Saturday, December 01, 2007

Notes from my Journal

It's been a few months, nearly, since I saw my therapist. I kind of up and stopped seeing her. "Kind of" is pussyfooting. I just stopped seeing her abruptly a couple of months ago for reasons which I do not care to share.

Let's just say I needed a breather, and that breather just felt good, and I just haven't felt that going back would be as good at not going has felt. I think I was getting into a rut that I don't know I could get out of.

See, I think a therapeutic relationship can be just as bad for us as any, and we (and perhaps the therapist) can have no idea. My mother had the same therapist for years and years and years and she was the same miserable person for years and years. I have no doubt that she and her therapist has a great time talking for 50 minutes a week, but I don't think she was being helped after the first couple of years. And I felt myself getting into that place.

I suppose I could write my therapist and tell her. I'm planning on giving her a card, anyhow. An "it's December/January" card. A "thank you" card. You know.

I just don't want to sit in her little office anymore. The walls started to close in on me and I get nervous just thinking about it. And it used to feel so cozy and comforting.

And why, friend, do I tell you this? Because of something that happened to me within the past couple of weeks. I was railing at the heavens, wishing there were someone I could tell my hopes and dreams to, reveal my secrets to and they would be there listening and neutral and still somewhat interested... and it occurred to me to pick up a notebook and write on paper.

It was hard, after all of these years, to commit my ramblings to a piece of paper. After all, paper these days is for writing notes, conjugating verbs and listing needed items from the grocery store. My secrets? Those are reserved for the Internet.

But I needed to resurrect the old habit of a paper journal, even if just for a little while. So the other evening, deep into the night hours, I found a little used notebook and a pen and I began to write.

What I wrote was, to be kind, garbage. It was at best the purest expression of my feelings at the moment it was written. It was full of earnestness and heartfelt emotion and not for others to read. But it was mine, and when later, I stumbled upon it and read it I felt...safe...as safe as if it were tucked away in a corner of the internet. The anonymity (which is a false anonymity I have come to find) of the 'net has come to mean something to me which paper and pen no longer did. After being married and having children, physical privacy seems at a premium to me - remembering how as a child I would long to know my mother's hiding places, I want to keep all of my secrets a secret.

The lack of a private place, a room of my own, a space, however small, in my own physical life where I felt safe to express my deepest thoughts, seems to reflect a larger struggle for me. A struggle to feel grounded, a struggle for permanence ongoing and very real for the past couple of years.

I do not expect that I will jump in with both feet and buy myself a special notebook or journal and begin to write regularly. That seems too much at the moment. For now my spiral notebook is as much commitment is as much as I can give, and as much as I need.

What I wrote this morning made me so happy though, I wanted to come and share it with you. It reminds me of myself (and as you know, as an Autonymph, self-reference is my life-blood).

Bear in mind that in as much as I can claim copyright on the following sentence, I do. For it will appear in my memoir(s) and I do not wish a protacted legal battle over it's inclusion.

I have entered a phase of Fatness and Introspection.


Oh, did I oversell this sentence? Because now that it's typed out on it's own it seems a bit small. Well, trust me, I wrote this with my newly Buddha-like belly supporting the notebook (I lost 10 lbs during the past 5 weeks. Unfortunately none of that was from my midsection. Suddenly my belly has been revealed to be like that of the joyful deity. Shall I be disturbed or is it some sort of a sign?). And I feel very FAT and INTROSPECTIVE and... well, it will pan out to be something wonderful.

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