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#343 - working without a net
07.31.03 @ 1:39 pm

I think I know now what it must feel like to be a tight-rope walker whom, after so long practicing with that comfort of a net underneath them, has to go out in front of that crowd and those bright lights and perform sans net.

Yesterday I was stuck in traffic as I was headed to see my therapist, and I thought maybe I should spend the time thinking about what I wanted to talk about tonight. I thought to myself no, it will just get me down. The last few sessions we've just been talking in circles about the same things. About my parents mostly. Things everyone else kind of worries about.

And it hit me. I'm normal. For the first time in my life, I feel like I could call myself "normal". I don't really believe in "normal", but I don't necessarily feel wacked-out. I mostly just worry about the same, ordinary, every-day things everyone else worries about: am I a good daughter, will I make a good mother, why do I stay at my job, why is my body falling apart as I get older...

All completely rational things to worry about, deal with, set aside, and move on.

So that's what Rosa and I talked about. And she was very happy for me, making this statement of normalcy. Because I'm always so down on myself. And from the beginning, I've been claiming to not be normal, to wish I was normal.

It's amazing how important I find things that I don't believe in. Normalcy, religion...

We had a big long talk. About my state of mind. I told her I've been at this plateau for some time now. I've had good days and bad days, but always come back to this middle ground. A more stable jumping off point, where I can concentrate on dealing with life, work, set backs, etc.

We talked about the progress we've made. I've been seeing her for 4 years. In fact, she walked over to check her records, and my first appointment was August 27, 1999. Just 1 month shy of 4 years!

We talked about how I didn't really believe that medication could help me when I came to her, but that I was at my wits end at the time, and was both relieved and hesitant when she wanted to prescribe anti-depressants in that first session. And it did work. It was remarkable. I came back the first week of November from 10 days in Hawaii with my husband, and it was like a blind person putting on a set of glasses that allow him 20/20 vision. I was crying at the drop of a hat, but for joy.

But after she asked what I had in mind, and I told her I'd like to go without seeing her for awhile, I got more and more nervous. Distracted. Wondering about it. Was this really a good thing? Was I ready?

I've been wondering about this for months actually. So now that I'm there, at a good jumping off point, I really want to try this out, and I told her that. But I told her I'm really nervous about it too. Working without her safety net. It's a scary prospect.

She told me she wasn't going anywhere, I knew where she was, and I have her number. To call any time. Because I'm still on meds, she wants to see me in 3 months, to see how things are going. That sounds great. Go for 3 months, see how I do. If I wack out, well then I'll call her, make an appointment.

I left her office and I couldn't stop smiling. It felt incredible. Not just standing on my own, but to feel ready for it. I know I have depression, it's something that's going to be with me forever. I have weaknesses. But I'm more capable of dealing with them now. And acknowledging that feels amazing.

I am by no means fixed. I had a bizarre dream about alien invaders last night. So detailed. Pretty traumatic, because I never saw the aliens, just their human helpers, and they were pretty evil guys. It was like the earth got taken over by Nazis. They killed my family, my husband. Over time, over small incidents. And I woke up, and all those feelings stuck with me, per usual. I've learned the best thing to do is just to go back to sleep. Nothing helps disintegrate a dream like more sleep and/or dreams.

Last night, after telling Husband, we went to grab Quiznos for dinner. On the way, we had an odd conversation. Kind of a deja vu. He brought up the old conversation of us having sex with other people. I'm like, OMG, what are you doing??? I just announced I'm better, and you want to go and lure me back to old, bad habits???? Of course, this is us. It was all very hypothetical and analytical and testing the waters. I didn't feel upset or put off at all.

We had a very adult conversation about sex. About fantasies. About whether our relationship can deal with including some of those fantasies in our sex life. The ultimate answer was no. It was a little frustrating, to realize that the "no" part laid mostly with me.

"I fall in love too easily. I develop crushes and obsessions at the drop of a hat." I said that to him, and he was fine with that. He knew that already. He just wanted to make sure that we knew where each of us stood.

Apparently, sex with another woman is out because a) I can't stand the idea of another woman touching him or vice versa, and b) he no longer feels he can merely watch me go at it with another woman.

Sex with another man is right out because a) my husband is not bisexual, and b) I devlop attachments too easily.

So there you go. We were both perfectly comfortable talking about this, and coming to these conclusions. It was a little frustrating to realize that his stance on me being with another woman has changed, but I'm ok with that. I had pretty much resigned myself to the idea that I will never be with another woman.

So there you go. Healthy. Normal. Not normal. I'm different. But so is everyone else. That makes me normal. If I was someone else's clone, now *that* would be abnormal.

[I put this down here so all you folks that don't care to read about dreams don't have to bother]

So about that dream. The beginning was kind of like "Signs" meets "Independance Day". There were rumors on the radio that aliens were coming, and our location had a swan. A giant swan was supposed to come out of the ocean. So I looked out over the ocean, and out of the clouds appeared this giant 2-dimensional heiroglyphic thing that looked like a big bird, swan, phoenix, crane, whatever. Instantly, I started mourning the loss of our planet, of our humanity. Because it was just like in "Signs", when Mel says to the others, "It's happening." Because you don't want to believe it, but there it is. And your world will never be the same.

And then these things landed at our front door. They looked kind of like something off of a Merry-Go-Round, shaped like a swan with fake feathers as adornments, but roughly the size of a car. And men came out. Human men. Looked kind of like "V", with their stupid faux-military outfits.

The rest of the dream was heavily inspired by "V", which I loved as a girl. The guys were basically here to assimilate us into our new way of life, being ruled by aliens. Basically, things would work almost the same, we would do what we do, but these military guys ran everything, and the aliens controlled them. The people who resisted were shot. And then we saw the price we had to pay for living out our lives in peace without too much interference from the aliens and their human helpers: the dead were drained of their blood, which went into something like a dialysis machine to keep mixing it so it would stay fresh. The bodies were then packaged and taken away. I asked why. I was told they were food. For the aliens.

The aliens would kill us to eat us. But they would eat our dead. And these military guys got to say who lived or died.

The rest is a little bit hazy. My whole family was there, and slowly, they weren't. There was a kitten, and the military killed that. They killed my sister, my mother. Eventually, they killed my husband. And you always knew, after that, they would be eaten.

And then the horror was that one of these dudes married me. Ewwwww. And I had to be his little slave wifey, never complaining, or it would be a shot to the head and I was lunch for aliens.

I spent the last of the dream in kind of a daze, pretending I didn't notice all the evil things this husband did. Like kill my family. Nope, I was the perfect wife. Because I wanted to live. Except, I didn't. I just wanted to figure out a way to kill this guy, and then myself, without become the main course for aliens after it was over. Problem was, he went and killed another family member, my brother I think, and it was obvious he'd done it and I didn't know how I was supposed to react. Did he want me to ignore it? Acknowledge it but forgive him? I didn't know how to react in a way that wouldn't kill me.

So I woke up from the stress of it. And I laid there for the next half an hour planning how to kill him and not get eaten by aliens for my trouble. I figured the best way was some sort of poison, which would kill the aliens who tried to eat me. But, y'know, if there's a poison out there that kills aliens, wouldn't they keep it away from us humans? So I figured that's why I had been so sneaky and pretending for so long. It was a long range plan, to get close to the poison. Because it would be locked at the hospital. And I'd never been interested in medicine, so it would be suspicious if I said I wanted to be a nurse.

So I would have had to have pretended to want to volunteer at the hospital to take care of the wounded from the original attack. And after spending that time there, I would "realize" I wanted to be a nurse. Then that would take years of training. More years to gain the trust of others to give me the responsibility to be around the medicines and poisons alone. So right around the time the final straw broke that camel's back, I would have already done this. In fact, what if I had the poison with me right then? And I planned a lovely dinner for my "husband". Only, it was a poisoned meal for two. Did I really have to die? Maybe I could just poison him?

At some stage in this planning, I fell asleep again. I never did have my revenge on that bastard.

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