crookeding & therapied

When my mother was shopping for family therapists we ran into a couple of characters.

There was the one who thought he was straigtening a painting each time he came to meet us in the waiting room - but was actually crookeding it.

The one she settled on would inhale deeply through his nose, later dabbing at it with a tissue. I would forever become concious of my nose from that point on. He had big eyes that he would open wide when I said something atrocious like, "I don't care if my parents don't like each other. I'm not the one divorcing them." Or when I confronted my father on his girlfriend - who he said would just be moving in to help pay bills. "We have four bedrooms and five people, so where's she going to sleep?" I asked him. "I'm not an idiot."

My mother loves therapy. She reads self-help books and quotes them to me. She's found therapy helpful where I don't. She doesn't mind talking to strangers...doing their excersises.

Mine was different. I'm a control freak. I'm in control of my own therapy. Learning has always been therapy. Working through things. Having a task in front of me and finishing it completely - whether it was consoling a friend or reading a book or writing a poem or filing a report at work...those things therapied me. Eventually bonuses would come. Friends who talked to me long into the night. Or find joy in seeing me happy and relaxed, having a good time - as I seldom do.

Right now, everything is crookeding and needs to be therapied and nothing is really working. School is tougher than I wanted it to be, stories are still being pushed off and taking longer to complete than I wanted them to. Being up all night at work isn't helping.

My therapies are gone. I'm noticing a distance with certain friends - inopportune timing with others. I don't know what to do when your therapies don't therapy. I'm hoping a day off next week and spent in Chicago might help things...and there's a long weekend in New York City that is in the works. But everything seems so far off.

That's the thing about being a control freak. You're the only on in control of what heals you. And when you can't do the job - the job ain't gonna get done.