I spent some time today talking to my therapist.  I haven’t been to see her in a long time, and it was really good to reconnect.  I had some questions about my life and my emotions and how to handle them.

Specifically I wanted to know what to do when I feel the fear that comes up around seeing my mother in town.  And I wanted to know what to do when I start having the feeling that I am like her, that I, too, treat other people with disregard for their wishes and feelings and stated (or even understood) desires.

It felt really good to go and talk about it.  One thing she pointed out was that if I’m asking myself these questions, it’s a sign that I’m not, automatically, living like my mother – who, for reasons I don’t really understand, doesn’t seem to have the capacity to discern how she comes across to other people.  In other words, if I’m asking myself how I’m coming across, and how are things going in my world, I’m using the kind of discernment that shows I can step back from a situation and truly understand it.

She also said that it takes two people to play tug of war.  So if one drops the rope, as I did when I cut off contact with my mother and set up the various safety plans, then the tug of war ends.  So what happens then when the other person comes and tosses the rope back in your lap?  It’s a great image, and one that makes a lot of sense.  What you do is wait until you calm down from the adrenaline rush, and then put down the rope again.

Similarly, when I think I am behaving toward others in the way my mother behaves toward me, that thought process is a sign of two things.  One is that, since I’m actually concerned about how I’m coming across to those who matter to me, I’m NOT behaving with disregard, just because I’m asking myself about it.  The other is that if I let that discernment, that questioning, that awareness, lead to judgment and hypervigilance, then I’ve swung too far over into overthinking and it’s time to swing back to just knowing I can use my awareness to show the caring I want to show to those around me.

So I’m back here to talk about my feelings and how they affect my life again.  I took a break from that for a while, and partly that was because I wasn’t sure I was on the right track and I didn’t want to talk about it.  But now, I think it’s time to bring back the subject.  It’s about coming out late in life, yeah.  Even deeper than that, it’s about deciding that it’s OK to have the feelings I feel, and it’s OK to write about them.  It goes deeper, now, than just about coming out, because it goes back to the essence of who I am and who I want to be.

Surely we are all layered and complex, and very few if any of us can call ourselves all good or all bad.  But maybe those words are not of much use in most of our lives.  Maybe they don’t really apply to me, specifically…  maybe it’s about feeling what I really feel, and doing what I do out of a sense of wanting to show care and love.  Maybe it’s about finding deeper and deeper ways to be authentic.

How to feel?  Aware.  And, apparently, according to my therapist, any time I ask myself if I’m being disrespectful or uncaring or pushy or nosy or otherwise entitled to the ownership of any human being in my life, my first answer can actually be NO.  Who knew?

That was a cute li’l first grader in her sailor dress.  Maybe she grew up all right, eh?