the prison doors (blog #33)

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Last night I dreamed that I was in a dark, dank prison. It looked medieval. You know–guys with bad dental hygiene locked behind bars–the whole bit. But then later in the dream, the prison was cleaned up. The guys behind the bars were gone. The doors had been taken off the cells. It was like a museum, and as I was walking through it, I saw a few ghosts fly across the corridors.

When I woke up this morning, I was sick. Like feeling gross, coughing, hacking up box-of-crayons-colored snot. As I type this now, I can’t say that it’s gotten any better. All day I’ve been fighting disappointment. I mean, I just had this sinus surgery to help cut down on sinus infections, and here I’ve probably got one staring me in my face, or more accurately—I’ve got one in my face. I guess the word that comes to mind is hopeless, as if it’s never going to get better.

I’ve really been trying to be patient with my body, to consider that there are a lot of other factors that contribute to getting and staying well besides having a surgery. I’ve heard that nutrition and sleep are important, and I’ve pretty much been giving those things the finger for the last month. Plus, there’s this new thing called stress that’s supposed to be a negative influence, and I may have a tiny bit of that in my life at the moment.

This afternoon I saw my therapist. I told her about speaking at the writing class yesterday, about how I read a story that I’d written six months ago and how the whole time I was reading it I was thinking, God, Marcus, you sure say “fuck” a lot. And I can’t believe you just told this group of total strangers that you’re gay! But then I told my therapist just how liberating it was to be myself, and I figured that’s what the dream with the prison was about, like my subconscious was saying that I was finally free.

My therapist agreed about my interpretation and added that the ghosts in the dream are like those people-pleasing or self-judgmental voices in my head, the guests that are welcome to come to the party but not sit at the table. She called them “the ghosts of Christmas past.” She said she thought it was an INCREDIBLE dream, and both her eyebrows shot up when she said INCREDIBLE, so it felt like my subconscious had just gotten a gold star.

Another thing we talked about was unexpressed emotions. For pretty much my whole life, I think I’ve put most of my emotions in a really big jar with a really tight lid on it. Over the last few years, I’ve given myself permission to take the lid off, which has been both relieving and terrifying. The terrifying part has to do with the fact that you don’t get to pick when emotions come out of the jar. I mean, if it were up to me, I’d get out my planner, look at next Friday, see that I had some free time, and write down “Cry” between three and five in the afternoon.

But that’s not how emotions work, apparently.

My unexpressed emotions always show up unannounced. Once I was on a massage table and ended up crying as soon as the lady got to my stomach. My body was shaking, and I had memories of the fire that burned out house down when I was four. Another time I got extremely angry in yoga class when the teacher kept telling me what to do and it reminded me of my father because he likes to do that. And then at the end of class, as soon as I went into Child’s Pose, I started sobbing. Another time on another massage table, I couldn’t stop laughing. The guy said I was probably laughing at how shitty my life had been. (Isn’t that perfect?)

So I told my therapist today that I feel like there are a lot of emotions left in the jar. My hip pain always feels like frustration, and my sinus issues always feel like sadness. And I want it all to come out. I want it to all be over. But my therapist has said before that emotions happen in their own time. You can’t force them. And she reminded me today how much progress I’ve made since I first walked through her door three years ago. She said that I had started the journey long before I came to her and that I’ll continue it long after, but she said that I had gone through the dark part of the woods, that I wasn’t lost anymore.

So I think when it comes to my health and my sinuses, I could look at having the surgery like coming through the dark part of the woods. And whereas I always want a “one and done” miracle, the more realistic viewpoint is that I’ve come a long way and that’s something to be proud of, but the journey is not over.

Last night a dear friend gave me a small notebook. She’d read one of my blogs where I quoted a bookmark I used to have that said, “If at first you don’t succeed, lower your expectations.” So the front of the notebook said, “Lowering my expectations has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.” (See the picture at the top of this blog.)

Well, I think that’s amazing. I also think it’s an excellent reminder to not put so much pressure on myself. I can lower my expectations. I don’t have to cry today. It took decades to shove all those emotions in the jar. I’d probably have a mental breakdown if they call came up at once, so a little bit here and a little bit there is fine. It’s enough that the lid is finally off. And I don’t have to fix all my sinus problems all at once. Isn’t it a big deal that even as I sit here feeling sick, I can actually breathe? And really, the prison doors are finally off. I can handle a few ghosts.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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You can be weird here. You can be yourself.

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Jesus and dolphins and oxygen (blog #21)

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First, my immediate goal, other than digesting the tacos I just ate and trying to keep my head from falling on the keyboard due to sleep deprivation, is to keep this blog post short. Or at least be finished within an hour. I mean, a girl’s gotta sleep.

Second, I’ve been thinking lately that it would be worthwhile to make an effort to blog about only funny things, you know, to not be so fucking serious all the time. Like, I could probably stand to spend an entire day watching The Golden Girls and picking my nose and not try to make a life lesson out of it. It would probably do us all some good. The problem with this idea, however, is that just about every day, there’s something that gets under my skin, sort of like a soul chigger, that won’t leave me alone, and writing about those sorts of things seems to help.

