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[
Stanislaw J. Lee ]
:
Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.
[
therapy
]
I crocheted an afghan this weekend. I'm excited when it all starts, but suddenly am terribly bored and wish the yarn just knew, when there was so little left to do, how to do it itself. It's had all those hours to learn, to figure out a pattern, to start working on its own without my pushing and prodding and yarning overs.
For some reason, I think I'll be too impatient for children.
No, that there was a joke. Children change, they grow, and you're always starting over at that excited stage. I don't know this because I have children, or friends with kids who goggle at them every time they point at something mundane . . . though sometimes I myself find that cute. But because I'm a big sister. I'm also a 24 year old woman. That prime-birth age.
Crocheting is, aside from reading romances and mystery novels, the best no-brainer, mind-lazing activity ever invented.
I sit at my computer, a cute blue iMac here in the Publications Unit, and wish for a while, a long long while, that I could crochet or read or quit. I came at a bad time. Late August to late-December is the slowest period for the department. Everybody wants things done by fall cause working on them in the winter would suck. So I sit here bored off my rocker waiting for work. Naturally, however, when I do get work, I screw up. It's depressing.
My subject line is therapy. I need an analysis. Even ones from friends are good. I can chew on them, think about them, wonder why I put a certain impression of myself onto others. Doesn't make much sense. Me. They say that women tend to over-analyze. How do you know that? How do you know when it's OVER-analyzing? What if you just don't like it? What if you hate being picked apart, but it's the only thing we can do to get an answer? We must make answers up ourselves unless the partner is a communicator. I think I am simply because I've been to so much therapy.
"Therapy" isn't really the right word. I've seen many counselors. A lot of foster kids have. The first person I went to actually showed me flash cards. I hate to think that still goes on. It seems like such a huge joke, though I can understand it for kids. I was thirteen. Maybe almost thirteen. I would take the public bus in Brockton, Ma., to the white house on a side street. It was one street perpendicular to Elm Street (the street my elementary school was on. I missed my school at the time. It was comfortable--and I lived with my mom when I went there). Then, one day, I got to the front doors and didn't want to walk on the carpet and up the stairs and see the tight-lipped woman snuffle her tight-pinched nose. She was pinchy. I didn't want to be pinchy. So I left. I took a walk. I think I met friends outside a group home.
I wonder vaguely when going back to Brockton in my mind how much I dreamed. I think I lived in many places with people I want to write about, but can't really figure out what people are dreams, and what people are real.
My second therapist, if I remember right, was brought to me by my own request. I was living with people who sucked (they were awful; such teenage garble is okay to use here considering I was a teenager at the time. I was also a loudmouth. But in that respect, I always have been.)
Aside: It protected me. Being a loudmouth, that is. A fat man named Richie once lived with us (he was eighteen actually), and he gave me a bad feeling. He asked me why I hated him so much. I said in my eleven-year-old tart: "Because you're fat, ugly and eat all our food. . . .Plus you smell and wear your towel everywhere." Yick.
Anyway, my foster parents at the time didn't want to give me a counselor. Considering the parenting skills they lacked, I can now understand why: they were afraid I'd tell my counselor what kind of parents they were, which is not very good ones. They had a habit of insulting me and my sister, they liked to give us dirty chores and rules different than those given to their real kids. In a nutshell, they treated us like "state kids," their own lovely pet name for foster children. The woman I saw was gay, blond and very nice. She had me paint pictures, though, and at thirteen, I didn't much enjoy it. I thought she saw a little too much in my trees. Eventually, my foster parents found a way for me to stop seeing her. The new girl who moved in with us was apparently seeing her as well. Flip a coin, I guess. So I was told my counseling would stop there.
My next therapist was only for evaluation. She asked me for my life story. I'd rather pass around a red-foldered document of crinkled pages than relate over and over again all that people can be intrigued by. Nonetheless, I did it again with that look on my face that says, "I'm bored with this, but ready to impress you with my sap story and the strength with which I tell it." Her reply to my face was "You need therapy. Anybody who smiles about a life story like yours needs therapy." Years later, in college, while discussing life and its ins-and-outs with a professor, the wise prof echoed the statement: "Anybody who can speak as objectively as you about their life needs therapy."
The evaluator sent me to Janet, a black-haired adventurous bahama-traveler. She was great. But she did nothing for me at the same time. We talked. And though I always felt a little better later, I never understood why I felt bad in the first place. And that is what I believe therapy should be. Don't make me feel better yet; just tell me what's making me feel so BAD.
I've had three others since, but nobody good. I saw a man who wore his yarmulke to sessions. It was disconcerting. I felt like my mouth was taped shut: I couldn't swear or tell him about my sex life. It was his symbolism: faithful. "I am faithful," he said to me with his black and jeweled colored cap. He kept his clock out where I could see it. I saw him more than 12 times. Talk about strength (and desperation).
And John was alright. He was a bit more helpful, but his couch was soft and I sagged into it. My crotch and armpits always started sweating. Eventually, I stopped seeing him. I needed more analysis. I needed to know things that I did, that were patterns of bad behavior or destructive behavior or just behaviors I have to deal with in general.
I bring this all up because I'm starting a new kind of therapy tomorrow. It will be with two therapists who are actually real-life psychiatrists. I don't believe I've ever seen one of those before. I have a feeling, however, that I'll be in this stuffy-office rotation for a while, making the scene, trying to figure out exactly what it is I'm searching for. My paper journals, in the meantime, will help me with that. I hope.
I just don't want medication.
Peace. --c.
beam me up, scotty
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the online journal of c.m. roberts: