Short and Sweet

I just finished my Tuesday session with Dr. X. I was hoping to feel better when I left, but I don't. In a way I feel worse. And I feel very, very alone. I want to know what's happening. I want Dr. X. to help me figure it out, but I'm starting to think she can't. I hate analysis. And I love it. Yep, I'm crazy.

The Very First Couch Potato Ramble

I don't know if analysis is good for me.  I feel crazy all the time - always trying to figure out what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling.  Is there really a point to it?  I wonder.  Will I ever know whatever it is that I think I need to know?  Will I ever find whatever it is I'm looking for?  What AM I looking for, anyway?  I feel like I'm wandering, lost and still as alone as ever.  Alone on the inside, that is.  I'm far from alone on the outside.  I want to feel connected to...something.  Someone?  I'm not even sure what I mean by that.  Maybe I just need to be with people who think like I do.  But how DO I think?  I want to talk about ideas and feelings and things people don't typically talk about in their everyday interactions.  I want to talk about truth, and why people are they way they are, and the way that it all fits together.  I want to think about what it all means.  But, more than that, I want to talk about what it all means.  I want to talk about love.  I want to feel love - a different kind of love, belonging, connection.  Where are my people?  I don't want to talk, and talk, and talk and never get anywhere.  That's what it's like with Dr. X.   Just talking to hear my head rattle, as my mom would say.  Besides, what I've got with her isn't real.  It's an illusion.  It's a game.  It's make-believe.  I don't care what she, or anyone else, says.  I don't even care what I sometimes know.  I mean, it might pass for a real relationship for some people, but not for me.  Why can't we just admit that and get on with it?  Why do we have to pretend?  Why is writing about it making me feel like I'm going to cry?  Why does it feel like Dr. X. and I are moving apart rather than closer together?  There's some invisible something that's keeping us from fully connecting - keeping me from getting close.  What is it?  Is it me?  Is it her?  I don't feel smart enough to figure it all out.  Thinking about it makes me tired and sad.  I feel like I need therapy to help me deal with analysis.  I need to talk about what is happening with Dr. X., and, as dumb as it sounds, I can't seem to talk to her about it.  Nothing is real with her.  I don't get real answers.  I get carefully crafted answers.  I get questions.  I know that's how the game is played - I do.  I'm just not sure I like the game anymore.  Maybe I'll quit.  I'm never going to learn how to do it right anyway.  I don't think I'm smart enough.  Or maybe I'm too smart.  I really don't know.  Sometimes I think I'm only fooling myself (and lots of other people too) into believing that I'm intelligent.  Other times I feel too smart for my own good.  If I could just get a hold of those crazy floating words!  I understand so much until I try to pin it all down, until I try to catch it and show it to someone else.  That's when it disappears.  Sometimes words suck.  They take too much energy.  Feeling takes too much energy.  It all makes me tired.  I want a mommy.  I need a safe place where I can just be.  But I can't have what I want.  I can't have it.  I can't have it.  I can't have it.  No do-overs.  No take-backs.  This is the life I got, and, really, it's not so bad.  But no one is ever going to love me or take care of me the way I want someone to.  Nope, it ain't gonna happen - ever.  Because I'm 47 fucking years old, and no one wants a middle-aged baby.  How do I learn to accept that?  I am the mommy. I've always been the mommy. It's not going to change.  You, A. Secret, are on your own.  Remember?

Today's Rant

Still five whole hours til I see Dr. X.  Ugh.  I wish this wasn't Thursday because, after I see her today, it will be four days before I see her again.  I always dread those four days, but they never turn out to be that bad.  I wonder why I continue to dread them then.  Strange.  I feel cranky and angry and back in that hopeless place again.  It's a little odd to me to be feeling this way when I felt so happy yesterday.  I think I was still feeling the effect of being in class the night before.  I always feel happy and hopeful after class.  Then I go back to real life - no money, not enough time, feeling guilt for the terrible way I take care of my kids, no desire whatsoever to be homeschooling them, and no fucking way out.  NO WAY OUT!!!  I feel trapped.  I know I just told myself that it's not true that I'm trapped anymore.  That it was like that when I was a kid, but it's not like that anymore.  But I'm not feeling that way today.  It might not even be true.  I mean, honestly, I am pretty much trapped by my stupid circumstances.  Why, why, why did I let myself get here?!  And is there really a way out?  I think that I can eventually wiggle my way out of this mess, but not yet.  I don't have the resources.  I don't have the support I need.  I don't have that many options.  It's like being offered a million dollars to do 100 pushups.  I could EVENTUALLY work up to that, but right now I can't even do ONE fucking pushup.  I'm fat, and lazy, and out of shape. I'm at the mercy of my own weakness.  I'm at the mercy of myself.  I'm at the mercy of the person I've allowed to act (and think) on my behalf - his weakness, his out of shape life, his laziness.  And even if I could manage to get out from under the husband and strengthen my own muscles, I'm pretty sure it would take too long to win the million dollar prize.  Ugh. 

