Dark Night

Work

I wasn't really happy about it, but I took my friends' words to heart. They wouldn't have spoken about it, let alone in such detail, if they weren't worried. I trusted that they had my best interests at heart and made some appointments with the student counseling service for some insight. I was a little surprised when my therapist wasn't surprised. But she'd seen similar situations before, where parents valued one child above the other growing up, and said that my response isn't atypical. That sort of irritated me. If there was something wrong with me, I wanted it to be unique and special. But no. She said I was trying to demonstrate that I was also worthy of the attention I'd missed out on, providing an emotional burden to my desire to  succeed in my studies and ultimately, my career. She stared at me when I explained my schedule, including my 'fun' courses in the city, and I started to feel like an idiot. My first assignment was to carve out little chunks of time when I wasn't actively doing anything in order to really relax and explore issues that I'd been suppressing. I didn't really want to, but it would be foolish to refuse the help I'd asked for. And, with an expression that I think would have included an eyeroll if she'd been less professional, led me in compiling a checklist of problems to think about. Then I established a process to help guide me: think about the issues, see how I felt about them, decide whether I wanted to work on them, if so, how, or whether to give up and move on. Then decide how to tackle the problems. My therapist refused to set a timeline and to enforce the lack of structure, also refused to let me use our sessions to benchmark my progress. She said it wasn't going to be that easy, and set my next appointment in a month. Since I wasn't happy with my lack of structure and I couldn't be trusted to actually goof off, she reluctantly mandated at least one activity a week that was completely frivolous: surfing, a manicure, a long bubble bath with a glass of wine (I prefer beer, she said whatever) and a book. But not even friend time counted because we always used it to check in on each other and be supportive or ass-kicking, depending on what was needed. 

It was so aggravating to forcibly shut down my brain. At first it was real work not to use the time to run through lists, set priorities, solve problems. I just felt like a useless meat sack sitting there. I tried a manicure to start with, but the manicurist's chatter about celebrities--and she was a nice lady, skilled, my nails looked great--made me want to shriek.

"This is part of the problem," Cass said one night as we made dinner in her apartment. "You're so focused that you can't relate to normal people. You need to remember what it's like to be normal. Like in high school. You were doing a lot then too, but we could talk about movie stars and current events without feeling like it was a waste of time." She sighed and focused on the cutting board. "Like we were wasting your time with unimportant things."

Oh, crap.

"It's your choice, of course, Leia, but if you lose that thread of commonality, your chances of having what you want go down. There aren't many people who want to have a relationship with a workaholic, and fewer still who want to be around somebody who make them feel stupid because they aren't focused on important things all the time."

"Do I make you feel like that?" I asked, crushed.

"A little, sometimes. I kind of thought that it was a phase you'd grow out of but it looks more like a road you're on. Everything has to have a purpose. The beach party? Socialization so you could carry on a tradition, coffee with our bunch? Checking in and a checkmark on your list. I know you care, but it's not as natural as it used to be.  It's like the ending of your relationships, especially with Will,  have created this sort of defense mechanism. If you don't connect, you can't be hurt. But if you don't connect, you're going to be lonely and unsatisfied. I think you're waiting for someone to put you  first, but that's not going to happen. You need to make yourself number one. Because while you can love somebody and prioritize their happiness, your happiness needs to be your first priority. Put it like this: if you're not happy with who you are, you're not going to be happy with somebody who likes who you are now. Subconsciously--because you're really good at suppressing and repressing inconvenient emotions--you're not going to really like or respect that person because they're not seeing the person you really are or hope to be."