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Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
A Gift from Hil - 2014-12-28
There was A LOT of turkey. - 2014-12-04
Can we just jump to January please? - 2014-11-14
A (don't kick the) Bucket List - 2014-10-28

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9:33 a.m. - 2011-11-06
Don't think the extra hour will help.

Fall back. Everybody fall back. Everything's done except my ancient clock radio and the timer on the coffee maker. The coffee maker needed to do its job right away and my clock radio (a gift for my 15th birthday!) is tucked in the corner next to the bed and clumsy to get to. That sexy 1970s digital technology requires both hands to reset the clock. I'll dink with it tonight. Don't misunderstand, I love that clock radio. Sturdy warrior. Survivor of a hundred tumbles off the nightstand. Like I said, it's been with me for 33 years. A hell of a run, eh? No piece of electronics I could buy today would ever last so long or still be a viable operating system three decades from now. But that clock radio, like its owner, is tougher than it looks and still does what it was meant to do.

At this point the clock radio is functioning better than I am though. I told Mick yesterday I'm exhausted with trying to beat back the black dog on my own and checking myself into the happy home might be the next step. I watched his face crumble with grief and shock droop his shoulders. That it had gotten this bad with me right under his nose! He was horrified. I assured him I'm not suicidal (I'm not, truly), just wiped out. Despite being on enough medication to drop a rhino in its tracks, plus herbs, vitamins, teas and tinctures, and withdrawing from all known sources of aggravation and hurt, wrapping myself in all the peaceful white light energy I can muster, meditation, purposeful thinking, being in the moment and trying every other technique I can think of to bootstrap my way out of this pit, it ain't working. Something drastic was required to blow apart this black pall. Mick nodded sadly and went away.

God, I hated to do that to him. His first wife cracked up too. She was schizophrenic, something unknown when they married. Her schizophrenia went full-blown when she got into her 30s and despite his best efforts to be supportive and there for her, the illness carried her away. Schizophrenics are notorious for going off their meds when they start to feel better and then rapidly becoming too paranoid and other directed to go back on them. She eventually became so unplugged she was danger to herself and everyone else. Mick tilted against the windmill of his wife's schizophrenia for a long, long time. Finally had to let her go, though it near killed him with guilt. So the idea he might have to visit his new wife, the one he thinks is sunshine on a plate and the best damn thing to ever happen to him, to see me in a ward with wavy chicken-wire windows and locks on the doors...oy.

Mick thought on it and came back to me later. Said he'd be there for me no matter what, but he thinks I'm basically okay, just having to deal with too much and am trying too hard to make myself be what I think I'm supposed to be. Happy, strong, the perpetual Answer Lady and Mother of the Millennium. My break isn't with reality, I'm 'here', Lord knows I'm 'here', but the weight of expectation I've put on myself is too much. His words rang true. Certainly enough of my friends have said the same.

But how? How do I stop? The shopping for a therapist I actually like and trust goes on. I've nearly run the list of local head-shrinkers, in network and out. My experiences with group and one-on-one therapy have not been helpful at all. How fucked up is it that one therapist used our time to ask me for advice about HER marriage? None of the others were quite that bad, but neither have they provided any real solace or answers. I get it they're human too and honestly I'm not expecting to find Freud in drag with a basket of homebaked muffins just for me, but jeeze. A little insight would help. Something more than the fatuous prattling of a twerp with a degree and a shelf full of 'Chicken Soup' books would be all kinds of nifty. Somebody who isn't afraid of me either. I swear I made one therapist so uncomfortable because I knew her shtick better than she did the woman used to stutter, shuffle papers and wouldn't look me in the eye after our second session. I refuse to spend my 45 minutes bolstering my therapist's self-esteem.

So here I am. On the search for a shrink with enough on the ball to be of some use. Of course it'll help when this foreclosure crap is settled, the awful custody and child-support court mess is over, when I get my desktop back, when I finish menopause, when I get used to this craggy baggy stranger's face in the mirror, when Wolf is through his own storms and changes, when I've gotten through the first round of holidays without crumbling and crying in front of the mother-in-law I used to believe liked and loved me, when the normal relationship growing pains of my marriage to Mick settle down, when I generate some meaningful income again, when all of this awful limbo of everything in my life being up for grabs and the stakes are so fucking high is over, maybe then I won't be such a weepy useless lump anymore.


One can hope, eh? ~LA

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