Back to the salt mines
or can I get a job doing literally anything instead of finishing this book
We’re home, again. Spent Christmas in Tampa. I had so many worries about the trip. It’d been so long since all of us were together, and my middle brother, the one who burned down the house, now lives in a windowless cargo trailer in my parents’ driveway. There is more, of course. There is always more, somehow. But we made it through. I golfed (for the third time in my life) with my mom and my youngest brother and Ori and we went to the botanic garden and two art museums and very briefly, the beach, where we dipped our feet in the cold water of the Gulf. My youngest brother took work calls between activities, opting out of most of them, to save his vacation days for moving apartments next month. Once, my middle brother ate with us at a restaurant. My dad showed me his shop, the shelves and storage he’d built for his tools, all on French cleats, before everything became cluttered again. I had very low expectations for what might happen, and nobody was injured and we only had a moment or two where I thought, hmm, not this. Maybe we will try again in the future. It seems possible. Something beautiful and incredibly sweet: they have so many of my old pots, some from childhood, and they use them and display them.
In the meantime, I am trying not to have any new year’s resolutions. I went walking with my friend two days ago, loops near the lake, and she told me all of hers, thoughtful and organized, having to do with brain, body, work, play. I admire that, how we can still have these kinds of plans for ourselves, a way to reset, to shift towards the Gregorian new year and whatever comes next. I have found whenever I make plans like this, they always go awry. So this year I am just trying to stay here, do whatever I need to do.
My dad took four years of Latin at a seminary high school. He was expected to be given away to the Church. This was something Irish Catholic families used to do. Instead of becoming a priest, he got a job shoveling cookies off the floor at a Nabisco plant, and then a job at UPS, drew a very high draft number, and decided, ultimately, to go to college. (My mother, somewhat famously, as a Jewish teen, dated a Catholic priest, so maybe this is one of the reasons they are meant to be together.) In any case, my father always says age quod agis. Do what you are doing. I think this is what I am doing. Or at least trying.
The writing, unsurprisingly, is still here. The book is still not yet finished, the work still complicated and weird. I have an essay due to one place and a reported essay due to another. Regarding the book, I think it’s a good book, or could be, but we’ll see what happens. I worry, too. I am telling a story that is hard to tell, and looking for a new therapist who might be able to help me make sense of what has happened and process whatever bubbles to the surface in revision. I have a therapist now, but they are not conformed for this type of work, so I am trying something new, going to meet with someone who practices IFS therapy, and see if it helps. I think she also does narrative therapy. We’ll see how that goes. IFS therapy is supposed to help people with complex PTSD, like what I have, to try and make sense of the various parts and feelings one might have, however conflicting. My friend, who is a writer and also in training to become a therapist, says she is going through IFS therapy herself right now, that it’s very helpful.
I tried reaching out to another therapist, initially, someone I think would have been a better fit in other ways, largely interpersonal, but when I filled out the intake form, she said she wasn’t trauma trained, that I would need to see someone else for that work. What, I thought. It felt so awkward, so raw to tell this person all these things in the very long intake form and then find out that they were maybe not equipped to deal with my shit. I’m grateful they told me, but didn’t everyone go to therapy because of trauma? Apparently some people go to therapy because they have feelings. Maybe anxiety or depression, or intrusive thoughts, or some trauma, but not complicated and extensive trauma histories, which is, evidently, what I have. I know a lot has happened, but I didn’t realize my experiences were far beyond what’s normal, somehow. It is never too late to learn something new about yourself, I’m finding.
So: I’m going to try a new therapist, keep writing, editing, making progress and chipping away at the book. Do you make new year’s resolutions? If so, what do they look like?
Some great books, reads and rereads: