Everyone and everything and anything all at once at the same time other things are happening and all the things yet to come occurring after what has happened before and could happen again but also there are two sides to everything and you should consider absolutely everything before you decide but ultimately just when you think you’ve thought it through enough you thought wrong so think again.
The final instruction my therapist gave me was to write. She suggested that by doing so I would find myself. She asked me who I am? I don’t know. Who is that little girl who loved the woods? I don’t know. What does she want? I don’t know.
I often find myself saying “I don’t know”
What do you like? What do you do for fun? What are you hobbies? What makes you – you?
I don’t know. Or, I don’t want you to find out. You’ll find there is really nothing of note below the surface. And what I mean by that is I am truly all the things that I don’t do. I am the books I have not read, I am the trips I have not taken, the trails I have not hiked, the crafts I have not started, the projects I have not completed, the skills I have not honed, and the head I can’t get out of.
This isn’t the first time I am writing it all down. In fact, I have tried to write it down and get it out since I was in the 7th grade. There is a collection of notebooks and journals that spans decades, and when I revisit them I read the same thing over and over again. Sometime’s I’ve been so discouraged by my writings that I’ve burned or discarded volumes of entries. Same shit, different day. At 38 years old, I am still feeling the same things and writing the same thoughts. It hasn’t gotten better, only louder. She persists.
I always had a feeling of not quite belonging. As a child I held a belief that what I really needed was to be some place else and that once I got to that place everything would make sense and I would feel better. I needed to find my own personal Oz. As I got older I became a very moody teenager, the kind that made my parents wonder – What happened to you? What’s wrong with you? What happened to our daughter? It’s like aliens came and took you away. Do you need to see someone about this? I was angry because I felt trapped. I didn’t understand it but I still very much believed that if I could just get out of here, if I could get somewhere else, then I will feel better.
My inner dialogue is very loud. It collects soundbites of the things you tell me, of the things I hear, of the things I read, and then plays the tape back – over and over and over again. Multiple tracks. At age 19, I saw my doctor and told him that there must be something wrong with me. He recommended I choose someone from a list on the printout he provided. I was uneducated in therapy, and it was still very much taboo at the time, something to be kept secret, so I had no idea who on this list I should talk to, or who even to ask for help.
Comically the therapist I chose at random happened to a hypnotherapist. After several sessions of trying to get me to relax enough so I could be hypnotized into feeling better it was decided that I simply thought too much. Obsessive thinking is the way he worded it. It was just too loud and too busy in my mind and the therapy wouldn’t work. It was pointless. He gave me a book recommendation, wished me the best, and I was on my way.
I have seen several therapist between then and now because believe me I know I should see one. Some of them were simply awful, some were just stepping stones, and some of them changed my life – Thank you, Joe. There is a common denominator – I can’t push past the questions of who I am and what I want. I still find myself believing that if I could just leave, just for a bit, just for a little while, then I will get better and it will all go away.
However, leaving is not an option. And if you know me, you know. So I will have to work through this from where I am. Writing in a journal has ultimately been a failure and somewhat self-destructive quest to learn and grow. I’ve written it down, got it out on paper, but I haven’t changed, not in the way I need it too.
I purchased thefoxandtheperegrine domain several years ago to address this low consistent hum in the background that was begging me to write and to share. I had several geocities sites when I was younger so I guess I miss that. I haven’t known how to start this so I am trying now. I should probably take a writing course. My hope for this blog is to get what’s in my mind out of my head and see if I learn something by sharing it.
-c-
The Fox & The Peregrine 