Harriet M. Welch

Yesterday I took my son to the doctor because he has been having GI problems. He is always nauseous, particularly after he eats, and he often throws up after he eats. I thought the doctor would just give him some medicine, but he wants him to have some blood work and a barium xray. This would not be a problem for most people, but my son (who is 20) has a terrible phobia of doctors and needles. Now he is deciding whether to have the blood test this week or next. He knows he doesn’t want it at all, but he is trying to decide whether to put it off a week, which means a lot of anxiety for a week, or get it over with. And a friend of his told him she had the barium xray and she is sure he won’t be able to do it, because he won’t be able to drink the stuff because it is gross. He gags just eating chicken. I feel very badly for him. He is eating less than usual; he normally eats just once a day. And he eats junk, and drinks a lot of soda. I think he has lost weight – at the office he weighed 125 with clothes and shoes, and he is six feet tall. The doctor said it could be a sluggish stomach, or h. pylori, or celiac disease, or crohn’s disease. Great choices? NOT. My son was asking me about it last night, and he seems very worried. I asked the doctor if I could give him some klonopin or xanax before the blood test and he said that would be fine.

Tomorrow I see the gynecologist. I’m trying to decide how much to tell him. Maybe I don’t even need to say anything; I’ll just go back to taking the birth control pills continuously without the week off. I’m hesitant to tell him anything that will make him think I’m unstable. For example in June, when I was having my period, and I got into that rage and was “organizing” my daughter’s junk in the garage and broke a bottle, then picked up a piece of the broken glass and cut my arm with it. I didn’t even tell my t about that. My gynecologist will most likely not be so understanding. But I do want him to know that I think that my hormone levels seem to be effecting my emotions, so maybe I’ll just tone it down a little and tell him I was throwing the broken glass into the recycling bin trying to smash it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been bleeding for 7 days now. That’s a long period for me. It’s not heavy or crampy, just ongoing. But I start a new pill pack tonight, so hopefully it will stop. I also developed a migraine yesterday morning, I was having some stress as a combination of work and my daughter’s car having repairs and arguing with the warranty company, and this headache goes away when I take my migraine meds, but comes back after about 4 or 5 hours. That was the original reason I stopped taking the week off the pills, because whenever I stopped for a week I would get a migraine.

Then I had a terrible run this morning. It was pouring rain, and 95% humidity, and my Achilles’ are just hurting me so bad. I think I really have to admit I have Achilles tendonitis, and I need to stop running for a while. I just don’t have time for physical therapy. I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to stop running.

I’m sorry this is whiney.

And this isn’t even everything – you wouldn’t believe what is happening at work.

But one good thing happened, my boss invited me to “movie night”, a weekly event he is having at his home for his sons and their friends. He has a home theater in the basement, complete with popcorn maker. So I brought a bottle of wine, and watched the movie “Serious Man” with boss, his two sons, and a few of their friends. Lots of testosterone in the room! It was a wonderful movie. One thing you can’t deny about the Coen brothers – they really know how to end a movie.

At first I wasn’t sure whether I would go, but I’m glad I did. It was fun.

Tags: gynecologist, hormones, running, son, work

A friend was telling me that her daughter is going on a weeklong mission trip to North Carolina with the local Methodist church. I told her it sounds like the people who I met in Gulfport, Mississippi when I went there for Habitat for Humanity. She asked me who I went with and I told her I went alone. She said, “That is just amazing! That you wanted to do something and you just went all by yourself!” People say this sort of thing all the time. I know they really do think it is amazing, and unusual, and that I am “the most independent person they have ever met in their entire lives.” I don’t feel it though. I feel that I am doing these things to isolate myself, or to run away from problems, or because I am searching for something and I don’t know what it is.

On August 1st it will be one year since I started on the crisis hotline. I made a one year commitment and I am trying to decide whether or not to continue. The main factor in this decision is that I got this new job in February and it is working out to be about 25 hours a week. Plus 5 hours for my other job, and another 5 or so per week seeing my foster child. So there isn’t a lot of time left over. Selfishly I also really want a day in my week when I don’t have to set my alarm clock. During the work week I get up at 6:30, Saturdays I get up at 5:30 or 6:00 to run, and Sundays I get up at 7:00 to get to the hotline. Then I was thinking of switching to another shift, but the weekdays are so busy already. I enjoy the hotline, even though I don’t really feel like I am doing much. I will have to think about this some more during the next month.

