruby Wax, in pretty much every way other than financial. After my landmark therapy sesh, I then went for an hour long drink in Borough Market with Emily, a schoolfriend I've not seen for over fifteen years. Well, honestly, we weren't friends at school. We discussed it last night, and I said I'd been thinking about it, and I reckoned the reason we weren't friends was because we both felt unpopular, and both responded in similarly annoying ways: by trying REALLY REALLY HARD to be popular. Which, as we both know now, is not the best way to make friends. Anyway, it was supremely lovely to add some wine to the water under the bridge and, once again, I gave thanks for the internet and social media for bringing yet another wonderful, feisty, intelligent and entertaining person into my life.

Sorry, that doesn't explain the Ruby Wax comment. After seeing Emily, I then rushed over to the Mernier Chocolate Factory to meet lovely Laura and her amazing friend James for a quick drink and a bite to eat before a performance of Ruby's current show, Losing It. I was just tucking into my chicken breast (skin on) and potato croquette, when Laura paused mid-sentence. "It's Palomino Faith," she whispered, only later realising that Paloma was not named after a blond-maned pony. I whipped round, and saw the back of her ginger beehive. Thrilling celebrity spot, we thought. Moments later, James spluttered into his cheese and grapes. "Ohmygod, what's her name?!" he hissed. "She was like Jane MacDonald, but less famous, and she won Strictly Come Dancing or something and, and, SHE USED TO BE IN BROOKSIDE!" Eventually, someone other than me put the clues together and worked out that D-list, red-faced lass, Claire Sweeney, was eating a few tables away. We were awash with excitement. Two famous people in one evening! Never mind that most normal people would never have heard of either of them. We were feeling very glittery.

Then in walked Joanna Lumley. James began to froth.
"This is too much!" he said. "I cannot cope with this level of excitement." Laura was rocking gently in the corner. I used to work for a pop magazine so cannot act excited around famous people without feeling like I will get fired. Then I spied my friend Damian. He walked over to our table, followed by his wife. "How did you get tickets for this?" he asked with a tone of slight surprise. "I know the right people," I said, coyly, neglecting to mention that we had just bought them, online, a few weeks ago, like any normal person would go about getting tickets for any normal event. Clearly, though, we had picked an interesting night. It was the Gala performance, for Comic Relief, and about five minutes before curtain up, the floodgates opened. You couldn't swing a copy of Hello! magazine without hitting someone whose face you recognised but whose name you couldn't quite remember. Between us, we identified Zoe Wannamaker, Nick from The Apprentice, Jo Brand, Harry Shearer, Harry Enfield and someone called Oliver Something.

Keeping cool, we moved through to the bar. I had to pinch James who was identifying people too loudly, and then I left the two of them and went to get drinks. As I reached the front of the queue, I turned to see Ronnie Wood behind me. This was someone genuinely quite cool, but also unquestionably a dick and a womaniser, so I maintained my glacial air of "Do I look bothered?" As I walked back to my friends with our beverages, however, Laura was holding something approaching what Rodney Yee calls Powerful Pose, knees bent, arms tensed, eyes slightly bulging. "RONNIE WOOD IS HERE," she bellowed. "I know," I said, passing her a glass of house white. "RONNIE WOOD!" she repeated, as he stood an inch away, wearing a bizarre Inca-themed jacket.

We took our seats, and Ruby began her show, which told the story of her descent into depression and her experience of living with the illness. The audience were agog, laughing uproariously when expected to do so, and sitting in horrified silence as Ruby described stuff that sounded perfectly normal to me, like not leaving the house for days on end. She is still heavily reliant on medication and says she hasn't had enough therapy. That's when I realised I wsa better off than her. So that was something. In the second half Q&A, an audience member thanked her for being brave enough to speak out, and I realised then what a generational gap there is - that while a large chunk of my peers are openly in therapy and on medication, where we all know several depressives and it's just, sadly, a common fact of in all our lives - for many of those in their fifties and sixties, it's still a taboo subject, still something that's not taken seriously. Basically, our parents should go, but for us, it was all a bit old hat. Afterwards, we muscled into the aftershow party, ate canapés, drank prosecco and dissected the validity of racist comedy. I tottered home, spoke to Grania for way longer than intended, and seconds later my alarm went off.

Which brings me to the end of today's episode of LLFF. I have had a lovely day, a fast run this morning, a delicious and highly enjoyable lunch with my wonderful dad in the heart of the City where he ruffled my feathers about Thatcher ("But how can you criticise her?") and the Middle East ("They're all morons") while simultaneously being completely hilarious and utterly charming. Winner. I'm off to uke band practice in an hour, then home for some TV and meditation. I'm still not sure why I feel quite so lifted having identified myself as Definitely So Mental As To Be Surely Beyond Hope, but I do. Long may it continue. Love love love to you all xx