My Trip To The Shrink And Other Stories

[kiya]

So teinedreugan dropped me at the subway on his lunch break, and I settled in to rattle around to Brookline to get shrunk. I had my copy of Soul Retrieval to read on the way, because hey, if I'm going to do this becoming-saner thing, I might as well snag all the tools I can find for it.

And I'm reading about the way bits of spirit, bits of life-energy, snag on things and get pulled away, or flee, or are caught, and thinking about yezida talking about calling oneself back and becoming whole at the Feri training session, and my music comes up with 'Matter'. To which the refain goes, in part:

Dreams are not lost, they merely fall beneath the ashes
Of what is left to the soul from where it starts to where it catches.

Found the building, went up, looked at all the little doors, failed to find the shrink's, summoned the elevator, found the shrink's name on a little mailbox, went to sit down for a while and keep reading. Eventually she came out, and we went in and talked.

Her room was nice. The therapists I'd been to in the past have all had rooms that felt unlived in and unlivable in various ways, where this was a nice sort of tower room with bookshelves, a fireplace, a couple of chairs, a desk -- a real person space, so it was okay to be real people. We talked about a variety of things: my history with therapy, what depression feels like, why I think there's something wrong with me, whether or not I was uncomfortable getting a shrink recommendation from a friend and whether there might be conflict of interest there, and so on. At one point I started leaking tears (as part of the 'why I think there's something wrong with me' bit). She was horrified by one of my stories about my mother. I talked some about goals for therapy, and the difference between going into it because I'm tired of being crazy and because someone else thinks I should. We made an appointment for next Friday, and after that I will be seeing her on Tuesdays, for so long as we decide to continue.

Called teinedreugan to inform him all was reasonably well while waiting for the trolley. Took trolley up to Central to go to Mary's for hot and sour soup and chicken velvet, which I had been wanting since about a week before when I was desperately craving comfort food (and while I no longer needed the comfort food, that doesn't mean I don't want chicken velvet, hah). Called keshwyn to confirm presence for dinner. Decided that I had been good and gotten to therapist after years of muttering I needed to (including, at one point not long before we broke up, promising brooksmoses that when we got to working on our issues I would go into counselling, heh), and thus deserved to get books.

So, first into Seven Stars, where I ogled pretty rocks (and wound up getting one) and peered at books (including the one noted in previous entry). I like Seven Stars; it's a pagan/religious/occult bookstore where I can find stuff by actual Egyptologists (not merely Budge) as opposed to forty thousand works by crystal-waving pyramid fetishists. Acquired a book off my to-acquire list (which has been updated with the acquisition, as well as something I got previously and forgot to take off).

Then to Pandemonium, where I wandered around a bit and finally asked for Farthing and got pointed at an endcap where it was displayed prominently and I couldn't see it until given more specific directions twice. Alas, for I am hard of paying attention. But one supports one's local genre bookshop, and one's moderately local papersky. Retreated to the basement to start reading Farthing and wait for keshwyn, which was eventually foiled, about two chapters in, by a group of gamers starting to have a noisy argument about their game. Which I listened to for a while, because one of them had approximately the most gorgeous voice ever, so listening to him was like listening to honeyed chocolate, but eventually I decided I was annoyed, went upstairs, and ran into keshwyn semi-unexpectedly, as she was looking for books before finding me.

keshwyn acquired books. I did not get a button for whispercricket. Then we wandered off declaring that we were going to go get drunk now, to the moderate bemusement of the other patrons.

We made it up to Porter, acquired autumnesquirrel and her anime eyes, and claimed a table at the restaurant; as we were about to head for it, raxvulpine appeared and then there were four. At which point we went up, ordered drinks and mostly appetisers, and settled around to increasingly tipsily discuss sex, religion, and appropriately related concepts. raxvulpine was given hugs. People read menus for autumnesquirrel. Everyone tried everyone else's drinks. The fifth person we were expecting did not appear; eventually we wandered off to the grocery store and continued conversation. (There was a fellow with a nice cloak in the grocery store.)

Then we hiked to the house that contains autumnesquirrel and raxvulpine's living space, went upstairs, found three more people drinking and having chocolate, and discussed various subjects further, many of them involving sex, many of them also involving free cars. I told stupid cat stories, and got molested by a small and somewhat pointy feline, which led to the 'bit on the tit by a python' story, and amusing responses to same. Many stories were exchanged. Eventually things settled into sitting around and staring a lot, and I played some Nightwish for autumnesquirrel, who was not familiar. Somewhere around then teinedreugan and whispercricket came to pick me up, and so I went home (after we dropped whispercricket at her place and I went in briefly to give arawen a kiss despite his being completely dead to the world).

Got home, ate my leftovers, tried to catch up a little. Slept a lot, woke up stiff and tired and with the sheets half off the bed, which I will at some point take as a sign I need to wash them, which I knew, and actually deal with it, which I don't feel like.

Comments

Wow!

[jubal51394.livejournal.com]

I'm exhausted and I only had to read it! Have I mentioned lately that I think I used to BE you? ;)

Re: Wow!

[kiya]

It was a long day. I got home at something like one in the morning, I think ....

[(Anonymous)]

yay on the shrinking - and double-yay on the PREZZIES! :D (being good always deserves prezzies. that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Sounds like a therapist that'll work. That's wonderful news.

Shad.