I feel like I’m on the verge of something dangerous. I’m so conflicted about the possibility of my therapy ending that a huge part of me just wants to throw in the towel now. My therapist said she wouldn’t leave me in the lurch – she said she’d take me on as a pro-bono client if we couldn’t get approved for additional sessions. I am grateful for that, but I still feel so much uncertainty about it. Maybe I’m just scared because things got tough and this is an easy out? I am scared. I’m scared to continue, I’m scared to stop, I’m scared to move.
I saw an old friend last night. We were best friends in high school and I haven’t seen him in nearly ten years. The last time I saw him was in the weeks surrounding the death of my foster mother (who was also a very dear friend and mother-figure to him). We keep in touch on facebook, but it is all very superficial. I feel like he is someone who really knows me. Someone who knew me before I became all the different characters I’ve played in my life. Someone who knows the person I”d like to rediscover.
We met at the bar, because his visit was short and he was under a lot of pressure to visit too many people, so he just said to everyone – meet me at the bar Wednesday night if you want to see me. I was agonizing about whether to go or not. I loathe social interactions in general, and showing up at the local bar felt like a LOT of pressure for me. I worried that there would be people there I don’t get along with – people I used to know who never really liked me and vice versa… I drank a beer before I left home and put on some eyeliner and mascara for armor and steeled myself for the worst. I couldn’t bring myself to pull in the parking lot. I drove past and parked at the drugstore for a few minutes while I made up my mind to go back. Eventually, I did. I’m glad I did. The first ones there were his aunt and cousins and a friend from high school that I didn’t hate. I knew most of them from childhood, so it was more comfortable than I had feared. His mom and more cousins came in and I was buffered by people that felt like family, so it was ok. His Ma was asking who one girl was and I replied “you know her, one of the twins with the dad who was principal and smacked the kids around?” Oops. I have a pretty big voice. Everyone shushed me, and if the girl overheard, she had the grace not to acknowledge it. It was a pretty big deal back in the day – he ended up being prosecuted for it years later but when we were in school it was the norm.
My gaffe wasn’t quite as bad as his cousin K’s… my friend, K and I went out to smoke a cigarette and ran into one of their distant cousins that he didn’t immediately recognize. He was in his twenties, very gaunt, pretty grungy and missing most of his teeth. They went through the obligatory “oh, you’re so-and-so’s boy” and figured it out before too long. Then K pipes up “what happened to your teeth?” In these parts, there are a lot of skinny young people with no teeth… methamphetamine abuse is rampant. Alternately, you see people who have suddenly gained 80lbs… those are the ones who are on methadone for the prescription opiate abuse that was lately replaced with meth as the drug of choice. My friend was mortified. I just laughed… I mean, hey, it is their family… if you can’t be up front with your own kin, then what?
I drank two more beers and was feeling pretty good. We told embarrassing stories from yesteryear and had some laughs. My friend asked me to come hang out as his motel room for a while, confessing that I was the one he really wanted to see anyway. It was strange. I always used to be the one with my shit together – he was the basket case. He was always drinking or smoking too much, getting his heart broken and crashing his car. I was always the one picking up the pieces and making things right. Now he has a steady job, gets along well with his family and has a great house and two dogs and two cats. He couldn’t understand how things had gotten so bad for me. We had no secrets back then, so he has always known about the abuse, but the way we talked about it then, it was normal. It was just par for the course that shitty things had happened to us. He said that looking back he could see I used to have disproportionate reactions to things – it all makes more sense to him now with the understanding of PTSD. He used to get such a kick out of my exaggerated startle response and laughed his ass off surprising me and making me shriek.
What puzzled him is that I looked so normal. He said that just looking at me he would never know that anything was wrong. I think that is pretty significant – I mean, I’ve worked a lifetime to behave as if every thing is okay… I’m a pro at it. He couldn’t understand that the evening going “well” for me meant that I spent it sitting on my hands with my heart pounding out of my chest. That I agonized over every word that came out of my mouth and beat myself up, second-guessing every turn of phrase. He couldn’t see how my stomach lurched whenever I caught anyone’s eye or how I panicked when someone spoke to me – so consumed with fear of responding appropriately that I barely caught everything they said.
And that’s when things are going *WELL*. I didn’t run screaming from the room. I didn’t burst out sobbing. I didn’t scream at anyone or let slip any of the colorful adjectives I was using to describe them in my mind. I didn’t vomit, fart or shit myself, so the evening was a success.
Today I’m paying the price. Three beers, three cigarettes and staying out until 11 might as well have been a three day bender… I had to get up early and get my son to his first driver’s ed class and take the truck to the garage. The good news is that the repair was $150 less than expected. The bad news is that the tires are worn down to the wires, it needs an alignment, most of the undercarriage looks like flaky pastry because the rust is so bad, the brakes are shot, the brake lines are rusted, the vacuum hose is broken, the oxygen sensor wire has been chewed by a mouse and there is a hole in the floor big enough to pass a hand through… Oh, and it probably won’t pass inspection.
**BAD WORD**
So, I’m panicked and overwhelmed and nervous and agitated and hung over and tired and angry and frustrated and confused and annoyed and just plain wiped out. And I don’t know what to do.
I should be grateful that my mechanic is a sweet, honest man (and my ex) who genuinely cares about my safety and well-being. I should be happy that the old heap is all paid for and even runs at all. I should be thrilled that he made my son’s day by offering to sell him a 1984 VW for $100. I am actually excited about the idea of him having the old car to work on and rebuild. It will be a great learning experience for him and the car is old and simple enough for him to do the work himself. He’ll be that much more inclined to take care of it and feel good about it if he does it himself. I am less excited about the colossal task of cleaning out the garage to make room for the car…
I think things will be okay. I think I’ll get it figured out. I think I need a good night’s sleep.
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