Untitled

I saw Dr. X. today, and told her about my discovery that her husband and my daughter both sang on the same children's CD a mutual friend made several years ago.  She asked how the discovery made me feel, and I said that I didn't really know.  She pressed, and I told her it made me feel strange, but I couldn't really identify the feeling and that I certainly couldn't explain in.  And that really was the truth.  She kept on and on, asking me to just try to express my feelings.  She said, "You say it doesn't matter that much to you, but I think it does."

I answered, "I think it matters to you."

"I think it matters to both of us, but we're talking about you here," was her smooth analyst comeback.

We ended up talking about many things - mostly about where my mind went after I made the discovery.  And I think it turned out to be a pretty good session, but I never did explain why finding out that we have friends in common bothers me.  I didn't explain it because I can't explain it.  I just know that I don't like whatever it is I'm feeling.  And I sense that the whole thing bothers her too.  Come to think of it, the idea that she's bothered by it might be one of the things that's troubling to me.  I worry that I'll do something - who knows what? - to make her stop seeing me.  Maybe knowing some of the people she knows - even having some of them as friends - could be one of those things.  It's an irrational thought, I know.  But it's there just the same.

I don't understand this part at all, but there's also this crazy, almost jealous feeling.  But it's not just a jealousy of the relationship Dr. X. and her husband have with my friends; it's some sort of crazy envy of...I don't know...maybe their lives?   Only that's not exactly it either. Not that I know a thing in the world about Dr. X's life besides she's doing something cool, something I sort of wish I had done.  And she's hanging out with my friends, and with people who were my friends, or could have been my friends - people I'll probably never get to spend much time with again. And, even if she was the craziest person on earth, in our relationship I'm the crazy one.  I'm the loser who needs her help.  I'm the stupid, fat, ghetto dwelling "breeder" who's sold her soul to avoid having to prove herself.  I'm the moron who let herself become dependent on her husband; who threw away what little talent she had; who watched as her family fell deeper and deeper into this shit life, where there's not even enough money to go on a simple camping trip, or let the kids take the lessons they want to take, or buy them shoes when they need them, or pay for school photos, or fix broken windows, or move into a decent school district, or feed the family without government assistance.  Yeah, I suck.  And Dr. X. knows it.  And she can pretend with her neutral analyst act that she doesn't, but she does.  I mean, seriously, what half way intelligent person wouldn't look at me and the life I'm living and think, "What the fuck did she think she was doing?"  Hell, I think it all the time. 

And I must end here because I'm too tired to go on.

Last Night's Dream

The Dream:

I noticed a small, plant-like growth coming from my left cheek.  There were two places about a half inch apart where the growth was coming from.  One place looked the way a plant does when it first emerges from the soil.  The other was a little longer, and had a leaf on it.  I looked closely at it, but couldn’t tell if the leaf was truly a plant or if it was skin.  I went to my mom and asked her to look at it.  She dismissed my concern and started talking about something that was on her mind.  I kept going to the mirror to look at the weird growth, and every time I saw it I felt the same horror I experienced the first time I noticed it.   I tried to pull it out, but it resisted, and I was afraid I was going to hurt myself if I kept pulling.  Then I realized that I had to leave the house for some important reason - can’t remember what it was.  I worried about how to hide the growth, and considered putting a band-aid over it until it occurred to me that I’d have to use at least two band-aids, and that that would invite as many questions as the growth itself.  The thought of it being there consumed me, terrified me, made me feel sick to my stomach.  I couldn’t think of anything else.  Every time my mind moved to something else, the thought of the growth would soon yank it back.

