That’s not an oxymoron, although it sure sounds like one.
Just got back from therapy. Yup, on Wednesday. Usually it’s Thursday, but my therapist had a dental appointment tomorrow at exactly our usual time.
No big deal. Knowing when my next appointment will be is far more important to me than having it always be on the same day.
I suppose I wouldn’t like it if it hopped around the days of the week like a flea with an itch, but the occasional variance is perfectly fine.
Today, we ended up talking about my crappy childhood. Specifically, the really bad years of elementary school, between the second half of Grade 1 and the beginning of Grade 5 with Mrs. Rogers.
Those were the years when I was totally socially isolated, I was bullied on the time on the playground, I had no friends, the teachers didn’t like me either, and life was basically a heady cocktail of boredom, terror, and neglect.
And it felt right to be talking about all that. In fact, it made me wonder why I hadn’t done more talking about it before.
So far, the only answer I have was that I had taken that whole time of my life and stuck it in one big folder called “The Bullying Years” and then filed it away.
So today, I opened that file and started going through it bit by bit. And I am glad I did, because a lot of awful stuff happened to me in that era, and I need to unpack with it and deal with it if I want to move forward.
And I do.
And this is rich territory for therapy’s main goal, which is to dig up buried memories so you can finish processing them and thus release them.
Repression’s basic form is that of a memory of something that was so painful that instead of dealing with it, the mind froze it in time and stored it away indefinitely.
Therapy, therefore, is the process of taking those memories out of cold storage and thawing them out so you can complete processing it.
Keep doing that, and that massive burden of frozen emotions gets lighter and less of your mental resources are devoted to carrying that shit around and keeping it frozen and that makes you feel better.
I’ve said all this before, haven’t I?
Point is, I feel like I got a lot of that done today and I am hopeful that things will continue in that vein next week too.
It all started when I realized, as I was talking to my therapist, that I was not making progress on a lot of issues because there was this fundamental damage in me that made my energies drain away when I tried to build them up to do things.
The only way to tackle something that deep is via traditional therapy. Dig it up and air it out. It’s the only way to heal.
It can be hard to grasp because it’s a nonspecific cure. You can’t say “do this and that specific thing will get better”. It doesn’t work that way.
You have to have faith that doing it will make you feel better in general.
And it does.
But it takes so damned long to do it.
More after the break.
Back from doing that comedy thang at the ever-awesome Kingswood Pub.
Had the bangers n’ mash they do there. It’s pretty good because they have excellent gravy and quite good mashed potatoes and the sausages are okay.
The sausages are chorizo, and hence fairly peppery. As in black pepper. And that’s fine but I prefer my sausages more in the Italian style, like the stuff you get on pizza.
German sausage is a real crapshoot. Might be meaty heaven. Might be something that tastes like it’s actively trying to murder you.
Anyhow, it was quite the unique evening as the comedians had to compete with, get this, Game Seven of the World Fucking Series.
For the sports impaired, the World Series is a best out of seven games match. This means that if there even is a Game Seven, that means the two teams have won three games each and it will all be decided in Game Seven.
The team that wins that game wins the Series.
So for sports types, it’s kind of a big deal.
The show normally starts at 8 pm, but we decided to wait till Game Seven was over before doing the comedy thang. So even though it was just us diehards, we were there almost till 10 pm.
Fine by me. I mean, yeah, I still had this, the second half of my blogging to do, but I knew that was unlikely to take more than an hour at most.
I’ve been doing this since 2011. I’m pretty good at it by now.
Right now, The Melt has set in and I am getting quite tired. When I finish here, I will lay down for a nap.
Or an attempted nap, anyhow. With The Melt, it might lead to a nap, or it might be that as soon as my temperature stabilizes, The Melt ends and I am not sleepy any more.
So I have to play it by ear, more or less.
It can’t be too long a nap anyhow, as I will want to be awake for midnight so I can hang out with Joe and Julian and watch Colbert and Daily Show and probably David Spade too, unless one of us is super sleepy.
I like Lights Out With David Spade. His guests are all funny people and they get together and riff off of stuff from non-serious news.
So entertainment, human interest, funny YouTube videos, and so on.
And NO POLITICS. Even a year ago, I would have said that a discussion show without politics would be terribly dull, but now it’s a blessed relief.
Colbert and Trevor Noah handle the politics just fine.
David Spade gives me an oasis in the desert of the world’s madness,
And I really appreciate that.
Thanks, David Spade!
p. s. I still have a huge crush on you.
Thought you’d want to know.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,