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Jul. 29th, 2005 03:28 pmSecond therapy session wth Dr. C today. I had one with another woman, a week or so ago, but decided to stick with Dr. C for a few reasons -- she's closer, she takes my insurance, she brought up morals in our first session, which I liked, and her questioning wasn't as invasive as the second one's. Which probably shows how ill-suited I am for therapy, but we'll see how well I can overcome my fierce desire to be private and not reveal myself in all my disfunctional glory. That was the problem with the other woman -- I got the feeling that she saw me as a mess who managed to function, while Dr. C got the (more accurate, I hope) impression of a highly-accomplished and talented young woman with some problems.
I'm doing this for the next few weeks, until I go to Barnard, just to figure out what I want from more long-term therapy -- which I've resisted getting for the last few years, mostly because my biological father has been pushing me to have it.
Today, I showed her some of the emails he's sent me over the last several years, emails which upset me deeply every time I get them, emails I can't bear to read. They're manipulative and hurtful, and I know I want them to stop.
I'm not sure what I want from him. I know that when he contacts me, I get upset. I know that I dread the thought of running into him when I stay with my maternal grandparents, who live in the same apartment building (long story). I know that I was distraught when he wanted to come to my high school graduation. I know that when I think about my college graduation, I see my mother, my sister, my mother's boyfriend (who is, for all intents and purposes, my stepfather; he has been my father figure for years, and a better one than my biological father was during most of my childhood and all of my adolescence), my friends there, but not him. I know that when I think about whatever relationships I manage to patch together in that clean well-lighted place of the future, he's never there; he's something I have to explain away, like a Jack Aubrey dull-blue scar on my back.
Dr. C was pushing me to explain what he could do right, so that I would be willing to communicate with him, and I honestly couldn't think of anything, other than get a complete personality transplant and erase the last twelve years.
I don't think she believed me.
It is so hard to explain why he frightens me so, why I mentally flinch at the thought of speaking to him again or emailing him. I have become so sure over the last year that I don't want him in my life that I'm almost insulted at her questioning if that's the best thing for me to do, what I really want to do.
This feels almost superfluous. As if I no longer need therapy. But I know -- I know -- that as soon as I have a bad week, one of stress and deadlines and small disasters and pressure and minor emotional upset (I never claimed not to be high-strung), this will smash down on my head again and be just as bad as before. I cannot afford to let this slide. I have to cope with it now, before it destroys anything else. I will not be poisoned from the inside out. I won't let him do that to me.
I just don't particularly want to do it. I'd like to come out the other side, with whatever realization and decision made and clean and shining in my hand, like a sword balanced on my palm or a CD spinning on my fingertip. It's time-consuming, it's boring -- I know all the background on this, I don't really want to go through again for an outsider, and I'm having a small FAMILY BETRAYAL bell ding in my head at telling Dr. C all this stuff; my family is artistic and dramatic and they are good people and I love them, but we are no saints -- and I'm afraid that being in therapy will fuck with my writing, and I will suffer damn near anything rather than do that.
One possible division between writers and dilennettes is between those who want to write and those who want to have written. I don't want to be in therapy, I want to have been in therapy. I want it all to be over and to get on with my life.
I'm doing this for the next few weeks, until I go to Barnard, just to figure out what I want from more long-term therapy -- which I've resisted getting for the last few years, mostly because my biological father has been pushing me to have it.
Today, I showed her some of the emails he's sent me over the last several years, emails which upset me deeply every time I get them, emails I can't bear to read. They're manipulative and hurtful, and I know I want them to stop.
I'm not sure what I want from him. I know that when he contacts me, I get upset. I know that I dread the thought of running into him when I stay with my maternal grandparents, who live in the same apartment building (long story). I know that I was distraught when he wanted to come to my high school graduation. I know that when I think about my college graduation, I see my mother, my sister, my mother's boyfriend (who is, for all intents and purposes, my stepfather; he has been my father figure for years, and a better one than my biological father was during most of my childhood and all of my adolescence), my friends there, but not him. I know that when I think about whatever relationships I manage to patch together in that clean well-lighted place of the future, he's never there; he's something I have to explain away, like a Jack Aubrey dull-blue scar on my back.
Dr. C was pushing me to explain what he could do right, so that I would be willing to communicate with him, and I honestly couldn't think of anything, other than get a complete personality transplant and erase the last twelve years.
I don't think she believed me.
It is so hard to explain why he frightens me so, why I mentally flinch at the thought of speaking to him again or emailing him. I have become so sure over the last year that I don't want him in my life that I'm almost insulted at her questioning if that's the best thing for me to do, what I really want to do.
This feels almost superfluous. As if I no longer need therapy. But I know -- I know -- that as soon as I have a bad week, one of stress and deadlines and small disasters and pressure and minor emotional upset (I never claimed not to be high-strung), this will smash down on my head again and be just as bad as before. I cannot afford to let this slide. I have to cope with it now, before it destroys anything else. I will not be poisoned from the inside out. I won't let him do that to me.
I just don't particularly want to do it. I'd like to come out the other side, with whatever realization and decision made and clean and shining in my hand, like a sword balanced on my palm or a CD spinning on my fingertip. It's time-consuming, it's boring -- I know all the background on this, I don't really want to go through again for an outsider, and I'm having a small FAMILY BETRAYAL bell ding in my head at telling Dr. C all this stuff; my family is artistic and dramatic and they are good people and I love them, but we are no saints -- and I'm afraid that being in therapy will fuck with my writing, and I will suffer damn near anything rather than do that.
One possible division between writers and dilennettes is between those who want to write and those who want to have written. I don't want to be in therapy, I want to have been in therapy. I want it all to be over and to get on with my life.
Reposted from LJ, 20 March 2009
