metaphortunate son

It occurs to me that if I said about someone "I know that person like I know my own mind" I would mean "I consider my interactions with that person to be a dark and unrewarding quagmire of poorly mapped quicksand, unscalable barriers, and bear traps. Bear traps that randomly catch fire. I know this person like I can navigate the fire swamp, is what I'm saying. If I told her that I love him, fuck knows what would happen. Could be fine. Could be lying. Could be the second half of the Blank Space video."

Angelica's mind is clearly more organized.

Today I plan to talk to my therapist about happiness.

My kids often make me happy. My husband often makes me happy. My problem is that I have realized that I love it when my kids or my husband make me happy; but whenever anything else makes me happy - and there are a shitload of things in the world that could make me happy: gardening, seeing friends, reading books quietly by myself, opera, masturbation, new clothes, massage, rock concerts, a haircut, taking the time to write a post like this: I feel guilty. Because I am taking time and/or energy and/or money that should be spent either on the kids or on Mr. E or on sleep or exercise so that I can be more physically and emotionally able to be a good partner and mother. Seriously: being happy feels like stealing.

And then I wonder WHY I'M NOT HAPPY VERY MUCH.

I am looking forward to hearing what she has to say. hradzka, you would love the shit out of my therapist. Couple weeks ago I brought up some money stress that I've been having: there's this, but then there's that, here's how Mr. E and I are doing stuff, but I might want to change because this other thing, blah blah blah.

She listened carefully to everything I said, then said, "Sounds like you guys need to set up a new bank account. Because then this thing, and this other thing."

I said, "Yeah, that would solve this problem…but ehhh, we haven't done it because awkward, and these feelings, and I have these other feelings."

And she was like "Okay, but your feelings are dumb and boring. What would fix the problem is if you addressed it, like by setting up a new bank account."

And the thing is, because I have been crazy for so long, my feelings ARE dumb and boring! Even I am sick of dealing with them! Of course she did not actually say anything so hurtful. But she was clearly uninterested in noodling around in my ~feelings~ for ages and instead was very clear about the benefits of addressing the problem with an idea for a solution.

Which I did not want to do, because money is hard to talk about. But the great thing about a therapist, as opposed to a self-help book or something like that, is that I could not face going back to her and admitting that yeah, you and I talked about a solution, but I could not bring it up and prefer to remain stressed out about money. Couldn't do it. Instead I sucked it up and talk to Mr. E and we have come up with a solution that we like for now: it is not the same one that my therapist came up with, it is one that works for us better, but we would not have done it if she hadn't given me the kick in the butt.

And I feel better.