Dear Diary,

Life has been pretty crazy... I have been working non-stop since last week and it has really been catching up to me. Yesterday was a full day and I was surprised at the errands I accomplished. Printed out and signed my taxes (something is STILL wrong with my printer, unfortunately... but I managed to wrangle the forms out), picked up my clothes from the dry cleaners, stopped and made a deposit at the bank, went to the copier's to buy envelopes and duplicate my tax forms, and the post office to mail them. All before meeting Ava for a late lunch, then dropped off several books at the library. Then on to work, where I realized how completely and utterly exhausted I was... making lots of mistakes. Whew! Went to bed about 12:30 and slept till 10am...

Today was also pretty busy. I got up and went to the gym. It was a short workout, but I always liked Tuesdays with GymMan because it's stomach day. I also did 20 minutes on the elliptical but I didn't want to overdo it on the first day back.

Came home and took a shower, then went to therapy. It was a pretty interesting session... I talked about feeling numb and unhappy, and about feeling "unwitnessed". I have even realized that most of the friends that I have, don't know me completely, I don't feel like I can trust too many people with all of my feelings and thoughts. My best friends are men- Keith, Red, and, even M- that's why it was so painful to lose him. I actually don't have any women friends that I feel like I can open up to completely. I mean, look at Gail- I hardly ever want to talk to her anymore because I just feel judged by her all the time. I feel like Emily just doesn't "get" me... she doesn't get the concept of "shadow" or responsibility for magnetizing certain energies into your life... I don't know what she thinks- that everything is everyone else's fault? She has a way of giving advice that's way off the mark in a kind of "Well, at the end of the day..." kind of way.

So I was explaining this to my therapist, and how I had spoken to Keith about wanting to find someone to witness my feelings.

Therapist said that's what she is for, and did I want to tell her something? And I started to cry and just said that I felt a lot of grief about not feeling witnessed. Then Therapist said we should do some kind of process about this or that and I said, can you just give me a moment to feel my grief? And then she said, it seems like you have a lot of anger, and I think maybe we should work on the anger that you have at me... and then I said, excuse me, but you just said you would witness me, and here I am telling you about my grief and you are trying to skip right over it! And then she went into a whole thing about how I was spiraling down into my grief and that wasn't allowing us to connect, it was rather like I was going into my grief alone and she couldn't follow me there. And I said I didn't understand- that grief was not a feeling that she could witness me in, but anger was? And she went on to describe her idea of the trajectory we could take- that once I expressed all my anger at her, it would create a safety and a trust where she could really hold me, like physically hold me, like my mother should have.

I was quiet for a while and then she asked me what I was thinking. And I said that I understood her plan for me, and her ideas about the anger and everything, but there was still this important part for me around this grief. And that rather than just saying, "Hey- sorry I missed that- I told you I would witness you but then I just totally minimized the first feeling you expressed-" she instead gave me a litany of reasons why she was right. It felt like being right to her was more important than really doing what she said she would do... and I am very familiar with this dynamic because of course in my family, I was not allowed to have feelings that made other people uncomfortable or inconvenienced them. They were always right and somehow, I was wrong. I am not interested in playing with people who need to be right all the time. So it just felt to me like the same thing was happening again. And I told her that if she wanted to help me, then she needed to witness all the nuances of my feelings, not just the ones she was comfortable with. It is very painful for me to feel like people just want to pick and choose the parts of me that they can accept, and then find some excuse why a certain part of me is wrong or unacceptable.

Therapist said I was absolutely right- she was trying to be right. She was honest and said that I was very perceptive and had a lot of integrity and that she admired that about me. And that she appreciated me pointing that out and she was willing to own her stuff. That made me like her a whole lot more. I guess a good therapist knows that they have to be authentic and own their stuff or else a really perceptive client can sniff out their bullshit.

Anyway I left therapy and hooked up with Red. We had free tickets to a concert and it was really nice. Red even exchanged numbers with a really pretty girl sitting next to him. I know he really wants a girlfriend and is actually pretty shy about asking girls out, so that is a big deal.

Now I am home and have to get ready for all my work tomorrow and going to my training on the weekend... even though it is school, I think I will have quite some time to rest and I am really looking forward to that.

Love,
Duck

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