Making the most of not being able to make progress.

I’m a trainwreck.

I’m from a generation of trainwrecks.

As a messed up kid, I went to therapy a few times. It was for my parent’s divorce. It basically came down to three visits where the last question asked in each session was: Which parent do you want to live with?

Every time, I said I wanted to live with my dad. There’s a lot to unpack in the early teen relationship I had with my mother, and I’m not doing that today. It was contentious and yelly, while the relationship with my dad was calm and simpatico.

When the therapist went to court to testify, he lied and said that all the kids chose my mother. That began my lifelong distrust of therapy and therapists.

It’s not an angry distrust, it’s just a passive feeling that, for me, therapists are just not the thing.

Realistically, I KNOW this was just one guy, paid off (probably) by my mother’s family to lie in court. I KNOW it was an outlier, but I’ve never been able to resolve the issue.

When, a few years ago, one of my kids was in trouble, we got him to a therapist, a retired clinical social worker, who worked with the kid, and, frankly, helped save his life. Of this I am totally convinced.

The same therapist spent a few sessions talking with just me, trying to break through the shell of distrust I’ve had since I was 12 years old. I’m more than happy to tell stories. I can talk for hours about the string of trauma my life has been, and then, at the end, shrug it off and laugh. I mean, I survived every time, right? I’ve compartmentalized all the bad stuff; stuffed it away in little mental boxes that couldn’t possibly break open and leak toxic trauma slime all over the place, right? Heh.

Funny story: while he continued to treat my kid, after a session with me and my ex, he fired us as patients. It was a huge gobsmack that actually made me trust him, and started to break apart the mental walls I had built.

I’ve written here before that I know that I need therapy. I’m a champion of people going to therapy, loudly singing its praises because I can see how it’s helped my kids.

All of my kids do better when they do therapy. They may not think so, but I can see it. Therapy works. The platitude that your broken brain is just as deserving as your broken arm rings true in my ears.

My insurance companies over the years, however, beg to differ. Hell, they demand to differ.

Mental health is anathema to insurance companies.

I can not afford therapy at this time, again, some more.

Hell, I’ve got a fucked up tooth right this very moment I can’t afford to do anything about, and I have dental insurance. It feels like someone hit the left side of my head with a board (one of those traumas that actually happened to me that I’m sure I should talk about in therapy) yet, in spite of my monthly payments over the years, all I qualify to get covered is a fucking cleaning.

If I can’t get a tooth pulled, how can I expect to get to a therapist? I digress.

I’m “health insured” by a company that won’t even cover my diabetes meds without a fight. Fights that I lose 9 out of 10 times. Tele-therapy is not in the budget, and it’s not in the budget because I burned out a few years ago, and dropped out of corporate America. You know, something I would talk about in therapy, you know? My general practitioner is in charge of my mental health meds, and while I love and trust my doctor, he’s basically just throwing pills at me and asking how I feel.

I work, as I say, two and a half jobs. I run a comic book shop, I’m the art director for a quarterly magazine, and in the left over moments, I run my own boutique advertising agency. Ends never meet.

I know I’m fucked up, but, moment to moment I seem to be happy. There are things out of my control that mess me up, sure, but I’m making my way through life with a smile a lot of the time. It feels dishonest, like I’m lying to myself. Every laugh seems like a betrayal to the days that precede it.

There’s a lot to be happy about in my life. I’m in a healthy relationship, I’m employed, I eat everyday, I have great friends … what purpose would be served if I went to a stranger to whine about the bad times? Easy – it would make me a better version of myself and allow me to be a better person to the people in my life that I love and care about.

So … I’m working on it. I have NO idea what the hell I’m doing, but I’m working on it.