angel of charity, eye of god

I have seen a therapist twice now — in the last two weeks, which seems odd because technically I am one but it has been very stabilizing to talk to her — Sister Maria.  The impact of the loss of so much and the grief is something that Catholics understand, I think.  I’m sure that my upbringing instilled their values, I know it — my grandmother especially.

I was less scattered this week — I cried when I saw the ojo de dios she had on her wall — my mother was never without one.  I also talked about my practice and how it got swept away after what happened in 2000.  Today I talked about the sense of being “erased” that I feel, because I do.  Erased off the face of the earth in a sense.

I did the Beck today.  Something I was really good at assessing for in my own clients.

She is so tiny.  Like a tiny angel in her office filled with ancient things like macrame hangings and flowers.  I remembered my office.

I was a really great therapist.  I still am.

If I want my practice back there is a way to do it again.  I’m certain there is.

But not without the correct support.

It’s funny how when you are working so hard, as I was — you don’t notice what might be going on.  She caught it.  She’s right.

She said “he never waned a baby.”

She knew that.  I was stuck in that horrible basement for so many years at work.  At the paper.  In the mid-nineties I went back to school for the MA.  I wanted to have a job where I helped people instead of being stuck on machines cranking out advertising day in day out.  So, I paid for that education myself and then began the very long process of the traineeships and internship.  It was hours and hours and hours that I did for free.  Community Service, non-paid.  I did all that at night after my regular job and on Mondays for years and years.

Everything slid after 2000 and that layoff.  I kept trying to hold my head above water after that as best I could, but, I quit my job because of what was going on — the graphic design job.  20 years of my life.  Trying to finish my hours.  3,000 hous.  Trying to get to the end.  All I have done is work.  And work.  And work.  I never got to be a mother and now I wish I had been so badly.

Not the hand I was dealt.

Not the men I was dealt.

Crying is really hard for me.  I did today.

Whatever has been flattened in me has to scrape itself back together and try and stay alive.

I really have to try.  The spirit can go too low, and that is the place mine got after my mom passed, and when the agency had me with so many clients, so much need — I reached maximum burnout.  She asked me, “Didn’t your supervisor realize?”

“No,” I said.

Nobody realized.

I told her I have slipped through the cracks and that is true.  But I’m not different than many other Americans right now.  I’m really not.

My mother always had an “eye of god” when I was growing up, and she has one — purple and orange on the wall.  It gave me great comfort to look at it today.

In the middle of your life, after loss, you come to terms with the whole of it, somehow.