I’m
a lot of things. I’m tall; middle-aged; and involved in an epic love-hate
relationship with my teeth and the professionals I pay to care for them. I’m a
wine drinker; a pizza lover; a voracious reader; a community volunteer; and a
reluctant role model. I’m an unhappy size 10 with questionable hygiene and a
gym membership to a cut-rate “bring your own towel” joint that smells like a
dirty sneaker. I’m an animal lover; a registered voter with scheduled jury duty
(yay, me); and a recovering fingernail biter. I’m a homeowner; a raging
introvert; and I have no idea how to wear eye makeup. None. Was there a class
on this that I missed somewhere along the line? I’m a music lover who can’t
carry a tune but who sings her heart out anyway. I’m lucky my parents didn’t
name me “Grace”; I’m incapable of small talk; and I’m terrified of birds. I
find everyday life thrilling enough and I don’t understand you “thrill-seeking”
types who ride roller coasters, bungee jump, or jump out of perfectly good
airplanes. I’m hypertensive and living with depression. I’m not a real writer
but I play one on the internet – not for any audience (although if you’re
reading this, thank you) but because the act of writing things down helps me
create order from the chaos inside my mind. So . . . I’m a lot of things. But
one thing I hope I’m not is ordinary, with trite a close second.
After
I finished kissing frogs, found a
prince, and decided to buy the dress and the tiara, I stopped seeing my elfin
therapist. (He looks like a Keebler elf.
A really compassionate Keebler elf.) I’m a big therapy advocate – for other
people. You, for example, would obviously benefit from working with a mental
health professional. I, on the other hand, am a therapy graduate. It’s just that level of smugness that will
bite you (translation: me) in the ass. Graduate or not, I noticed I haven’t
been my normal level of awesome lately. I’m short-tempered and I threaten to
hit someone with my good whacking shovel a minimum of 30 times a day. My
favorite response to any inquiry or statement is, “Shut your word hole.” (My
second favorite response is considerably more vulgar. And – if you receive any
unexpected, anonymous gift by mail,
simply do as instructed. You’re welcome.)
If
it was just an anger management problem, I’d suck it up, take up kick-boxing,
and move on. But it’s more than that. I’m feeling a lot of sadness on behalf of
my posse, too. As a socially awkward, raging introvert with near crippling
levels of shyness, I don’t have a lot of friends. I’m a workaholic so I
absolutely and truly suck at keeping in touch with people, and at the end of a
long day of work, no matter how much I may adore you, I’d rather retreat to the
safety of my bedroom and my Cookie
Monster loungewear. This is a long prelude to the fact that my inner circle
may be small, but if you are part of my posse, it means I choose you over loungewear, which is no small feat. Lately, my
small but powerful posse has been struggling with all kinds of grown-up stuff
like divorce; infidelity; infertility; addiction; illness; death; elder care;
job loss; financial struggles. Their pain has become my pain, and my heart
breaks to see these amazing, brilliant, beautiful people bear these incredible
burdens.
I
had a few brief flashes of clarity that precipitated my (likely overdue) return
to the Elf Therapist. After spending an evening with a friend and his family
recently, I found myself on the verge of tears for the next 72 hours. I’m not
suggesting these two events are related in any way – I mention it only because
the waterworks threatened to begin as I embarked on a long drive home in the
dark on unfamiliar roads, and I was trying to listen to Siri direct me; wipe my
eyes so I could see; and prevent snot from dripping onto what I felt was a
fairly sassy ensemble. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure my outfit was procured at
some tragic old lady store like Coldwater
Creek, so the whole snot thing was a non-issue since I’m going to have to
burn it anyway. After walking around the office terrified of springing a leak,
I decided to suck it up and I contacted the Elf. He replied immediately and
like the nicer men in my life, he let me down gently. He doesn’t see patients
anymore. He, too, is a therapy graduate. Now he runs the practice. But since I
clocked a lot of hours on his lumpy couch between 2006 and 2010, he was willing
to make an exception. Could I come in on Monday at 2 PM?
Well,
Elf, as it turns out, I have a job. So 2 PM on Monday isn’t super-convenient
for me, but I was so low that my knuckles literally dragged on the ground when
I walked. At 1:55 PM on Monday, I found
myself in the throes of a panic attack while I sat and waited for the portal
to hell Elf Therapist’s door to open. The cognitive part of my brain
understood that therapy is useful and beneficial, my stupid reptile brain (and
Catholic upbringing) decided that it would be a swell time to deliver a
heaping, wagon full of guilt and shame. I kept waiting for someone (my boss,
maybe – or my mom) to show up with a “life” report card that reflects my
current failing grade.
We
exchanged pleasantries, the Elf and I. Oddly, I felt like going in for the hug –
I mean, this guy has been by my side and has heard some shit, to put it mildly. Yes, he’s on the payroll and I get that you’re
not supposed to hug the help (not to mention my general aversion to touching
other people) but these are my feelings and this is my blog and I wanted to hug
my therapist but I didn’t. He’s quite petite, being elfin, and I worried that I
might break him. Or that he’d have me arrested. He has a new, rather nice and decidedly
unlumpy couch, so I sat down and we got down to business.
It
was almost an out-of-body experience. I could hear the words coming out of my
mouth and I was appalled. My so-called problems are so trivial in comparison to
the very real strife other people are faced with every day. Frankly, I’m both
bored and embarrassed at my inability to unfuck myself – a thought I
articulated in my therapy session. The Elf was unfazed, but he said two things
that stuck with me. First, he wanted to talk about “five year old me” and I
went from zero to enraged on the express train. Middle-aged me doesn’t give a
flying fig newton about exploring how five year old me was the only girl who
didn’t quit the T-ball team or how that’s the year we moved into the house
where we had bats in the attic or how five year old me saw my mom cry for the
first time when we learned that my grandfather died. Can we stick to what’s
relevant, please? The second thing he said was considerably more profound and
less irritating and it was this: “You’re not going to uncover any new issues.
We all keep returning to the same central themes, better and worse, for the
duration of our lives.”
I’m
going to be honest with you. I think I took the news that there’s no Santa
Claus better than I took this little gem about my central tendencies or themes
or whatever. You see, my central issues – the very ones that brought me to
therapy in the first place so many years ago – are the three things I fear the
most. They’re ugly. They’re trite. And they’re ordinary. To hear that I have a
lifetime of revisiting the same smelly trash I thought I got rid of years ago
was not exactly welcome news. Needless to say, I’ll be back to therapy on April
11th. And I’m packing my good whacking shovel in case the Elf
decides he wants to talk about four or six or ten year old me.
The
final paragraph of my blog is usually where I whip out my ribbon and tie
everything up in a beautiful bow. I high-five myself for giving up, giving in,
and giving it all I’ve got. Sometimes, I do this not because the words are in
me but instead, because I should. I hate to disappoint you and
me – but I’m not doing it this time. Life is messy. I’m messy but I am most decidedly
and blissfully alive, and as long as there is life in me, I’m not going to
should all over myself.
©2016 Princess D
