Monthly Archives: February 2008

My Mom Keeps Calling

And I keep hang­ing up.

The first thing she asks, non­cha­lant­ly like noth­ing has hap­pened, is whether I’ve eat­en yet. This is some­thing thing she used to say at the begin­ning of every phone call. One of her old habits, to make sure I’m eat­ing enough.

I did­n’t answer her ques­tion, but asked what she want­ed. She told me she just want­ed to see how I was doing.

She does­n’t get it. I don’t want to talk to her. I nev­er want to talk to her again. Every call is a reminder of the wounds that haven’t healed.

It’s like hav­ing your rapist show up at the door with flow­ers.

Psychoanalytic Reflections 01

It’s a full sev­en days between ses­sions, and at this point, my pschol­o­gist is just start­ing to know me. In between, I can nev­er stop reflect­ing. I’ve always believed that I know myself well, but these ses­sions are prob­ing ideas and mem­o­ries I haven’t thought of in a while, and open­ing up com­plete­ly new areas of reflec­tion.

And while I could write for days about these thoughts and epipha­nies, I sim­ply don’t have the time, so I fig­ured I’d briefly touch on them in point form.

  • I need to respect my psy­chol­o­gist in order to accept help from him. i.e. If he was a Freudian and I was a Jungian, I would­n’t be able to agree with any of his meth­ods.
  • I get very anx­ious when I’m in his office. This is because I don’t like to admit to myself that some­thing’s wrong with me, but when I’m in there, it’s a very tan­gi­ble reminder that I have men­tal prob­lems.
  • I’m very con­flict­ed on sev­er­al issues.
    • I don’t want to lose my emo­tions because I need to suf­fer to cre­ate. Yet the emo­tions are bad enough that I don’t want to have them any­more (or have them in mod­er­a­tion at least).
    • I want to love and be in a rela­tion­ship, and at the same time I cling to being sin­gle because I’m scared of being hurt (in addi­tion to the fact that the free­dom is intox­i­cat­ing). I do this by push­ing oth­ers away from me or cut­ting them off.
      • This stems from two sig­nif­i­cant child­hood mem­o­ries, where I felt betrayed in friend­ship, as well as my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents.
    • I want to be set­tled and have some sta­bil­i­ty (in terms of sched­ule, rela­tion­ships, finances etc.), but the strug­gle to be set­tled is what makes me grow and be stronger.
    • Many of these issues can only be resolved from deci­sions I should make. (i.e. No one else can make the deci­sion for me)
    • Turning to Taoism, which is very para­dox­i­cal in itself, has only helped so much.
  • Without my cre­ativ­i­ty, or my desire to express myself, I’m noth­ing.
  • I don’t want to “blame” my par­ents for con­fi­dence prob­lems or per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies, but I’m slow­ly start­ing to find out that they’ve affect­ed me even more than I thought before.
  • As a hedo­nist, my great­est fear is los­ing my joie de vivre. If this hap­pened (and it has once), I would con­sid­er killing myself. This is because the joys of life bal­ance out all the bad and makes it worth liv­ing.
  • I’m depen­dent on oth­er peo­ple for hap­pi­ness. I don’t see my friends often enough for me to be sat­is­fied, and it’s a sim­ple fact of life. They all have sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, and I’m the only one left sin­gle. I don’t blame them for not spend­ing enough time with me, but it makes me very sad.

The Legend Of The Wayne Gretzky Coffee

Knowing his pref­er­ence for how he likes his cof­fee1, I jok­ing­ly told him he should get a Wayne Gretzky on the way to Timmies this morn­ing. Until today, he had nev­er even heard of Tim Hortons, and must have thought that all Canadian prod­ucts are named after Canadian heroes. “What’s that?” he asked me. “Nine cream and nine sug­ar, like Gretzky’s jer­sey num­ber; 99”, I told him.

That sounds good”.

So I walked up to the counter, made my order, and looked at him. He gave me a nod, so I turned to the girl behind the counter again, and said, “Extra large cof­fee. Nine cream, nine sug­ar”.

In a com­plete­ly dead­pan face, she asked, “Are you seri­ous?”.

Yep.”

And this is prob­a­bly the great­est thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced.

  1. The pre­vi­ous day, I asked him how many cream and sug­ar he takes. Expecting a quan­ti­ta­tive mea­sure, he just told me, “A lot”. []

Signs Of Senility

I’m exhaust­ed today. I try not to acknowl­edge it, but my body keeps remind­ing me.

How is it doing this?

I just peeled a banana, and with the peel in my hand I threw the banana in the garbage.

My dad did the same thing once with an orange. “The old man’s going senile”, I thought to myself.

Hopefully, it’s not due to some degen­er­a­tive brain dis­ease, but the 12-hours I put in at work until mid­night yes­ter­day.

My new sched­ule involves going to ther­a­py after work on Mondays. Today, I also have to go to my framer to sign my pho­tos and mats after­wards. I was going to pick up a drop cloth and back­ground stand at the pho­tog­ra­phy store in between, but I think I’ll skip that.

We’re in the mid­dle of a serv­er swap at work, so I expect client com­put­ers to be burst­ing into flames today. I’m also orga­niz­ing a pot luck for the com­pa­ny at the end of the week.

My mind feels like it’s going in eight dif­fer­ent direc­tions at once.

But as long as I feel, I know I’m alright.