But good news—nothing like that happened today. Surprising, I know, since Mercury is in retrograde, and that’s supposed to screw with everybody’s life. But really—today was a wonderful day. Like, if you were in a bad mood, you wouldn’t have wanted to be around me because I would have been THAT PERSON that just LOVES Jesus and dolphins and oxygen. (Isn’t breathing GREAT!)

Don’t worry. I’m sure it will pass.

The day started with lunch with my friend Ray. He’s the one with whom I usually have “therapy after therapy.” But today, we had “therapy before therapy,” which my mom later referred to as foreplay. (I’m just going to pretend she didn’t say that, but I guess that therapeutically and professionally speaking, she had a pretty clever point.) Anyway, Ray and I caught up on the latest with each other, and when I talked about living with my parents, he said, “I’m sure that has its charms and challenges.” Isn’t that a great phrase—charms and challenges?

After lunch with Ray, I showed up to therapy early, so I got to hang out for a while in a waiting room that could—quite honestly—use the help of a gay man. I mean, it looks like someone went shopping for furniture at a yard sale once a decade for the last thirty years. (My therapist knows I’m totally judgmental on this point. And to be fair, it’s a shared office space, and they recently got some new chairs that aren’t half bad. And my therapist’s office is LOVELY. Her answer to the waiting room is, “Look down.”)

Anyway, while I was waiting, I ran into a friend of mine whom I must have known in another life, since our paths seem to cross every few years, and it’s always in a different context (dance, therapy, etc.). So we hung out for a while, and it was like even more therapy, since my friend works in the field and is a good listener. Each of us shared about our lives, and we laughed a lot. We were THOSE PEOPLE in the waiting room. The whole time this was going on, there was a lady across the room that was waiting (on an ugly couch) for her therapist, her head buried in a magazine. I kept wanting to draw her into the conversation, like, So, why are YOU here? But I assumed that wouldn’t have been appropriate.

Well, therapy was great. (And we all lived happily ever after.) For the longest time, I almost always come to therapy with what we call “the list,” which is simply all the things that have happened since the last visit that I want to talk about. (Can you say, “Anal retentive?”) When I used to do a lot of construction work, “the list” was always written on a paint stick, and I called it “the paint stick of truth.” But now “the list” is on my laptop because that’s much easier. Anyway, I’ve had a number of things on “the list” that have been there for a couple of months, nothing major, but a lot of times I like to ask questions about psychology or self-help books I’ve read. For me, it’s like an educated version of Fact or Crap. So I got to do that today, and it was like my little heart went skipping barefoot through a field of pink tulips.

We also talked about the blog, which she told me before it went live that she supported, and she said the same today. (#winning) I told her my experience with it so far had been nothing but positive, that it’s helped me to figure out what I’m feeling and thinking, work toward solutions for problems, and even cry (to which she said, “Get the poison out, get the poison out.”) And then she said that the term therapists use for what I was doing was “self as instrument.” When I asked her to say more, she said that I was using the blog as a form of self-therapy, so I was using myself as an instrument of healing. (#morewinning)

After teaching a dance lesson this evening, I caught up with my friend who likes birds. (I’m assuming he wouldn’t want me to use his name, and I can’t think of a better way to describe him at the moment.) Anyway, bird friend was probably my original therapist, as we joke that he has “tell me everything” written across his forehead. I’m sure you have a friend like that—a good listener, a straight shooter, someone fundamentally kind.

Well, before I left the birdcage, my friend showed me a gift someone had given him. It was a Mickey Mouse calendar, one of those ones you have to change by hand every day. (Sounds like a lot of damn work to me.) And at the top of the calendar it said, “My, oh my, what a wonderful day!” (Doesn’t that sound like the cutest thing you’ve ever heard?) And you probably already know this, but bird friend said the quote was from the tune “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” his favorite song. He said you just can’t listen to it and stay in a bad mood. And then he started singing it, kind of moving his shoulders up and down, dancing ever so slightly around his kitchen. (He was THAT person.)

Okay, it’s been an hour, and I’m at twice my anticipated word limit. I’m not exactly sure how to wrap this up, other than to say I think we all need days like today. Ray calls them Self-Care days, those days when you only spend time with people you LOVE being around, your BEST friends. And maybe you get a massage or do something decadent. You know, stop for tacos. That’s what I did on the way home tonight. TALK ABOUT SATISFACTUAL.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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All great heroes, at some point, surrender to the unknown.

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about going to therapy (blog #15)

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This evening I went for walk and listened to a segment on NPR called The Secret History of Thoughts. The program focused on weird or dark thoughts that people have (like “I’m a loser” or “I should kill myself” or “I should kill my wife”) and whether those thoughts are normal or not. Fascinating, but the part that caught my attention was when one of the reporters said something like, “If I were going to see a therapist—not that I need to—” and then continued.

And it kind of pissed me off, and here’s why.

Since starting therapy a little over three years ago, I’ve been pretty open about it. Granted, until this blog, it’s not something I’ve posted about on Facebook—like, Hey everyone, I cried in therapy today!—but all my family and plenty of my friends know. In fact, they’re probably sick of hearing me say, “My therapist says” because I say it A LOT, to the point that even I think, Good God, Marcus, stop talking about your fucking therapist.

Not that I actually stop.

But the point is that therapy hasn’t been something I’m ashamed of. It’s actually something I’m proud of because it’s helped me so much. And whereas most of my family and friends are quite supportive, and although there are some exceptions to what I’m about to say, the feeling I get from most people who hear about my seeing a therapist is like, “I’m sorry your life sucks so bad that you have to do that.” And behind that feeling there’s another one that goes, “I’m glad I’m not as fucked up as you are.”

Now let me be clear—I’m not a mind reader. I don’t really know a hundred percent what people are feeling. But I’ve had a number of friends tell me that they thought they needed to see a therapist because they’re dating a serial cheater, or because all their friends are users, or because they got drunk and started crying in the backseat of an Uber. But they don’t go. One friend told me straight up he knew he should see a therapist, but he couldn’t go because people would think he’s crazy.

Sadly, I don’t think my friend’s alone in his perception. I think it’s why the NPR reporter qualified her statement about “if I needed to see a therapist” by saying “not that I need to,” like, “not that I’m crazy.” (By the way, my therapist says everyone is bat-shit crazy; some of us just hide it better than others.)

To be fair, I think there’s a big misperception about what therapy is. And all I can speak about is my experience with one particular therapist who approaches therapy in one particular way. I’m also very aware that just like medical doctors, dance instructors, and prostitutes, not all therapists are created equal. And a lot of it comes down to whether or not your therapist and you are a good match for each other. All that being said, it’s not lying on a couch and talking for an hour while someone else nods her head and takes notes on a scratchpad. It’s also not taking LSD, which I just read was Gloria Vanderbilt’s experience when she saw a therapist. (Apparently that used to be a thing.)

Honestly, I used to think that I didn’t need a therapist too. Knowing what I know now, it would have been helpful a LONG time ago. But I ended up in a relationship that was a big mess, and somehow was lucky enough to notice something, and here’s what it was. My grandpa always took care of my grandma, who was mentally ill. My dad has always taken care of my mom, who is mentally ill. And I was starting to take care of someone who was, quite possibly, mentally ill. So really, I was curious if I was repeating a family pattern, if I was attracted to someone largely because they felt—familiar. (Spoiler alert—the answer was yes.) On top of being curious, I was fucking miserable (because there were a lot of other issues in addition to any that related to my family history), which was a big motivator. So I made an appointment.

Before I went to therapy that first time, a friend of mine sent me a 22-minute YouTube video about psychotherapy that I can’t recommend enough. It features two psychoanalysts talking about their profession. One of the things the guy in the video says is that we all have a basic understanding of our emotions, and that’s like having a high school diploma, which is fine. You can get by with that. But going to therapy, he says, is like going to college. It’s a way to better understand your emotions, and therefore better understand yourself.

For the last three years, almost every time I have a therapy appointment, I’m excited to go. I’m almost always in a better mood when I leave than I was when I got there. It’s an hour totally about me and my well-being, I always feel listened to and supported, and I never feel judged for anything. And in the last three years, my relationships have improved, there’s way less drama in my life, and I treat myself better. I don’t mean to sound like an infomercial, but who wouldn’t want all those benefits? Who wouldn’t want to spend an hour with someone who tells you, “You’ve got to stop using Tinder because the quality of guys you’re meeting is ZERO POINT FUCKING SHIT”?

To be fair, there have been times when therapy has been really difficult. I’ve had some tough confrontations with people that I love, and I’ve seen more than one long-time friendship come to an end. (My therapist told me that at one point during her own therapy, her therapist was her only friend.) But despite all the changes, I’ve always felt like there was someone there to help me. I’ve never felt completely alone.

Caroline Myss, a spiritual teacher who’s one of my favorites, says that truth and change go hand in hand, that the reason we fear the truth, that we don’t want to admit to ourselves that our partners are cheating or that a loved one is doing drugs, is that we are afraid of change. She says you just can’t have the truth and not have change. So inevitably we end up running from the truth or any place we might find it. Change is just too scary.

So I get why people stay in bad relationships and don’t do anything about it. I get why it takes being fucking miserable, maybe hitting rock bottom, before you’re willing to go to therapy, or see a medical doctor about that lump in your breast, or go to twelve-step program. It’s probably less about what other people think, and more about the fact that it takes a lot of courage to face the truth and the change that comes with it. That’s a hard thing to do. I won’t lie and tell you it’s not. But I believe it’s worth it, and I believe we’re all courageous, and I believe that no one is alone.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Life doesn’t need us to boss it around.

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