A dying light...

12/4/18
1:36am after laying awake for 45 minutes confident that I would fall back asleep naturally, I gave up and decided I’d better write it out should I ever hope to get back to sleep.

I am thinking on his advice about not feeding the fire… Letting it burn out. It is a very sad but beautiful analogy and I envision sitting under a starry night sky watching a campfire slowly burning out the last little bits of wood; red glowing embers eventually cooling and fading into black. Now and again a piece of missed fuel will ignite causing a temporary flame to spark back to life but only for a moment... soon choked out by the lack of new fuel. When all the fuel is burned to embers, for awhile, there is always a low intense flame that is almost invisible. It is the hottest moment in the fires life.
The whole process is truly beautiful and mysterious and I think the analogy is very fitting.

But as a camper watching the fire die you have to make a decision: Do I sit and watch it die slowly until it is all the way out? Do I push and stir all the remaining fuel into the core heat in order to burn any missed fuel pockets so that it burns out more quickly and the risk of something reigniting while it is unattended is minimal? Do I poor water on it and stir to make sure it is completely out for the time being? Or do I just leave it to burn itself out believing that there is no risk of it causing a wildfire?

The decision made will be influenced by time and location. Sometimes we are tired or impatient so we put it out quickly leaving little bits of fuel for the next fire. Sometimes we have the luxury of being able to sit and savor every last moment of it; feeling the cold calculatingly creep into our body as the fire fades away. And sometimes, when we believe we are in enough of a windless desert that there seems no risk of igniting anything outside of the fire pit, we just leave it to do its thing.

Right now my mind is watching the fire die and it is the bittersweet end to an adventure filled day…

Dear Perri and All Other Therapists

I did get the chance to talk with him, one last time, though he did refuse to be my therapist any longer which is a little sad because he really is the best and I will miss him. But still I know he is right. I do feel like I got the closure I needed and now I can continue to let go... That does make me a bit sad but my heart has settled some and thinking it causes no added surges of cortisol, so that is good.
Progress.

I was able to say a whole lot in a short period of time and I feel better knowing that I was able to clarify a few things and help him to see that he really didn't know me so well as he thought. I am the other side to the profession, I have as much experience or more, just from the other side of the mask. Through the process of learning, trying and growing for so many years I have picked up a lot and had unknowingly created my own reflective mask. ...And to further complicate myself I thought I was transparent. It's comical really.
But there were a couple of things I didn't have the chance to say. I am not sure if he will remember that I told him about this blog or if he will remember the web address or if he will ever allow himself to check it out anyway but I'd like to say it for my own sake and for the sake of anyone else who may stumble across this.
First, and this is a little silly, I was bummed I didn't get to tell the story of my shirt. I got it in Lisbon the day we returned home from our Spain and Portugal bike trip. Because we had weird vibes with the friends we had originally come with, Trump had just been elected president, and it's basically the story of my life; it made me laugh so hard I had to buy it. It reads: "The future will be definitely confusing."
It always will be but that doesn't bother me. I enjoy the adventure. So it fits for me and it was so fitting for the situation. Though I knew I had to move on I could not bear him shutting me out completely. I am fine with things being what they are and whatever they need to be. I can leave him alone because I love him and respect him but I still need him to be part of me for awhile longer and the goodbye forever is more than I can physically handle right now.
Which transitions perfectly into my next missed topic of discussion. Though I had told him that my heart had been physically hurting for the past 3 weeks I did not get to ask him about it -get his professional thoughts on that. And I especially wanted to ask if he knew anything about waking up from death... More on that later but I had intended to ask today if he could explain the physiology of what was going on with me since it was starting to take a physical toll.
It turns out there is such a thing as "broken heart syndrome" where all the extra cortisol from stress causes physical heart problems and can lead to cardiac arrest of some sort. I had no idea until I looked it up this evening since I still feel a little week in the heart. But no time and no more time to write tonight either,
but therapists be advised; 
if you have a client/patient that you know is forming an attachment to you please be very careful in how you break that bond, it really can cause physical harm.
But even more important: thank you for helping me to write that very transcendent chapter of my life.

Reprocessing: so much to do... so little time

11/30/2018
2:24 am

I am thinking on reprocessing as I become semi-conscious through the natural cycles of sleep. It wakes me completely as I recognize that these thoughts are new, and they are forward moving in the direction I wish to head. I know that I will not go back to sleep easily now because my mind will not easily give up the processing of them and I make a quick and decisive decision to get them out now, as they are coming, so that I may return to sleep -the very thing I need- quicker… and as I type this I remember that even going to sleep I recognized that I was not likely to sleep well since I was feeling certain emotions before I went to sleep. Not terribly overwhelming, but emotions that needed to be felt and a very natural part of the “grieving process.” Emotions that I am familiar enough with to know that they would affect my sleep.

In addition to those loss and grieving emotions (before I went to sleep) I was thinking on how he just let me go. How, somehow, in my mind I felt a switch from him that I did not see coming, at least not like that and not just then. I knew therapy would have to end with him and I had scheduled appointments for the next four weeks in a row when I realized that I needed to get this therapy stuff done so I could move on and not grow so attached to him. An ironic paradox. It really did seem to me that the moment I started to utilize him as just my therapist is the moment he turned on me and this was so confusing to me. And my research confirmed that this was confusing. I now long to talk with him human to human, preferably friend to friend, but even if he can’t be friends with me for a moment to resolve this, I hope and so intensely desire that he can at least talk real person to real person with me, without the walls, without the masks, and outside of his confining office where his Jedi mind tricks would not have power over me and he would be less tempted to use them.

The new thoughts that are attached to the old thoughts that I know... I need guidance in reprocessing if I am going to do it correctly… or at least more productively and heading down the happier healthier path that (therapist) had started me on. The paths in my thinking that I had become excited about ...and grown quite fond of.

These are the new thoughts that are coming. Something feels different about this time. “It’s not an uncommon theme with me,” I say, “ I fall in love with just about everyone, but this is a little different, you are something special.”

…-it’s not a sexual thing...maybe I needed to add that?

I have so many things that I need to reprocess that I do not want this to be another one. But it is confusing to me, as I see repeats in my patterns that I believed he would have seen, been aware of, and sensitive to as my therapist and as “the best.” I know that he is going through some personal stuff, I sensed that, and I am aware that this could have thrown him off his game… but why would that happen ...especially to me? With me? Why the timing? It was far too familiar of a pattern so I came to questioning myself and at the same time wondering if I could believe anything he had said and that I had felt. Wondering if my perceptions were so completely off. Questioning. And feeling like a fraud in both my sanity and insanity again. A very challenging thinking trap to escape. His actions seemed to confirm everything I hated about myself; the mysteries of myself that everyone else hated about me too but would not tell me (so I could fix them.) I had been here before, but this time is different. I am gaining ground. Making progress and I will not let my mistakes or someone else’s mistakes, real, projected, reflected or perceived derail me this time. I AM more solid and I WILL make it through and I AM finding my power to do that.

So, and this is what woke me up, the new thought in this process, the thought that I knew could keep me on my path to full healing and my full potential:

“I can admit that I am wrong.”

I want to be able to compartmentalize and store my thoughts, hurts and experiences more effectively and efficiently so that I can live the best and most productive version of myself. There is more to my story than he knows (so much more), whether I was hiding it from him -very well- or whether he failed to see it doesn’t matter so much as I know that he does have the knowledge and training that fits my scenario and he knows how to direct me -he really is very good. I know deep down inside that he can still be helpful for me with this if he is willing to.

My pride says "No! since I told him I would not see him again as my therapist." My ego says no because “you don’t even know what the truth is and what is the lie with him.” But my heart says "it will hurt no matter how you see him again but forward movement is what you need and you are going to continue to love him either way, besides it might be good for him as well." And my logical brain says, "umm yeah, admitting that you are wrong and utilizing his skills to help you in the right direction of reprocessing this is a good idea even if it does mean you have to admit you were wrong about coming to see him as your therapist again and even if it is painful for either of you. It is paradoxically a step in the direction of becoming that person you have been working so hard on becoming for so long."

It is now 3:21 am and I feel like I have gotten it all out -I hope I have as I’d like to go back to sleep. “How are you sleeping?” He would ask regularly … because he knows that I am going to be extra sensitive to not getting enough sleep.

I broke my therapist

It's been awhile. I had been working so diligently to create my illusion that I almost had myself convinced.
And this morning, at 5 am, I believe in my realization that I had my neuropsychologist convinced.
It's such a funny irony, paradox, hypocrisy whatever and a million other things that I have struggled so much with my sanity, to keep it in check, and yet somehow I feel neither here nor there in the land of crazy and the sane. I can't accept that I am *crazy and I can't accept that I am sane -as if I am perfectly at home as a fraud in both spaces.  (*have any type of medical diagnosable mental illness)

