If it’s Tuesday, this must be my big deal post therapy session diary entry, right?

Today’s session went quite well, actually. There was a bit of funny business at the beginning because I arrived a little early, but then discovered I really needed to pee, so I had to get the key from the receptionist, and it wouldn’t come back out of the lock, and then I could not get my zipper to go back up, and basically, it was all a comedy of minor errors fueled by my two needs : urinary relief, and not ever being even a little bit late.

But that all resolved itself, and the session began. I have to admit, I am finding my therapist’s slight hearing loss to be increasingly annoying to me. I have to repeat myself, louder and with exaggerated enunciation, quite often, and it really is a drag. When you are deeply intent on baring your soul and spilling your guts and sorting through all the fiddly little painful squidgy bits, it is very wearying to have to repeat your harrowing confessions.

The deep and irrational part of your brain can’t help but feel like this means the person is not really paying attention to what you are saying.

It doesn’t help, either, that his office has a lot of ambient noise because of the two enormous fish tanks. Plus tomorrow, he was making his own coffee via a French press, and so you had the noise of that percolating added to the mix, and he kept having to go check how that was going, so he would move further away from me periodically. And that’s also not good when you are slightly deaf and the room is full of burbling fish tank noises.

I like the fish, mind you. I especially like his enormous carp-like algae eater. It’s a lovely share of dark purple, and it’s easily twelve times the size of all the other fishies, so it makes for quite a striking visual presence in the tank.

But given the deficiencies of my therapist’s hear, I could do without the burbling of the filters.

Anyhow, aside from that, it was quite a fruitful session. We covered a wide range of things, and most importantly, we came up with an immediate and fruitful plan of action that should yield useful results and yet I felt was entirely and comfortably within my capabilities.

It goes like this. I had been talking about my desire to write my father a letter getting everything off my chest that I needed to get off my chest. I mentioned that I had tracked down an address that I thought was probably his, but I didn’t know for sure, and from there, we got into my problems with my siblings.

This is little complicated, but I will try to make it clear.

Basically, the logical way to get my father’s current address would be to email my three siblings and ask them. Surely one of them has it, right?

But here is the thing. If I do that, they are going to immediately suspect that I am not dropping him a letter just to say hello. They will recall the letter I sent Catherine a long while back, and the big ripple effects that had (that’s where I told Catherine that Dad has abused me when I was young, and she told Anne, Dave, and my mother) and think “Oh no, he wants to upset the applecart again, we better not give him that address. ”

It says something about my family dynamic that their response to the revelation of my early childhood sexual abuse was “wow, you really dropped a bombshell all of a sudden!” and not “you poor thing!”.

But then again, I am not supposed to exist, or at least, not exist in a way that bothers anyone.

In fact, preemptively, my brother told me, after that letter to Catherine, that if I had a similar letter for my mother (they live together) he would intercept it and destroy it rather than have my mother read it. Isn’t that just warm and fuzzy? Does not matter how much telling her might help me because I have absolutely no value. All that matters is what might effect him.

I told all this to my therapist, and after talking about it for a while, he helped me decide to send the email anyhow, which I did shortly after coming home. Very simple and neutral, just “Do any of you have Dad’s current mailing address? I want to write to him. ”

And now, I await their replies.

Best case scenario, all my dire, bitter predictions are for naught, they happily give me the needed info, none of the bad stuff even comes up, and they wish me luck. That would sure be nice.

But even if things go badly, I think it will be a good thing in the long run. There is a lot that needs to be said, and discussions that really need to be had if I am to stand a chance of recovering from mental illness before I die, and so if some kind of argument happens, that will probably do a great deal to clear the air.

It might not be peaceful and they might end up really mad at me, but nevertheless, it should prove fruitful. At least I will know where I stand with them, and how much they value me.

It will likely take them a while to reply, because they are all pretty busy people and do not check their email very often. So for now, I will try to put it out of my mind. I have done what I can to start the ball rolling. Whatever happens, happens.

It is not like they are a big part of my life right now anyhow. Just birthday and Xmas gifts, which admittedly help a fellow like me a lot, but still.

We were never all that close, you know?

We will see how this plays out.