Yesterday I was having a pretty nice day. Got up really early, went for an 11 mile run down to the zoo. Then my running group went to a coffee shop and I sat with another woman who I have been running with for the last 3 weeks or so. She has a son somewhat like my son, and she is divorced, so she is interesting to talk to and we have some things in common. I actually worked with her when I was a substitute teacher, but I didn’t know her well. Then I came home, and spent the day at the pool. Swam, and read, and napped. Talked to people who came and went. Around 6PM I went home to shower and change so that my husband, son and I could go out to dinner.

I went into the bathroom. Noticed there was no toilet paper on the roll. Got annoyed. How hard is it for whoever uses up the paper to replace it? There is plenty more under the sink, you don’t even have to move to get it. So I replaced the paper. Went to the bathroom (sorry for too much information), flushed the toilet. Turns out the toilet was clogged by the last person who used it and now the water is overflowing all over the bathroom floor. I grabbed the towels and threw them on the floor. Not enough. Ran into the kids’ bathroom and grabbed all the towels there (they have tons of them since they never bring them down to the laundry room, just keep taking new ones), and ran back to my bathroom to throw them on the floor. Ran back to the kids’ bathroom to get the plunger and run back to my bathroom to plunge the toilet, which takes all of 3 seconds.

Now I have an unclogged toilet, but the floor is full of sopping wet towels and rugs. I take the plunger back to the kids’ bathroom, throw it across the room, and slam the door. Go into the linen closet to get a clean towel for me and slam the door. My son asks what is wrong. I ignore him. My husband comes upstairs and asks what is wrong. I scream at him, “Someone left the toilet clogged and now I am the one cleaning up the mess.” He says nothing, turns around, and leaves.

This same exact thing had happened a couple of weeks ago. After that time my husband went to the linen closet because I had used all of the towels in the bathroom to soak up the water, and he got himself a fresh towel. Didn’t bring one in for me though. I said to him at the time, “I see you got yourself a clean towel, but didn’t get me one.” No response. So this time I got myself a clean towel and didn’t get him one.

I piled all of the wet towels and rugs into a laundry basket and it was outside the bathroom door while I showered and changed. My husband came upstairs to change his clothes. Walked right by the basket full of wet towels into the closet to change. Walked right by the basket of wet towels to go back downstairs.

I am feeling rage. I get these feelings of fury, of rage, and lately they have been happening more often. It happens when people in my family do things like leave me a big mess to clean up, act like I am the maid, pretend they are stupid and don’t know how to do anything, don’t admit they made the mess, etc. I guess they are making me feel devalued, and my response is rage.

Sometimes it gets really bad and I throw things. I used to do this a lot when my kids were little and there is a lot of shame there. My little kids would see me have terrible tantrums and throw and break things. I don’t do it as often now, but I still feel the rage. It is horrible. A couple of weeks ago I broke a bottle while in a rage (cleaning up a mess my daughter left), and picked up a piece of the broken glass and slashed my arm with it.

I can’t even write about this anymore. I’m still doing the damn laundry for the towels and rugs from the overflowed toilet. And I am still furious at my husband.

Tags: anger, family, hotline, husband

Yesterday I got an email from the library saying the book I requested to be put on hold is available for pickup. I don’t remember putting this book on hold, I wonder what that means.

Calling it quits : late-life divorce and starting over / Deirdre Bair.
Bair, Deirdre.
call number:306.89 BAI

Hmm.

Which leads into what happened last night. I worked during the day as usual, but since I had been out of town for two days I had missed my usual day of working for the college consultant, so we agreed I would come in last night. I had some time to kill between the jobs, so I stopped at the local watering hole and downed a couple glasses of merlot in about ½ an hour.

Got to work and S and I were chatting about what there was that needed to be done and how my trip was. Which led to a discussion about how my daughter and my son are so different, which led to me telling her about my decision to let up on my son and stick with doing nothing for a while.

I’m not sure what happened exactly, but I guess she told me that that isn’t a good idea. And then we got into a whole discussion about my husband and what he is and isn’t doing and how I signed up to be the stay at home mom 20 years ago but didn’t realize that meant that I would be the only parent and I don’t want that arrangement anymore. I already have two children, I don’t need to be parenting the other parent here.

I am tired of doing everything myself. I don’t understand why he gets away with doing nothing and I do everything. Because he makes the money? Well, now I’m working too, and granted I am making a mere fraction of the amount of money he makes, but I still do all of the other stuff too.

