"You said somewhere there's a box full of replacement parts"

 So, maybe I should admit that my fridays are now going to be something of a challenge.  the gym/therapy combo really wipes me out, and while I would have loved to have a tea-date with N, going home and just listening to my audio book and merging dragons was delightful.

 

I have things to do.  (everyone has things to do shut up omnia).  I have laundry to put a way, a table to clean, dinner to make, the scent of cat urine to track down.  I have a dinner and possibly a cake to plan for Boisterous's sort-of-birthday thing at our house.  (I think I'm  just going to buy pizza dough and have a couple toppings on hand). I could go to the dollar store and find something cheap and foolish and celebratory.  I could go pick up the rest of her present and buy some ant traps. I could start on Media's cross stitch commission.

 

I could I should I have.to I ought to. I don't want to

 

Most of the time I cry silently, or with the occasional gasp or hiccup. Most of the time, I can't even figure out how to make noise when I cry even when encouraged to do so.  (I feel like I lost it around the same time I lost the ability to smile with my teeth, somewhere in third or forth grade).  But sometimes, I let myself cry in the car.  Not while driving, of course, but in a parking garage, in our driveway, in sufficiently unpopulated parking lots.  And there are a handful of things I find myself scream-sobbing.     I'm sorry. I'll be good.  Please stop. Please make it stop. I don't want to anymore.

 

And I know there's something to that, something to unpack, some part of me stuck somewhere, hoping for rescue from someone who isn't coming.  And not in some stuck under a car, or child being beaten, just baby omnia not understand why it hurt so much to be her, why she was so sad, why she wasn't good enough.

 

The part of therapy I'm willing to talk about today was about the idea of time limits, of running out the clock on sympathy or even the right to bring something up or be affected by something anymore.  And I know, somehow, I got this idea from my parents, and I know I was a sullen broken teenager, but I'm also pretty clear on the fact that I'm a recovering alcoholic, that recovery isn't a place you get to but an effort you put forth forever, and grief is not a slowly tapering quality, always trending downwards.  

 

We also talked about how I'm tired and I don't want to try to please people who aren't trying to please me anymore.  (and then we talked about how I could swap out that infinitive for countless others.)  And I get that sometimes skills are complementary instead of mirrors and there's no metric on which to judge effort, love or even judge success. 

 

And there are things that people say that linger, that I need to let go of and don't know how to, because the unkind things feel like the proof to a thesis I learned when wee, that there's something wrong with me, that I'm asking for the wrong things, that I need too much, that space I carve out for myself is wrong.    And sometimes I just want to list them out here, this place is sometimes a better exorcism than the more inward-facing journaling (which I do much less of) 

 

I need to find a new psychiatrist, and I want to pay more attention to the process of diagnosis this time. It's never going to be a good time to switch up my meds, but these ones aren't working anymore, I can't wait to arrive at some calm place, it's not going to happen.  And I'm old now, I can recap my history with a more deadpan delivery, with more distance.  And maybe this time I can try not to conceal or lead the conversation.  It's hard to let go, and so I try to walk this line of performed sincerity because I want drugs and I'm an even better functional depressive than I was a functional alcoholic.  And I worry that makes my depression seem less legitimate, if it was really bad I wouldn't be functioning through it.

 

And I guess there are arguments to be made that I'm not functioning, I'm here on the couch on a lovely Friday afternoon curled up with a dog and my la croix instead of keeping the house, which is kind of my job now that I don't have a salary (and was kind of my job when I did) and labor no one pays you directly for is still labor and so if I'm not doing my ostensible job, maybe I'm not as high functioning as I think I am?

 

*at this point in the script, omnia shames herself into housework, laundry and cooking dinner*