subterranean homesick blues

yesterday my therapy appointment was at a different day & time than usual, and i vastly underestimated the rush hour traffic, and i ended up getting to therapy about 25 minutes late (for a 50-minute session). i called my therapist about 10 minutes before the appointment time, to let her know i’d be pretty late. but i still felt terrible. i felt guilty, like i’m a bad patient, and i felt stupid for wasting half of the time that i’d have to pay the full price for anyway. i almost wanted to skip altogether, but i made myself suck it up and go.

when i walked in, i immediately started crying. and crying. and crying. why? i have no idea. it was really surreal. usually i have a pretty reasonable connection between my brain and my emotions, but at this moment that was completely severed. my brain was just like, “wtf?” while my heart was apparently completely miserable and determined to show it. i’m not usually a big crier, although i cry occasionally at therapy, so i think my therapist was a little thrown, too.

the only explanation that i could come up with was that i’m subconsciously really sad about leaving my therapist when i move in a couple of months. i say that it’s subconscious ‘cause the rest of me really doesn’t feel all that sad about it at all. i mean, i think of her as more of a friendly acquaintance who’s a very pleasant and kind person. kind of like a really nice co-worker or something. but not the kind of person that i’ll pine for when i don’t get to see her every week. i think she must be in some way (subconsciously) sort of a mother-substitute for me – relationships with those figures in my life tend to tap into the deepest feelings in me, and i tend to take those separations the hardest, ‘cause that’s such a primal, important relationship, and my relationship with my actual mom has not been all that great for most of my life.

so when i showed up late i think it made me feel very aware of how little time we have left together, and it made me uncomfortably aware that this is a professional, doctor/patient relationship, not a mutual friendship, as i usually like to pretend. (of course she loves to listen to me talk for an hour straight each week about every silly thought that goes through my head. who wouldn’t do that for free??)

i felt a little weird and bummed out for the rest of the day. i had the rare chance to hang out with my friends in berkeley in the evening, but i was too tired and depressed to move off the couch, so i watched two episodes of law & order, part of the movie “monster in law” (until my boyfriend made me turn it off because it is so ridiculous and awful) and then the movie “the producers.”

then i had stayed up so late doing those nothing things that this morning i was too tired to get up to go to the all-day bar review class to go over the simulated multi-state exam. oh well! screw it. i need to focus on the NY part of the exam anyway. (oops, i wrote about bar studying. sorry.)

oh yeah: i have a new email address. it’s ilona@ilonathepest.com. so, feel free to write me if you have any questions or thoughts about this blog, or anything else.