Pre-Therapy
Suppressing the urge to do work. I can already feel the obligations and tasks press in on me. Open a ticket with vendor to work on problem X. Send updates to management on project Y — I was unable to do this yesterday. Investigate high availability with Multi Factor Authentication in our Shibboleth Identity Provider environment, update wiki, send note to M. I am pushing these things aside and writing instead, trying to allow myself space in my own life to think and breathe.
I have fifteen minutes before therapy and I will write until then and that’ll be it. I barely write anymore and I know it’s a problem – I know that writing is a crucial way that I process the world and make it real inside of me.
I don’t know what I will talk about. I’m always fascinated by the difference between what we are doing and how we are doing. Wednesday for example. I did a lot of stuff. Completed a difficult scripting task for work. Put up some of the ceiling drywall in the basement for the room I am semi-finishing on the cheap. Did my physical therapy, did my weights for my upper body, called my mom, made dinner for J and I, joined a couple of meetings with coworkers, made a few strides planning and coordinating a get together with some old high school friends, possibly for October. Talked to, separately, my sick and depressed mother, and my unemployed and depressed brother, for half an hour each. If you judge my life based on what I’m doing, I’m doing great. I’m busy and active and I have sufficient energy to meet the demands of the day.
Inside, though, I felt fractured and messy, wondering if I’m about to become a father, wondering if I’m about to have even less free time, wondering if putting up drywall is the best use of my time, wondering how J is doing and how I will handle her if the science baby stuff doesn’t work out. I wondered if my friends, the ones I’m trying to get together with in October, secretly hate me for various reasons — and then my brain recalls a hundred stupid things I did around them, cigarettes smoked through the nostrils in high school, my insistence that Doug E Fresh was a great rapper, times I’ve let my ego out and bragged about this or that. they probably do hate me, i would hate me if i met me, I think with certainty. I wonder how K has the money to go to Paris in September when he’s a journalist. his dad gives him money, his rich-ass parents are funding his leisure, you know it’s true, you just can’t talk about it, K has rich parents and you do not, you are completely on your own. I thought about having to try to get rid of old, heavy furniture in the guest bedroom so we can clear space for a nursery if we have a kid, thought about hauling our exercise bike down from the master bedroom into the basement when I finally finish the space down there and it becomes a home gym, thought about anything except trying to write, about trying to express myself, trying to listen to my own voice.
Sometimes I put on music while I work and at times it helps distract me from the inside voices. Wednesday it was Pineapple Thief, a progressive rock band that a friend of mine has been trying to get me into. They’re not bad but I just felt the whole time like, these guys are younger than me. They have nothing to teach me, nothing to say that won’t sound stupid and banal.
Last night I had a dream where I was crying, messy crying, overcome in my dream by the same feelings that often stagger me in real life: Too many things to do, difficulty differentiating between what is really necessary and what is optional — the things I do because something inside of me drives me to do them but don’t really matter all that much. I could really feel it inside, welling up, the overwhelm and it built until there was only one outlet and I bawled.
There’s not much of a link between the dream world and the awake world other than the images feelings we’re left with when we open our eyes.
It’s a good thing that I often get something out of this life, something good in return at times, or I’m not sure what I would do.
Therapy time.