On Sunday after the graduation party I cleaned up with whole house and I washed all of the dishes and left them to dry on the counter next to the sink. When I came home late Tuesday night those dishes were still sitting there. Neither my husband nor my son had thought to put them away. The dishwasher was full of clean dishes and no one emptied it. No one but me EVER empties the dishwasher. I know this is not a reason to leave my family, but it is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with the family dynamics.

I told S that when my daughter leaves to go to college I am going to leave home too. I don’t know where that thought came from, but it sounds so appealing.

S said that I really need to tell my husband how I feel, because men are stupid. I told her that I thought he is selfish, and she said yes, he is that too. But I said it is too risky to tell him how I feel. Now I can be in denial that he is just stupid and selfish, but if I tell him how I feel and that I need changes in our relationship in order for me to stay, he might just say he isn’t willing to do that. Knowing the truth is much scarier than being in denial.

I was a mess, crying, sobbing, etc. That’s what I get for drinking before I decide to spill my guts to someone. Woke up this morning with swollen eyes and a pounding head. I’m basically not speaking to my husband at this point. This started the night he told that the doctor said I should call him because mothers are better at this stuff than fathers. It has been a downward spiral since then. I’m ready to get out. I’m done.

Tags: divorce, drinking, husband, work

I am so busy catching up with work since I was gone last week, and I’m sorry if I haven’t replied to emails or comments lately. I will catch up soon, I promise!

But I wanted to mention my new boss. He is so great, and we are alike in a lot of ways. This morning I was at his house working in the dining room, as always, and he was in his office right next to the dining room. I sent him a link to the slideshow that I had made from pics from my trip. He was very supportive and very interested in hearing about the trip, more so than my own family, and I thought he would like the slideshow.

So I send him the link and about 5 seconds later I hear the music from my show coming from his office. I go in there and say, “That was quick.” He had immediately clicked on the link to watch the show. So we watched it together and he asked lots of questions and I told him about all of the people and how the whole thing worked.

And then the best part was he proceeded to show me what he had been working on at 6am when he couldn’t sleep – a slideshow of photos set to music that he planned to send to his mother for mother’s day. I said, “It’s great to know that someone else gets these creative urges that they can’t resist, even when there are more important things to do.”

Then at lunch time he asked me if I ever eat out, because I bring my lunch to his house every day. I said, sure I eat out. He asked me what restaurants I like in the area and I mentioned a few and he said “Since it’s a slow day (which it wasn’t for me actually) would you like to go out to lunch?” I said sure and we went out for lunch and had a great time. I got to talk to him about his business and how he got involved in real estate and lots about himself, which was very interesting.

We got on the subject of how I volunteer for the summer baseball team selling tickets. He said, “Is your husband as outgoing as you are?” Which threw me! I said, “I’m not outgoing.” He told me that he thought I must be if I am selling tickets to between 500 and 1000 people at a baseball game. I don’t consider myself to be outgoing, and although I do talk to the people at the game, it’s just very quick. Like, “Enjoy the game!” or “Have fun!”

So I told him that my husband is very quiet and not very outgoing, but neither am I.

He also writes me such nice emails like this one:

EXCELLENT! You are really doing a fabulous job and I am thrilled that we are working together. Thanks for the attention to all of the many varied aspects of helping me organize my life.

I decided to be a big girl and write back to my T about why he didn’t respond to my email. The new guy I’m working for gets and sends TONS of emails. When he sends an email to someone and they don’t respond he sends another one saying something like, “Hey, I sent you an email and you didn’t respond. What’s up?” He doesn’t obsess about whether he might have said something that hurt their feelings, or maybe they are angry at him, and he doesn’t apologize for something that he probably didn’t even do. So I took a page from his book and wrote J asking why he didn’t respond. Of course, I did do the whole apologizing routine, I’m sorry if I said something that might have been out of line, of course whatever happened is my fault, etc.

He wrote me back saying that he did respond to my email, in his head. Too bad I’m not a mind reader. He apologized and said that I was glad that I sent a follow up email. And he said that my verbal expression perhaps does not always convey my feelings and anxiety about being misunderstood gets in the way of expressing myself directly and I allow people to not get what I’m saying because of worry about offending them. Him included. And he said he wasn’t blaming me, that miscommunication goes two ways, but self-criticism and worry get in my way.

As for the other email I was supposed to send, telling one of the women I work for that I didn’t have time to work for her this week. Well! Not only did I NOT send her an email saying I didn’t have time to work, I DID send her an email telling her I do have time to work. I’ll be going over there this afternoon for a couple of hours.

