I will never understand therapy or how it works. I'm not saying this as if I do not understand how its supposed to work or how it's carefully formulated. At a certain distance, I admire the process. Much like detective work and behavior assessments, I can respect any form of problem-solving that has any x-factor that will cause the situation to change and alter your very approach to solving the situation. Some of my favorite memories are in a laboratory with a stack of Petri dishes and procedures in mind while hunting down and attempting to look at my anal procedures, calculate how much of my process may be corrupt, and if I gained enough insight in order to realize what tests to continue or repeat. I can appreciate the process.
So while sitting in the cozy room with the stained glass lamp, I sit across someone who has to be at least 20 years my junior as she attempts to gain enough of a foothold to help me. I sit there and I do everything in my ability to do three things: Attempt to give blunt and simple answers, even if I can't, counter my initial reactions that have been honed to a discipline that has protected me for the majority of my life., and most importantly of all, to not over think or analyze anything that she says in order to understand her motives, goals, needs, and possible tactical position. I've spent almost a lifetime dealing with people who have taken advantage of me or at least attempted to. I've learned to deal with them as on would deal with a cold or step into some unknown excrement. In my time, I can say with confidence not founded in ego that I can pull apart any form of interaction with people to the degree when I can guess motive and need from them. In that knowledge and practice, I've allowed people free reign, if only to prove the control and to understand if you give people enough of a chance they will take more than what you are willing to give to them. Much like politics, I've learned to take a proactive position rather than trust the vote of masses who time and time again ponder how things could get this bad, never realizing they can not vote someone in and simply forget the rest. There must always be a high degree of vigilance.
I've teased 19-year-olds who wanted to get enough of a verbal foothold to entertain the idea of having coffee. I've dealt with elders whose assumption of age somehow had wisdom and trust as a given. I've dealt with people who use scarecrows to prove arguements and the intellectually lazy who I have learned to cut the jugular, knowing full well that simply writing as I do will overwhelm their argument because....pfffft....reading....the fuck is that? In my time, I'm going to say I met people who are good and kind and somehow I have enough evidence to assume trust, all the while keeping a monitoring eye on them for their chance to strike. I do get a bit lazy when the friendship continues past a decade, but the eye is on them nevertheless.
Stating all of this, I realize that I have removed emotion from my engagement with people. Treating everyone as coldly calculating as possible, I know I have broken down people to a list of needs and wants that I deemed acceptable and have given myself permission to meet. Somehow I have removed emotion out of the situation so that my prevalent emotions are annoyance, awe, and disappointment. I know there's another emotion somewhere, but I'm not in the mood to look for it. It was hard enough to acknowledge it in the first place. I know I described "poor" emotions, but they are as close to emotions as I get a hold of. I know I mention annoyance, yet do not confuse this with your definition. I had teenagers in my life and that is an annoyance, what I call annoyance is a type or realization that I have to focus attention and time. Nothing aggravating, but more as in working on the next math problem where you have to clear the table and go through the procedures in understanding and analysis. That level of annoyance.
The fact that I have to pay attention to you is annoying to me. There, I said what I always said.
I can't honestly register it simply because it's difficult to take in. I don't have that relationship with emotion. And yet, if something happens where I lose my tolerance to suffer it I simply stop working, halt being functional, and I become broken. I don't have emotional breakdowns. I break. I stop doing. I can not move on. Whatever was inside me that cause me to keep moving forward and roll with the punches breaks. That happened last year. That's why I know I have to change or die. That's why I know that if I do not take a proactive approach to my own situation, I will not be among you much longer.
And yet, I am more than comfortable to declare that my actions are in no way helpful. My interaction with people is cold, calculative, procedural and distant. It's how I survived. It's how I can plunge my arms, elbow deep, into the shit that most of you dare never to see and get things moving again. I have always worked damage control and I have to do what I needed to do to make things work or survive. It's why I drank to shut my mind off. It was overwhelming and in all truth, it prevented me from making connections with people I DO care about. It was the only way to silence a constant working mind to allow me peace and sleep. It was the only way one can numb to build up enough tolerance to make it through another day, to look up at the ceiling and wonder, "was it worth the effort?"
So, I sit with the Crazy Doc and I try to feel. The entire statement insults me, but oh well. I try to feel. To reconnect. and to reconnect correctly. It's difficult. It's painful. It's almost impossible to me. And yet, I attempt and I fail and I try again and I silence my mind and I do everything I can to rip apart the defenses that I mastered so that I can leave myself open to the person in the small room and silence all of the screams in me so that I can pretend that they will not rip me apart, much like the Jackels do. What I do is painful. What I do is damaging and it can fuck over the rest of my week. And yet, I do it again and again.
And she sees it. And she appreciates it. And she sees that I'm trying with sincerity.
I'm better now. I was mentally sore yesterday. I will be the same next week.
I'm going to end here. Time to go to work and I don't have an ending because it didn't.
1,200 words in 50 minutes.
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