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06.04.04 - 1:03 a.m.
alanis, take me home! crazy week, crazier weekend to come. what's saved me this week has been an old, forgotten addiction: GOOD MUSIC!*!*! i've finally joined the itunes nation, and i'm glad to have discovered a tribe where i belong. i threw away $30.00 along the way, signing up to kazaa gold - the ghetto con front for kazaa plus - trying to get away with getting music on the cheap only resulted in more spyware and dirty porn links than i care to remember. just like i remember my first CD album ever quite fondly, the indigo girls swamp ophelia, i must note for the record that alanis morissette's latest album so-called chaos is the first album i purchased via download. and pshaw to all the uptight reviewers that say that this album just rehashes her old style of lyrics, her old angry punk therapeutic responses... i LIKEthe old alanis, thank you very much! yeah, that i've found my theme song for Summer 2004: "Excuses" yes, my dear you sing the truth, everything all that i think a thousand times, and write through my formally infatuated fool self. today, after an emotional-less, but still difficult therapy session where i finally told the thpst - clueless E - that frankly: (1) i'm TIRED of talk (aka 'cognitive') therapy; (2) i'm bored by our sessions (3) i don't know where the hell we're going, and i don't buy at the moment that we just have to 'go with the process'... don't get me wrong, i'm all for stream of consciousness...but it's ME who's literally talking my thoughts at her like a rubber board...and then, I'M the one who says, "wait. we need to back track to that last comment, and dig under its implications"... it was quite hard to speak up, since she greeted me with a way too cheery smile as usual, saying "oh, i was so happy to see that you were on the schedule, today!" well, i wasn't. i swear i'm not being a perfectionist bitch...and in retrospect, i think the problem is she's damn too unproblematically uncritically AFFIRMATIVE... i'm sick of her interrupting me after every other statement. for ex., i say "i totally felt resistant and resentful about attending graduation on sunday," to which she replies. "oh! (insert poor-baby, over-compassionate expression) "tell me, tell me." (always twice) talk about being careful for what i wished for. i thought she'd make a good match because she was so forthright about being a former anorexic and bulimic, that she's a native new yorker, and that she's been through years of therapy; or, that she really liked some of the psychoanalyst's work that i also like: klein, winnicot, ferenczi to name a few. really, i do believe in "object-relations,""emptiness vs. fullness," "introjection vs. incorporation," and the "having vs. being" binaries. yet, when i told her that i ate some of my roommates food last week when she was away, and she tells me it's "because you want to be like your roommate and overidentify with her, you were trying to ingest your roommate, and store her inside of her because you missed her." the truth is that were i writing an article about myself, yes, i might use those same symbolic terms to talk about my e.d. behavior. yet, all that high abstract symbolic theory doesn't address, fix, or resolve the immediate behavioral or ethical issue that, while my roommate was away, i made not ONE but TWO trips to the supermarket on foot to buy boxes of those granola bars to replace them. let's talk about guilt, stealing, lying, self-deception, shall we.and what i'm going to do about being more honest with myself, and become a roommate with more integrity? i feel absolutely no regret at speaking up, other than that i didn't speak up for myself longer... and i can say, that i tested myself in a way (is this martyrdom? self-sabotage? reckless risk-taking? name the complex)...but the point was, that although i felt desperately depressed this spring, paralyzed at some times, or just treading water others times, i knew i'd placed myself in the care of a therapist who neither detected the severity of these moods on a consistent basis, nor remembered to keep checking in with me about those moods and behaviors even after i told her that these actions WERE problematically. like shit, i don't strive to be the atypical, extraordinary case of bulimia... and there are certain behaviors - like compulsive and impulsive shopping - that are just common, you know? so, when i tell her that i blow a wad of money on clothes i don't need to feel better, isn't that a clear prompt to say, "okay circling, let's get a financial grip" - i don't have a gettaway plan. turns out, my friend j_ told me on our roadtrip to an outlet mall on tuesday that she's seeing a therapist whom i had considered as an alternative to clueless E. and since j_ is brandnew to the world of therapy, she doesn't know yet that it's a *major* issue to be close friends and to see the same therapists. some things just should NOT be shared on a non-in-patient basis... and anyway, j_ told me that our graduate health insurance covers a pittance of that therapist's fee. but i'll worry about that bridge, when i cross it next week. meanwhile, alanis - not my therapist (since we wasted our session talking about our staid pointless relationship) (god how i hate when she repeats the phrase often "the work that you and i have done" as if "you and i" are on the same team, or a team. but seeing as this team has no goals, no direction, and one of these team members can't STAND the other, i'm bailing next week, and i trust i'll land where i'm supposed to land. ************************************* so - yes, headed to my parent's house tomorrow. as with most of my trips to 'my home of origin'in a connecticut town that i'll call SOWACK (LOL), i let indecision about if and when i would go overshadow my week.
i have a purpose thankfully: to attend the wedding of a childhood family friend joan. i used to be best friends with joan's younger sister lesa, since their jamaican family moved from england to live in the upstairs apartment in our duplex home. it will be fun hanging with friends from my age group, don't get me wrong. and lesa has a child now, so i can play with amanda as a huge distraction.
but i'll also have to be around a bevy of caribbean women from my mother's age group. and i know already, than instead of asking me about my research and the nuances of my dissertation, they'll want to know (1) when are you going to get married and have kids? (2) why aren't you already married with kids? (3) when are you going to be finished with school? (4) when are you moving back to SOWACK to teach after you're done with school? (5)...and let me not forget all the inappropriate poking and pinching of my 30 yr. old body, or comments that "oh, you're so soft," "your face is so round," "looks like you put on a likkle weigh, hee? what a shame."
let me here scream the scream in advance, which i'll have to repress all weekend
UGGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGH!!!!!!!! . truth be told, i'm going on this trip, mostly so i'll have an excuse to rent a car, play my favorite CDs at a very loud volume, and drive for 5 hours on the freeway, feeling like an adult all the while.
i felt much more like a kid, and 12 at that, in reponse to all my mother's hemming and hawing, negative fatalist pessimistic questions today. "isn't renting a car too expensive?" "won't that be too much driving?" "where are you going to park the car, when i drive you to the wedding?" god forbid my mother let me get away with arriving there on my own . thank you mom for the vote of confidence about my driving... your the reason i'm always fighting self-doubt, and feeling too defeated to even try in the first place.
anyway, i had a really good dinner conversation with my roommate, which cheered me up immensely. well, also going to the gym and working out like i meant it, riding away all those bottled frustrations, and then having a nice bottle of white wine also cheered me up even more immensely (evil grin)
anyway, i haven't even packed. i'm too afraid to try on the two nice summer evening dresses i might wear, for fear that neither will fit me.
but, that doesn't matter. i will survive. and i will NOT binge and purge over her this weekend, dammit! wedding receptions are for getting on the dance floor and burning a hole in the carpet.
besides, ms. alanis, won't accept any excuses from me. i'm going to have me a good SANE time, even if i've got to endure 48 hours in SOWACK as the cost for 10 blissful hours of alone time on the road again, with me.
circling free
MUSIC: Alanis Morissette, "So-Called Chaos"
READING: Marcel Mauss, "The Gift"
FEELING:crazy determined
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