After I sent the email I felt a somewhat huge weight being lifted off of my shoulders. On the other hand, I now have to work on a Saturday afternoon when I have other things to do. I’m thinking it’s all J’s fault that I couldn’t send the email that I intended to send. We had talked about this for at least 10 or 15 minutes last week, and I thought I finally got him to understand why I was having difficulty with this. But then when I was leaving he asked if I would like to send him the email to look at. I asked if he would send it on to her, and he said he couldn’t do that. Of course. But how will him looking at the email help me? I thought I had clarified for him that the problem wasn’t writing the email, it was sending the email. So his comment negated that whole discussion and left me feeling misunderstood. Therefore to spite him, I didn’t send the email that we discussed. So there. Of course, I just screwed myself and not him.

I also had another insight. Perhaps I don’t want to say no to people who ask me to help them because if I do say no they might find someone else to help them, and then it will be apparent to me that I am not invaluable to these people. I think I have a strong need to feel wanted and needed and like I am doing something of value, and if they can just find someone else, or if they can just check Google instead of asking me, well, where does that leave me? Just a nobody. I think that is black and white thinking – I’m either invaluable or I’m a nobody. I should find a way to be comfortable with being somewhere in the middle.

Tags: communication, email, misunderstood

What am I thinking about? More and more, as things with the job settle down. My boss was out of town all week, so I was more flexible about when I could work and I could do more from home. Still a lot of work, and also working for the old clients, but at least I wasn’t so structured with time constraints. He’s coming back today, and then leaving again Wednesday for a few days, so it should be a fairly peaceful week. At least I’m getting more time to run.

My mother left me a voice mail yesterday morning and I haven’t called her back. I can’t deal with her right now, I’m mothered out. I feel bad complaining about my mother, because she is really a good person and we’ve always had a good relationship despite her difficult personality, and despite my issues, which I’m sure she would also describe as a difficult personality. I know plenty of people whose mothers have passed away, or who have mothers who abused them as children, and I am lucky to have my mother in my life. So I complain, but I do feel bad about it.

And of course I’ve been thinking about therapy, and what issues to deal with, and the fact that I am growing resentful of therapy and of J. It just seems like I bring up important issues, well they seem important to me, and they never get resolved, or they get put on the back burner, or ignored. And it is hard for me to resurrect things that I believe J feels are boring, or unimportant, because of my lack of assertiveness and low self-esteem. And now it seems like there is the proverbial “elephant in the room” which is the horrible place I was in just last month, when I was truly suicidal, and hating myself, and wanting to drive into trees, and take overdoses of prescription medicine that I continue to hoard. Is this a topic not worth talking about? How is it possible to just move on?

And have I really moved on, or am I just currently distracted? I feel like I am teetering on the edge here, and it would be so easy to slip back into that place. I mean, I just got a job, and that is good, but it certainly isn’t going to save me from all of my deep seated problems. And I still find myself distrustful of J after the blog incident, which was also never resolved (my fault though, not his). I tend to hang onto things, and I can’t move on. I just don’t know.

Tags: mother, trust, work

Hi – I’m still here. I’m sorry I haven’t been writing, and I’ve barely been able to even read other people’s blogs. But I’m thinking things will start to calm down soon, well, as soon as I learn to say “No” to people!

Last week in therapy I told J that I was feeling better, and it was because I got a job. We talked about the job for a while. Then I told him that I saw a different therapist, Parrot T, because I felt I should try someone in my insurance plan and I wanted to see what it would be like to see a woman T. We talked about her for a while and I told him that she was very nice, but quirky.

It was a nice session, I can’t really say it was therapy, we just talked, but it was fine. I think it took seeing another person to realize that I’m more comfortable with J than I probably thought I was. So even though it didn’t work out with Parrot T I’m glad I tried it.

Then another busy week. Mostly feeling good, but a few slumps. One thing I realized is how easily my mood can change from good to bad. One minute I’m feeling fairly confident about myself, or at least not like a total disaster, and then one little thing can happen, or it might not even happen – it might be something I perceive to happen, and then I’m really hating myself.

Today in therapy I did have two things I wanted to talk to J about. But when I got there he asked how the job was going, and he asked me some questions about it. That got us to talking about how I can’t say no to people – in this case the other people that I work for. I really want to stop working for them, and just stick to my new boss and the college consultant (and I actually had to tell J her name, because we were talking about all of the people I work for and it was really hard to keep them straight. We referred to her as “4 hour lady” and “old lady”, not because she is old but because I’ve been working for her longer than for the others). Finally I said, “Her name is Sally.” And he referred to her as “Sally” which felt strange. Kind of invasive, like how dare you call her by her name, you don’t even know her. But it was too complicated to talk about all of these people without using names. Which is why we have names I suppose.

