Therapy is hard

I just spent the last hour or so wasting time on the internet and even bought a goddamn living social deal for someone to fuck with my hair. Sorry Michael! And I'm especially sorry to your Mr. Erik, I'm not cheating. Well maybe a little but my hair needs it and I needed the distraction. So now I'm trying to sit down and think without over thinking and failing miserably at even beginning my assignment. This friends, is not it! So far I've been able to distract myself with the television and facebook stalking. And now I'm back to you!f
It's been a lot of this and a lot of that. Mostly chaos and depression and all things in the way of awful since right around my birthday. Next year I'm picking a new day and celebrating like I've earned this shit! Cause I totally have.
So anyway... without further a do the clift notes of the last month:
Family drama caused me to go off the deep end. It really shook me to my core. It shook lose a lot of pent up anger and frustrations that I have held in for my entire life about one of my sisters. I felt like I lost the rest of my family and because my mom was my best friend growing up it felt like someone took a sledgehammer to my heart each time we spoke. My irrational reaction to their irrational reaction made everything so muddled and it felt like it was me against the world. The feeling of loss felt insurmountable. The sadness in my soul was dragging me deeper and deeper and drinking more and more than I should have. I know very damn well that drinking is bad for me and it doesn't fix depression it aids it... in dragging you down deeper. I reached a breaking point when I was having multiple anxiety attacks and eventually started crying at work. Lucky for my darling coworkers I was able to do it outside their presence. So I called our doc and he couldn't see me until February. For real doc? His receptionist said this is their busiest time of year. I wonder how many of their patients end up as residents at the Johnson unit?
So to keep myself from being one of those I did something I wouldn't usually do, I sought out a new doctor. It's a temporary gig for her. She works as part of an employee program so I only see her a few times. It's been interesting. I went into it thinking she was gonna throw her hands up after the first 5 minutes and tell me that I am too much drama for her. But she stuck through it with me. On our second visit she told me that although she's been doing this a long time and has seen a lot of family drama she had never run across this situation and a tough one indeed.
So where are we now? At our second session we came up with a temporary game plan. It is helping me to survive the in between time. Meaning I'll have to revisit this when I am ready to go to Cali again. Basically I am spending way too much time, effort, energy and suffering too much because of someone who doesn't give a fuck about me. And while it is easy to say just ignore them or just don't think about them in practice it isn't. There is nothing easy about it. Because you wish you had the love of someone who is supposed to love you but you never have and really never will. So what do you do? You have to cut them out of your life. For the safety of your sanity and all of the other relationships in your life you have to make hard choices. Because even though you have come from the same lineage, the same DNA... it isn't what makes you family. I wouldn't let "friends" do me that way, I would have told them to fuck off and die long long before they could do more damage.
So for now we are practicing avoidance therapy. I guess that's not really what a professional might call it and that's probably not exactly what I'm doing. I dunno, this is all pretty vague to you all only because the details are ugly and painful. I really don't want to rehash it all AGAIN. The assignment that I've been avoiding is to rehash all my memories and then let them go. I am to write down all the painful memories that have been coming to the surface and then in as ceremoniously as I care to do so set them on fire, bury them, flush them whatever I want but destroying them none the less. Will it make everything better? Of course not but it is the beginning of the healing process.

Beggars can be choosers

Beggars can't be choosers. Where did that silly expression begin? Who says a beggar has lost the right to choose? Last night I watched a woman walk out into the cold night because of her own convictions. Because she was offended by one of the people that were there to give her a warm and safe place to sleep.
It broke the remaining solid pieces of my heart into tiny crumples. I spent all evening with her just chatting, she never intended to stay. She wouldn't take a cup of coffee that was provided by food for lane county. She never said why but she said she didn't accept anything from them. She wasn't a drug user, or a drunk. She was a mother to 3 adult children, a grandmother to 8 and a great-grandmother to 2. Life has a funny way of taking you to places you never expect. She didn't want to talk about her family much, only to say she loves them very, very much and it is painful to talk about them sometimes.
From the moment she sat down to chat with us she made it clear she wasn't staying, only came in to warm up. As the bitterly cold night dragged on she finally said what I was hoping to say. "Take my info, I'll stay tonight." It warmed me up to know she wouldn't be spending the night outside alone in some dark and cold place. At least for this night when I had come to care she would have somewhere safe to be. Then just as unexpectedly a side conversation began, some maybe not so light hearted banter took place and she said never mind. Please stay I asked her, please. No, she couldn't do that. It wasn't pride that kept her from staying, it was her conviction that no man could take a stand as was taken in the house of the lord. It was crushing to see her walk out into the cold, get on her bicycle and ride into the night.
My shift ended almost immediately after and I walked out determined that if I should see her I would take her home with me to give her a warm safe place to stay. But I didn't find her... I went there last night hoping to find something my soul was crying out for. To soothe my aches or to simply distract myself from my fears, pains and struggles. And I found something in her. She listened to me make no sense as I tried to get things off my chest without falling apart to tears. She reminded me that God is bigger than all my worries and will never steer me wrong. That sometimes we have to go back into the cold and trust that HE will see us through.