Thursday, September 28, 2017

College is a time of transition, change, uncertainty.  You're away from family, everything's new and different.  It's a huge developmental task.  And if other things are going on then, uncertainty, stress, tensions back home, those compound the changes.  Normal ups and downs seem bigger, bigger blows for someone already in a fragile state.

Earlier in the session she'd asked me what it was like when it all blew up.  How did it feel?  Could change happen now without feeling like everything was blowing up again?

I'd not seen her, my therapist, in several weeks.  She had an important appointment during our normal time, and the next week I was headed up to visit my mom up at the university town where she lives.

It had been a validating experience, sitting in with a class at the SUNY with a colleague of hers, Sharon.  We were introduced as writers, a mother son team, and that was right.  Dr. H. acknowledged for me how life affirming it was, after I'd sketched it out for her.  The credential of writing a book, in terms of doing it no necessarily as the greatest writer, but as a form of education, writing in a way that was self-education, self-teaching, a process that itself was the deeper story behind the narrative, and therefore, truly, as an educator.  It had been the case that I hadn't quite known that, come to see, come to accept that.  For whatever that was worth.  And it did have some sort of worth, though obviously not in the direct creation of wealth, via a little book available through Amazon...  However personally somewhat awkward, as any roman a clef would be.

The visit up to Oswego to visit my mom, a ray of light into my situation, my sort of imprisonment.  Maybe I'd rebelled, as young people do, when feeling hurt.  But in the rebellion, the tradition, the genes, the values still come through.  Mom had written a book through her pursuit of the new life that had blown up my transition from home into the world.  Her's was a scholarly work, impeccably written.  Mine had been more of a literary effort in the sense that it feel with the realm of the novel and the short story.  Her work helped her, gave her a career along with the hard work of teaching, of education department tasks.  Mine had been a form of academic rebellion, I suppose.  Rebellions are costly.  They will leave you only with having strange jobs, strange lives and many unhappinesses.

And my own job was quite emblematic of foolhardiness and rebellion.  Week by week, no week an exception.  Nights working alone up at the wine bar, with scant help from downstairs, no late night sustenance to get me through the last few adventures.  People getting home far earlier than I and receiving the same financial reimbursement.  Having to deal with Jazz Nights at the bar, doing the complimentary wine tasting all by myself.  The closer.  Eating my supper all alone at the bar with a glass of Beaujolais to ease the pain and the angst.  Going back home alone on a bicycle, my courier bag slung over my back, having another glass when I got in, sat back on the couch, turned the TV on.

Waiting for the day off.   Scribbing a few thoughts down now and again.  At least some satisfaction in that, the process.


The Lexapro gives me diarrhea, but it seems to work with the mood stuff.  It might be putting a half tab of Propranalol, a beta blocker, into the mix, but that helps keep the calm.  Trazodone, I'll take one to help me sleep if it comes to that at some odd hour.  But the writing itself, that process, whatever it is, this is helpful too, as if questioning your own inner therapist.

Still, one needs a writing project.  A purpose beyond the self-explanations.

Look on the good side.  Therapy got you over the thing that hit hard, the compounded issue, the precipitated, the person not undesired for, or, a teacher in some way, the issue sketched out as The Princess in a book, occupying the mind for a long time.  She was a good compounder, with a sense of humor almost, give her credit for that.

"She treated you like a low-life," a similar session with the Dr. H, the fruit thereof.  That had helped.  And so, finally, did the distance, the time, the disappearance.  And even finding a recent picture of her, helping me see in a new light.

But that still left me in the same situation.  Just feeling better, feeling a bit less overwhelmed...


So.  Figure it out.  You're a grownup.  Get on with your life.


A book is not a lot to show for it all, but I suppose it's better than nothing.  There restaurant journals never paid off as far as offering more flesh to a journey I would have been on anyway, and perhaps a distraction, albeit one that paid a few bills for a time...

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