So I didn’t get to talk about the two things I had in mind. And maybe that is good. Last week I asked J if he thought that maybe he can’t help me and I should find another T. But he assured me that he wants to work with me and that he can help me. He talked about “maintenance issues”, and how we can work on these ongoing things. And with the new job it will give us lots of here and now material to work with, rather than keeping everything theoretical. And then there are the deeper issues that we can work on as well. He said he sees people from a minimum of one time up to someone he has been seeing for 4 years.

Even though I didn’t talk about the two things, I think it’s good that we talked about the stuff we talked about today. Maintenance. It might be better for me to avoid the deep issues for a while, at least until I get settled into my new routine.

Tags: work

Working is definitely getting in the way of blogging – both writing and reading. There have been days when I was out for 12 hours, and unlike many days over the last couple of months those hours did not include sitting at Starbucks or Panera reading and writing. Right now I am focusing on fitness, nutrition, time management, and work, not necessarily in that order.

I’m feeling a lot more energized. The less time I have the less time I waste.

I don’t think about killing myself all of the time. I’m still waking up in the middle of the night a lot, and when I do I continue to get that sick feeling that I’ve been getting for the last year or so – crap, I’m still alive? I don’t like that. But during the day I’m really too busy to fantasize much about dying.

I am feeling a lot of anxiety about work, and how capable I am and whether I can get everything in, etc…. I guess that is to be expected. I’ve started major to do lists and calendars to stay on top of it all.

Tomorrow I see J. I’m thinking I should quit therapy. Maybe all I needed to feel better was a job. But maybe we can try again to figure out a way for me to help my son. Maybe I’m in a better frame of mind now. I don’t think I’ll see Parrot T anymore. I just don’t have the time or energy to start over with someone new. Not right now.

I’m sorry I haven’t been commenting on blogs. I try to skim them, but I really need to take some time and catch up.

Tags: anxiety, blog, death, work

Thank you everyone for your input regarding Parrot T. One thing I forgot to mention is the life sized stuffed gorilla sitting in a chair in her waiting room. How could I forget that? And there is a sign around his/her neck saying “I Give Hugs.” OK, that is just creepy.

I think what I’ve decided is that everything that J is too much of, Parrot T is not enough of. There has a be happy medium, and if I am going with the extremes I’d rather stay with J. But I haven’t reached a definitive conclusion yet. Maybe I’ll talk to J about it next week.

I started my job today. Took the IQ test. See if you know the answer to this:

Ten people are at a meeting and at the end of the meeting everyone shakes hands. How many handshakes are there?

And do you know what philology means? I didn’t! I do now though.

I worked from 8:30 until 2 for R. Then went and got lunch (he lives in a great nearby city with lots of cool places to eat and shop). Then went over to the college consultant and got in an hour’s worth of work before her student showed up. Then did errands, picked up food for my son, and got home at 6:30PM. Yikes, is this what it is like to work? It takes all day! And I have work to do at home too.

So I mentioned the pressure I am feeling about the new job. R seems to think I am perfect, even though he knows intellectually that it is not so. But he keeps praising me for my questions, my answers to his questions, things I write, etc. We spent a good amount of time together this morning and he is very easy to be with and easy to work with. The other day in an email to me he said, “you have a very gentle and personable persona.” He offered to send a personal letter from me to an organization that he is on the executive board of; I had a complaint about this organization in regard to my daughter. I wrote the letter, sent it to him, and he told me, “Wow! Letters like this are not easy to write. Too often they end up as rants, and lose their effectiveness. I believe you have struck exactly the correct balance between personal motivation, irritation and constructive input. Very well done.”

Today he called the college consultant, I had given him her phone number as a reference. He asked her a question something like after she had known me for 9 months what was it about me that she discovered was a negative, or something she didn’t like. She said she still hasn’t discovered any negatives about me after three years!

I’m not saying this to brag, although it sounds like I am so I’m sorry about that. I just am feeling my perfectionist tendencies starting to get out of control, my fear of being “found out” and what will happen when people find out I’m a fraud?

