1. we all want what we didn't have as children: I spent some time thinking about this aphorism (did cesperanza invent it or was it a thing before her?), and what I didn't have, and what I want as an adult. The words that kept drifting up were unhappy and lonely; apparently I just — "just" — want to feel safe and loved. Which is uselessly vague, frankly. (Fine has variable definitions.) WHY ARE WORDS FOR EMOTIONS SO UNHELPFUL.

2. in probably-related news, I have realized I don't even know what I've stopped myself from doing or thinking or risking because I'm afraid of my mother being disappointed in me and/or criticizing me. It's a fear that's so engrained in me I don't know where the fear starts and the rest of me begins. I don't know which of the voice(s) in my head are echoes of the real her and which are the ones my fear has made me project and which are actually me.

So. I continue to have feelings! I continue to mostly-not-understand my feelings! I continue to not die from having feelings! I am calling this progress.

Edited like five minutes later to add, because I forgot to type this up before: among the things that sparked these thoughts is the realization that I have two directly opposed desires around my new apartment: I am hurt that my mother has shown no discernible interest in coming to see it and I want it to stay a safe comfortable space that I don't have to make perfect by her standards. See also: the tangle of yuck that is my mother's apparently-better relationship with my sister and my feelings about seeing that from a distance and oh look, that entry is super-relevant because it talks about feeling lonely and unloved, unlovable, and ALSO suddenly I am damp-eyed and I don't really know why because I am NOT GOOD AT FEELINGS. Sigh.

That was a year ago? I guess so.

So this year for her birthday, my mother went to visit my sister again, and I went too! It was a surprise for Mom, and I think she was pretty pleased by the effort, and I'm glad I did it, and yet the long weekend was kind of less than awesome.

We all seem to be agreed that we like spending time together individually but the behavior patterns we fall into in a group are not good ones, and maybe we should take a break from doing that. I did not really think through and prepare mentally for being in close quarters with my mother and sister for a few days, and it was exhausting and dispiriting and I am feeling a little thin-skinned and fragile at the moment.

Some of it was that the weather was bonkers and I slept poorly the first night I was there, and then it was fucking freezing the next day, and cold + tired = a very unhappy Elizabeth. But mostly it was just...emotions. History and boundaries and patterns and man, being a grownup is hard.

Also my sister's apartment is wonderfully sunny and now I am freshly bitter over how much I hate my apartment because it is a pitch-black emotional vampire. But the rent is great and I like my roommate and I like the neighborhood (mostly) and ...yeah.

My therapist and I agreed yesterday that if I get through a stressful period at work that I have coming up without melting down, I can stop regular sessions.

!!!!!!!!!

BECAUSE I'M MENTALLY HEALTHY.

Like, I have a history of depression and will probably be on the lexapro indefinitely, and obviously if I need to I can go back anytime, but I have a support system and healthy coping mechanisms and I'm gonna be okay.

*TWIRLS*

Have started calling my mother on alternate weekends. It's ...going okay? I am still having a hard time relaxing and actually saying things instead of small talk, and I realize this is a great problem to have, but my therapist is right: I would like to have a close relationship with my mother, and I don't know how.

Well, the only way out is through, I suppose. It'll take time. We'll see how Thanksgiving goes. I'll keep trying.

It doesn't feel like it's been two weeks since my last entry.

Therapy tomorrow. I plan to go in and say, "Clearly we need to talk more about my relationship with my mother, because that is consistently the topic that kicks me in the teeth when it comes up and I'm always surprised and mute. But today I have to meet some friends immediately after this session, so I need you to keep an eye on the time and give me some warning and wind-down before the end of the session, because I can't deal with a social obligation while I'm fighting off tears."

Look at me, setting boundaries and asking for help!

....seriously, though, last session knocked me out, emotionally, for days. If that happens again, I am not sure how much my life can go on autopilot while I Deal.

Last week, in therapy, I mentioned that — no, wait, let me rewind. Last week, in therapy, my therapist asked how I was feeling about being in a transition period in my life, which has been pretty stable fr a while now, and which is the way I like it. "Overwhelmed," I said.

"Hmmm," she said. "I'm not getting that from you."