I somehow have the ability to look at myself scientifically and rationally even when chemicals are raging through my system and there are mystical signs and omens at work on me. I don't know that I always recognize it as well as I think I do, but I do a pretty damn good job.
My therapist, who I had been seeing for several months, has been helping me to uncover my buried story, bring it to the surface, and to learn to accept and love my perfectly imperfect self.
I had my story so far buried I had forgotten why I had buried it; how I had gotten to that point. I figured I was just there to deal with PTSD from a car accident, that involved a concussion, thus it also meant dealing with the head injury of my youth, which seemed to be contributing to the problems I was having while offering reliving style memories and feelings from my teen years that I was not realizing were in fact head injury related and that I had been left to handle alone.
There are so many ironies, repeats and parallels in this
That is probably why the spirit animals came into play.
I do in fact need some other worldly comforting.
But back on track. I was also aware of recent painful experiences with friends and an employer. I do certainly scare people, but my therapist didn't believe I was scary; because I had him fooled.
Yesterday I remembered my blog.
I revisited you (blog) it's been years and I have to say it is a bit sad that it lacked sharing of some of the happier sides of my beautiful crazy life.
Ironically I feel it easier to share the depression stuff, I think it is safer to share and I often look back with embarrassment at the other. ...and I allow my self to digress again ... but back on track
You see the problem is that I fell in love with my therapist. It is not an uncommon theme with me, I fall in love with most people and it's not a sexual thing, it's just love. But because it is coming from me or is channeled through me it is a deep and intense love that I struggle to handle myself. Forget expecting other people to handle it.
What if you saw God, or Jesus, how would that effect you?
This is a deep confession and not where I expected to go with this, but I am going to let it continue, because my box is broken, my therapist is broken and I am tired of hiding, it never felt quite right when my parents told me it was something I should not share freely.
I wasn't crazy then. I didn't even have a damaged brain. I was a young child and it was a dream, but as sure as I was that I was alive and human, that my parents were my parents and that anything tangible really existed I knew that I had seen Jesus. I knew it because I had felt his love. A love so intense and so powerful that it changed me, it shined out of my little blue eyes as I proclaimed to my mom "I saw Jesus." It shined out even without me talking about it.
As an adult, as a teen, I questioned it, questioned if it was just a dream. I often tried to tell myself that it was just a dream, but that was a destructive lie.
When I was around 17, in a religious studies class, in order to illustrate some point, my teacher carelessly asked for a raise of hands from anyone who had ever seen Jesus; In that moment I became the damned as I tried to convince myself that it had merely been a dream despite the fact that I knew better. It likely scarred me more deeply than I know. I had just denied seeing God.
This was not what I came on to write about, but sometimes it is best to stopping fighting with ourselves and our egos and just go with the flow.
And  just like that my mind is empty again. Ready to go back to sleep.

“I think I am struggling a little with depression.” I say as tears well up and then silently slip down my cheek trying to escape to the dry ground before anyone notices their presence. 

It’s just me and my husband on the trail at this point but that is enough and I am exposed.

“You probably will your whole life,” he says.

“Nope” I say flatly and I mean it even as more tears escape.

“Good” he comments with a slight sense of pride.

He reassures me that I have done a good job at keeping myself out of depression. He praises me for my efforts to beat it. And I am glad for this.

I am glad that he understands and is supportive of my intense desire to beat it. To change that aspect of me so that I don't have to struggle with it my whole life. It has been many years that I have struggled with depression and it has brought me very near to breaking points... Or I may have broken many times but I am not beat by it 

and I can proudly and confidently tell you that it is not a struggle for my whole life. 

I have beat it because I know it. I know what it looks like, I know when it is coming, and I know what to do about it. I know how to take care of myself and I know how to beat it again and again until it is not a struggle and it is not a burden of my whole life to wallow in. 

I am a better and stronger person because of it but eventually I will lose touch. 

I will forget what it is like to go through and I will be yet another person who just doesn't get it, not because I never have like most who don't get it, but because I have lost touch. I have healed, I have beat it, I have outgrown it and I have moved on.
I am happy to know that and I feel better already.

my five senses.

A good early education will move from concrete to abstract to make sure the student has a solid conceptual understanding of the subject.
I think so much of our lives has become so abstract that we often forget how to live concretely. How to live in and enjoy our real life physical surroundings and existence.

Often we want answers. I often find myself praying. Then I find myself looking for the answer. Wondering where and who to turn to to get the answer I am looking for.
...Because God is silent.

But what if He wasn't?
What if he gave solid answers.
I have been trained to believe that he does and yet it is a code you have to decipher and while no one else can receive revelation for me I am supposed to turn to certain books and people for answers. Who have been trained and conditioned in the same way. and sometimes they are wrong.
So why isn't God himself giving me answers that I know are actually coming from him? That I know I can trust? I am sure I am not the only one to feel this way.
I am not one who likes to believe down the line. I like to go directly to the source or at least as close to it as I can get and then figure out and decipher for myself how to interpret that data.
There is so much data out there.
And data can be changed, tweaked, manipulated for what ever purpose people have.
It's exhausting.
No wonder there are so many crazy people.