I was thinking that of course I have faults. But my faults usually don’t affect the people for whom I work, as a matter of fact they are an asset to my clients and employers. These faults that are positives on the outside and make me seem competent and perfect are the ones that cause me all of this internal angst. That’s an insight, isn’t it?

Tags: parrot, perfection, work

Well I think my life has changed since the last time I wrote, which was a mere two days ago.

I’ve been answering ads on Craig’s List in an attempt to find a job. Whenever I send an email in response to an ad I get no reply. However on Saturday, as I was sitting at my desk in a stupor after running 13 miles, I saw a new ad posted. Someone looking for a part time personal/executive assistant, which is exactly the type of position I was looking for.

I crafted a cover email and attached my resume, sent it off, and kind of forgot about it. No one ever responds. But a couple of hours later I did get a response and it was a positive one. He asked me some questions, I answered, and he asked if we could talk on the phone. We set up a time to talk on Sunday. That call went well, we chatted for about half an hour, and he decided we should have a meeting. We were both free an hour later, so we met at his home office in the afternoon. I was there for 1 ½ hours, and it seemed like a real connection. You know me and my connections! Well, I really felt the connection, and it seemed as though he did too. But he said he was interviewing another person and he would get back to me by Wednesday.

Today, Monday, I got an email from him saying that he really has mostly made his decision, but he wants me to fill out some forms for a background check and wants me to take a test that he found online. He said that the position is not contingent on me doing well on the test, but it’s a way to determine my strengths and qualifications. He had given me a sample question when we met yesterday and it was kind of fun, so I told him I am looking forward to taking the test.

I emailed him back the forms for the background check, and I am going over to his office on Wednesday morning, both to take the test, and to actually begin working.

This has all happened so quickly that I haven’t even had time to process it all. All I can say at this point is:

– This man is very intelligent, seems caring, seems like he also feels the importance of connecting with people, and owns a very busy business with which he needs help staying on top of
- During our discussions I felt quite at ease, both with his personality and with the degree of difficulty of his questions in regard to my abilities and experience
- We both seem to have some of the same interests, beliefs and values
- We each have two children, his are one year apart in age from my own
- He has a beautiful home in which I’ll be doing some of the work, and a lot of the work from my own home
- It’s a perfect type of position for me in terms of flexibility, number of hours, and salary
- I can still do my volunteer work, but will be giving up my other business which is the professional organizing. Not enough consistency, hours, and therefore income, in that type of work
- I will still be able to work for the college consultant, who is a great friend and so supportive of me, and for whom I work about 3 hours a week
- I’ll be making $350 to $450 per week, which will enable me to keep my personal trainer (assuming I’m not working during those hours!) and I will be able to see whatever therapist I want to see, regardless of whether or not he/she is participating in my insurance and I won’t have to ask my husband for money
- I actually feel pretty good about myself, well, when I’m not feeling like I’m a total fake or fraud and it’s just a matter of time before he finds out

Other than that, I feel excited about starting a new direction with my life. This businessman for whom I’ll be working, I’ll call him R, is really serious about doing his research before hiring anyone, so I feel comfortable that if he does decide to definitely hire me it will be for the long run.

We’ve already had conversations about marriage, children, psychology, passions, nutrition, health, exercise and each other’s personality. And that’s in addition to the discussions we have had about office systems, productivity, finance, internet research, computers, international travel, the college search process and various other professional topics.

Tomorrow I meet with Parrot T. I’m not feeling anxious right now. What is there to be anxious about? We meet, we talk, we click or we don’t. If we do, I make a decision. If we don’t, I won’t see her again. I believe that I am feeling anxious about the prospect of leaving J, more so than starting with a new T.

This morning when I had my workout with my trainer I was wearing long sleeves to cover some self inflicted injuries incurred over the weekend. Despite the long sleeves my cuts were visible, you know when you are working out your sleeves don’t always stay all the way down. He asked, “Have an encounter with a cat?” I replied in the affirmative. He said, “The cat win?” I said, “Yep.” I don’t know what he imagined, and I’m wondering why I cut so low on my forearms, which I don’t usually do. I’m unclear as to whether I was flirting with the idea of cutting my wrists, or if I cut in a place where someone might notice. Either option doesn’t really sit well with me.

I want to thank my dear friend Grace for her support when I am feeling hateful of myself, despite her own troubles and being so sick that she was in the hospital, she is caring and loving and selfless. I only wish her happiness and love and peace, and for her therapist to come back from vacation and tell her that she’ll be ok. Thank you dear Gracie!

Tags: anxiety, connection, cutting, friends, work