Tag: hard truths | The World According to MEH

Tempus Fugit

Posted on August 26, 2010 by admin • 21 Comments

I had my therapy session this morning. First of all, the temp has dropped considerably, which makes me a happy camper. Autumn is definitely here–and it’s my second favorite season. No, you get no bonus points for guessing my first since I’m not exactly reticent about it.

Anyway, I walked into my therapist’s office and started blathering about how I’ve lost my momentum since my mom left. After my therapist listened to me list my dissatisfaction with myself, she asked a seemingly non sequitur question. She said, “Minna, what are you going to do after I’m gone?” I looked blankly at her. She said, “Not on my vacation, but after I retire.” I stared at her, and she hastened to add, “I’m not sick or anything, but I’m a month away from 61. I want to retire when I’m 65. 4 years is not that long.”

I admit, my first reaction was sheer panic. I have been with her for some time, and it freaked me out to imagine not having her in my life. But, that was her point. I have been steadily gaining momentum in the last year and a half or so (with setbacks, of course), and I can’t afford to slide back again.

Four years ago, I was saying I would have a house by the time I was forty. Well, I’m going to be forty in eight months, and I will not have that house. It’s not that I couldn’t have a house by then, but it’s that I am not prepared to make that decision by then. Am I closer to making that decision? Definitely. Am I there yet? No.

Here’s the thing. I haven’t had to be a full adult yet in my life. I haven’t had to face the consequences of really failing. Now, it’s time for me to put away childish things and be an adult. And, if there is no external reason for that to happen, then I have to make it internal.

Back to my therapist’s question. After my initial panic faded a bit, I thought about it. I said that what I got from her was clarity and a new perspective. However, I had other people in my life who functioned in similar ways, and what’s more, I often times know ahead of time what her response will be (though it’s not as elegant in my head as it is when she says it). We have been together so long, I know what her basic tenets are. She is not always going to be there. And, I tend to think, “Oh, I am going to bring this to therapy and talk about it” before making a decision. That’s not a bad idea with big, tough, grappling issues, but it can be a way for me to avoid having to make any decision at all on my own.

My Destination Unknown

Posted on July 9, 2010 by admin • 8 Comments

As longtime readers of this blog know, I am a bit of a control freak. OK, OK, I am a HUGE control freak. In the past, I have made my world small enough so I felt it was manageable (look, honey, I shrunk my life!). The illusion of control was just that, an illusion, but it gave me some (cold, my favorite kind) comfort.

Well, let’s just take that illusion and blow it the fuck up, shall we? Remember the entry I wrote about how I couldn’t talk to my mother about my father? When my therapist asked me which part I couldn’t say, I retorted, “Fucking any of it!” No way I could talk to my mother about how my father ruined my childhood. Uh uh, no how, no way, never in a million years.

Well, I did it.

Let me recount to you how it went down.

Tuesday, my mom and I had a few errands to run, then we were going to go to dinner at Taiko, a local sushi bar. My mom had gone there the Friday before with a friend of hers (moved to a new location), and she said it was as good as ever. So, we reach the location, and the place is deserted. There isn’t a car in the parking lot. The sign says they are closed for the fifth and sixth of July. Oops. For me, it was no big deal. Yeah, I was disappointed, but we could go another time. For my mother, it was A Big Deal She started griping about how they hadn’t told her they would be closed and why would they do that? She kept up with it as we drove until I finally said, “Mom, it’s not a big deal. Let it go.”

I have to tell you it’s really frustrating to watch her do what I do because it reminds me of how out-of-proportion such a reaction is. But, it also helped me see that I come by my control issues honestly. At any rate, we ended up going to Acapulco, which is a decent Mexican chain.

Reluctant Realizations

Posted on February 4, 2010 by admin • 9 Comments

I am an adult.

I wanted to start out with that because I don’t often feel like an adult, and I don’t always act like one, either. In addition, I don’t get treated like one in my family, especially when the whole family is together. Once the baby, always the baby, I guess.

Secondly, I am punch-drunk stupid exhausted, so I apologize ahead of time if my words are less coherent than usual. My sleep, quite frankly, sucks. This is purely due to the stress. I have taken to napping on the couch with my boys rather than sleeping in my bed, and I snatch a few hours here and there whenever I can. They, of course, are delighted to be able to snooze with me. It comforts me to have them snuggle with me, but then I wake up with sore eyes (I’m allergic, which is why they are not allowed in my bedroom).

I had my therapy session yesterday. It was tough, but needed. I realized some hard truths that I have been reluctant to put into words before now. I brought print-outs of the letters from my parents to my session–the first time I’ve ever brought any communique to a session. My therapist read the letters, and then we talked about them. It tickled me to hear her say, “There’s a lot of shit in these letters” because she doesn’t swear very often. True to her profession, after reading the letters, she wanted to know about what I wanted to talk.

We talked about my father’s letter first. She called it predictable, and it really was. All the stuff about responsibility to society was typical, but missing the point. And, I realized that even though his letter was meaner in a way, it didn’t bother me as much. Why? Because I expect nothing less from him. I was surprised he tossed the monetary figure in there because he’s not usually one to talk about how much things cost, but the rest of the letter was pretty standard for him.

Learning Some Hard Truths

Posted on December 9, 2009 by admin • 13 Comments

I had a really hard therapy session today. My therapist told me some things I didn’t want to hear, but in the end, they were exactly what I needed to hear.

To make a short story long, I have to give some background. Here it is. I am lazy. Ok, I hear people protesting. “Minna,” says you. “How can someone who writes eleven-billionty words for NaNoWriMo be lazy?” I’ve heard variants of this retort ever since I started trotting out the “I’m lazy” line. My therapist nailed it in one, though. She was telling me about research that has discovered that if kids are told they are smart, they tend to quit if they don’t get something right away. On the other hand, if a kid is told, “Wow, you really worked hard, and you made that happen,” they were more apt to persevere. When my therapist told me this, something clicked in my head. See, if there is one thing I’ve been told repeatedly in my life, it’s that I’m smart. Fucking smart, really. When all else falls by the wayside, I cling to that truth. That’s good in some ways, but when I run into something I suck at, say, badminton, I refuse to play because I think I look stupid doing so. My therapist pointed out that for many people, not knowing how to do something does not equate looking stupid. I told her I’d have to take her word for it because it meant the same thing to me.

In my entry yesterday, I wrote that the five-year-old in me was saying, “I don’t wanna!” when it came to dealing with my eating issues. This fits in with what my therapist had said. She said that many times when I come across a situation that is difficult, I don’t want to put in the effort necessary to deal with said situation. It was the same when I was a kid. I was good at several things–dancing, playing the cello, and softball, to name a few. However, I would reach that point where I would have to put in several hours a day to become truly excellent, and I would quit rather than put in the effort.

Tag Archives: hard truths