And we talked a little more, and I said something about how I had been so anxious over formally resigning and announcing my resignation and so on and so forth that I had taken a wee dose of ativan, a few days before, and for the first time it had had a real effect; the few times I've used it before it's kept whatever panic attack I've been having from increasing, but hasn't actually stopped it. This time, holy crap, it actually got my brain to stop chewing on itself completely. I was sort of astonished. I didn't know that was possible. I didn't know I was capable of — for example — going down to the laundry room in my apartment building early and instead of pacing and twitching and counting the seconds until the goddamn dryer stopped spinning, just hanging out.

"Hmmm," she said. "I'm wondering if we don't talk enough about your anxiety. Because I don't think of it as a major problem for you, and you don't mention it much."

"I don't? Uh, I bring it up when it's a problem, but I guess I'm just used to having a background level of high-pitched yelping in my brain — I mean, people don't go through life with their minds empty except for what they're specifically, consciously thinking about, right?"

Apparently the answer to that is both yes and no. Apparently we're going to be talking about this more. I suspect there are more mindfulness exercises in my future. And probably yoga. Which I don't actually mind.

The other thing I am spending a lot of time thinking about these days is finances; I'm at that spot where I have enough money to do retirement planning and have some fun (although not unlimited fun; my monthly do-whatever-with budget is $200, so traveling is sadly limited), but not quite where I can make real investments; I keep playing with the calculators at Bankrate, and I have mostly talked myself into trying out a laddered CD investment, which should make me around $150 over five years. Which, you know. Is better than my savings account.

Sometimes I think the mind sheds memories like the body sheds skin, little flakes of dead memory sloughing away invisibly.

Good: My therapist and I had a productive conversation about the last session I posted about. I'm still not entirely thrilled, but I did get through to her that this is not a topic I am willing to be flexible about.

Good: I have dropped down to biweekly sessions! Yay 450 extra dollars a month and agreement that I am doing super well mental-health-wise!

Bad: There was a mouse in the apartment this morning and I am almost certain my roommate blames me and apartment stuff in this apartment pretty much makes me fall apart with social anxiety.

Bad: I think my stepfather is mad at me, and while I can't entirely blame him, I am absolutely shit about communicating with him in the way he wants me to (i.e., phone), his technique of using every contact method he has for me (work and personal emails, work and personal phones, text and SMS) makes me feel trapped and panicked and overwhelmed and approximately 399% less likely to be able to call him back.

ETA: that may have been a panicked overreaction. A little.

There's a pattern playing out with both these bad things that has to do with perfectionism, that has to do with being good, and I have no idea of how to start isolating the thought patterns and excavating them and replacing them with something healthier.

There may have been, but I can neither confirm nor deny, a tear or two.

I'm honestly not sure what exactly was so hard about the discussion we had today — about how I feel totally helpless to say no to my mother and her expectations of how I function in our family, and how the single thing that sends me out of my mind most reliably is feeling incompetent, and how that's connected to my mother's disappointment and judgement, and how I have learned to not want things from my family so that I can't be rejected. But it was really hard.

The image of Cordelia from Shards of Honor, the fountain that pours out honor and keeps nothing for itself, has come up a few times, and it continues to feel relevant, somehow. If I could muster anything beyond helplessness and grief, I would probably be desperately jealous of my sister for how she does not seem to be vulnerable to the demands that I feel so crushed by — some of it is that she isn't physically here, and it's one of the few things that was better about not living in the Ancestral Homeland, and some of it is how she has built a life that my mother respects, she has a partner, for example, and I don't, and don't want one, and so obviously my first obligation is to my family of birth (except for the side which I have publicly rejected), but I honestly don't think I am jealous, I don't want her life and I don't want her relationship with my mother, I just want some boundaries in mine, but I have no fucking tools to build them.

Well, fuck, if just writing this entry brought me to tears again (yes, okay, there was a bit of m. in the e. during the session), clearly there's more here to deal with. Ice cream and an early bedtime for me, I think.

Because I don't trust him. Because no is a complete sentence. Because I tried for ten years, from ages six to sixteen, to get my father to pay attention to me, and it never worked. Because I get to take care of myself first. Because I don't owe him a chance to prove he isn't going to hurt me again. Because I'm happier living with his absence than I ever was with his presence. Because I don't believe he's capable of having a relationship with me where I feel respected. Because I am tired of this being my important story. Because no other relationship in my life has left me damaged in so many ways as this one. Because if he didn't want to lose me as an adult, he should have treated me better as a child. Because I am not his weapon against my mother. Because I don't have to help him sustain his narrative any more. Because someone who speaks ill of people I love to me is not someone I trust to love me.

Because I have survived him. I am done.