GIRL TALK: If I could lose myself and have a dirty weekend

To say that I'm a hard person to live with is an understatement. Sometimes I wonder if a herd of migrating elephants might fit in a little easier.
I have always believed that change is as good as a holiday and that you don't need a first-class ticket to a remote tropical island to get away from it all.
This weekend, I have a dusty old work wagon in lieu of the 747 and a sub-zero mountain instead of the tropical island.
I'm off to shoot a winter wedding on top of Mt Ruapehu. Yes it's work, not play, but when you have shiny happy people leaping around all loved-up in the snow, the difference is negligible.
This is my holiday. Full stop.
As you would expect, my boyfriend is quietly delighted about having the house to himself for a weekend.
Whilst I have no doubt he loves me, he's less enamoured about my OCD-tendencies which see me able to register the exact moment a wet towel is dropped on the floor or a hot drink placed on a wooden surface without a coaster, even if I'm on the other side of the house.
To say that I'm a hard person to live with is an understatement.
Sometimes I wonder if a herd of migrating elephants might fit in a little easier.
If we are honest, all of us would concede that every now and again that the people we love the most are also the people we would most like to throw into a vat of boiling oil.
And so it is that this weekend, my boyfriend gets a holiday from me.
But as I pack my bags and mutter and stress about whether I have enough of this or too much of that, it occurs to me how desperately I am in need of a holiday from myself.
For those lucky sods who live in a sublime state of ignorance, blissfully unaware of how irritating they are to themselves and those around them, this concept may seem a little odd.
But for the rest of us, how good would it be to zip up our suitcase, walk out the front door and leave our brains sitting quietly behind on the couch in front of some odiously self-improving television, to await our return in 48 hours?
Forget the tropical island or even the exciting mountain peaks.
If I could have a holiday from me, I'd be happy enough doing it down the road in someone's draughty old nana flat.
Because it doesn't matter how much navel gazing we do.
Understanding the things that make us annoying to ourselves and others by no means equips us with the ability to change.
In a fashionably 21st-century gesture, I recently paid someone a large swathe of my disposable income to sit in an uncomfortable chair and listen to me talk about me.
After an hour, the therapist looked at his watch and smiled in a benign way which hinted at an ongoing internal dialogue of his own: "do I really get paid enough to listen to this crap?"
Meanwhile, I vocalised what both of us were thinking: No.
The experience didn't generate any major epiphanies other than that I probably just need a holiday.
From myself.
And so now, as well as wanting to explore Peru and go on a safari in Namibia, I'm saving up for a temporary lobotomy which, for the duration, will enable me to gad about irresponsibly, leaving wet towels and dirty cups on all sorts of inappropriate surfaces.