When I awoke I still felt the terrified, sick to my stomach feeling I’d felt in the dream.  I knew, of course, that I had been dreaming, but I couldn’t shake the fearful feeling - in fact, here I am an hour later, and still can’t shake the feeling.   But what is the feeling exactly?   It’s fear, like I said.  But it’s more than that - it’s deeper, more primal.  It really is terror.  Terror of being out of control?  Of not knowing - not being able to know - ultimate truth?  Terror of growing old, of my body failing me?  Terror of my existential aloneness?  Terror of death?   I don’t know.  And then there’s the element of sadness.  The feeling makes me want to cry, but I couldn’t cry even if I allowed myself to try.  Thank you for that, Celexa and Wellbutrin.

The following are some of the thoughts/memories/associations that came to mind as I lay in my bed immediately after awakening from the dream:

My first menstrual period, and how I was alone and frightened when it happened, not only of the noticeable change that had just occurred, but of the things that were changing inside of me, and all around me.  I remember having such a deep need for something - I don’t know, maybe it was just acknowledgment of the changes, or comfort, or the assurance that everything was exactly the way it should be - the way it has always been, and the way it always would be.  I wanted my mother.  I wanted my mother to take care of me.  And I wanted life to move slower.

The way I had felt the day before during the movie we went to see with the kids.  We were all sitting in a row, eating candy, and laughing at the movie, and a feeling of deep contentment, and an understanding of how very blessed I am came over me.  But before I could relish the moment it was replaced by the thought that this would all soon be over - first the movie, then the day, and on to the kids’ childhood, and then, in the blink of an eye, my life would end.  And I hoped then that I would die before my children.  And I wondered how it would be to be a widow - alone in the bed each night with no one to hold me, no one to hold.  And there was that powerless, trapped feeling - that damned slap in the face realization that there’s nothing I can do about any of it, and the always-in- the-back-of-my-mind question of how and why any of this piddley little life matters.  We laugh, we love, we hope, we dream, we suffer, we wonder why, and then we die.  What for?  Is there a point?  One thing I know for certain is that I’ll never know.  And that pisses me off.

My thoughts soon moved to Dr.X., and how I don’t want to need her - how I want to dislike her, how it would be easy for me to dislike her if I tried.  That “she doesn’t care about me - I’m just her job” feeling came over me.  And then the worry that, as I lie there, vulnerable, on her stupid couch, babbling away, saying, or, perhaps, at times, just desperately wanting to say, things I wouldn’t dare divulge to anyone else, she could actually be sitting in her chair, where I can’t even see her, bored and yawning, or rolling her eyes, or thinking of how incredibly stupid I am, or - like the therapist in the book I read through the other night - stifling her disgust with my blubbery, fat body, or any other thing about me, for that matter.  And I wouldn’t even know it.  I could be putting my trust in someone who is disgusted by me.  I don’t want to be somebody’s “job.”  I don’t want manufactured, artificial empathy.  I don’t want to need someone who couldn't care less about me once I get up from her couch.  Unless something spectacular happens in analysis, I’m only setting myself up to be hurt and humiliated.  The strange, maybe even sad, thing about that is, unless Dr. X. tells me not to come back, I won’t quit going to my sessions with her.  I want the exact same thing that I don’t want.  I want - yet I don’t want - to have someone to depend on.  I want - yet I don’t want - intimacy.  I want - yet I don’t want - to be known.  It’s the story of my life, which I suppose is apparent to any halfway observant person - therapist or not.   Here's the thing: I don’t much like having my reactions and tendencies, or what motivates them, examined so closely.  I don’t like having my real live feelings lying exposed on the dissecting table - like they‘re nothing, like they‘re dead and no longer a part of who I am.   Like they only matter if they can be fit somewhere in the picture puzzle of who I am - and even then, will be disposed of once their purpose is served.  I am more than those naked parts lying, tagged and orderly, on the table, more than those bits under the microscope - however much they are magnified.  I wonder if, after the examiner has seen the same things many times over, she is able to maintain a sense of the sacredness of what she observes.   I wonder if one can become immune to holiness.

I have no idea how, or even IF, the above thoughts are related to the dream.  All I know is that they were the things that came to mind while I lay there in that delicious state between sleep and wakefulness.  There's no telling where my mind would have taken me if I could have stayed in bed a little longer.  :)

I'm excited!

Dr. X is training to be a psychoanalyst and today she asked me if I'd like to be one of her practice patients (she called it something else that didn't sound as scary).  I'll see her three times a week - once for my regular insurance paid session, and two other times that she's asked I pay only $10.00 a visit for.  Isn't that cool?!  And isn't Dr. X the best?!    I never imagined that I'd be able to do something like this.   I'm very interested to see what comes of it all.