Stories for Charles

My boyfriend made a suggestion to me this past Friday while we were out.

Actually, he made a couple of suggestions, “I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

This secretly thrills me.

I love that he was thinking about it a lot.

A. I like being thought about (a lot)

B. It is flattering to be considered (as a writer)

C. That he wants things for me

The first thing he’s been thinking about, at least in so far as this conversation went, is that I need a new chair.

It’s true.

I do.

My “desk” chair aka what I call my “therapy chair” needs to be replaced.

While it is, or was prior to my cats destroying it, an exceptionally stylish chair, it is not the best for writing or working from.

And I do a lot of both from this chair, hell I’m sitting in it now.

I’ve balked at getting a new chair for a while, scarcity mindset, why replace something when what I have is working?

But.

It’s not working well.

My body gets very tight after being in it a while and though I have not admitted this to anyone, barely to myself, there have been days when I have avoided sitting down to write because my hips hurt from the chair or I’ve been in it all day long and I can’t stand the thought of continuing to use it.

By the end of a day of seeing clients I am stiff and achy.

Not great.

I haven’t done long sessions in my chair at all this past week as I was on vacation.

I just got my legs back underneath me and I am already loath to be back in the chair.

So, his suggestion to get a better office chair does not fall on deaf ears, or dead legs.

Hell.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to sit down to write this blog, but it’s been needling at me all day to be written, so write I am.

I will be getting a new chair in the next week or two.

I’m just waiting to replenish the coffers in my bank account.

Being in private practice has a lot of benefits, but some drawbacks.

I pay all my insurances (oh, how many types I have to pay, seven…..good grief) and I have no paid days off.

No sick days.

No vacation days.

I have to save money to go on vacation and I have to have money set aside to live on when I return from said vacation as I have had no revenue coming in.

So, just a week of putting back into the account should cover it.

New desk chair coming soon.

I’ll actually be getting something similar to what my boyfriend has, a Branch desk chair.

I really like his chair.

And this will help the writing.

That’s the other suggestion he had, sit down once a week and not work on my blog or my “morning pages” (quotations because they happen at all times of the day. I do try to make them a part of my morning routine, but sometimes they float to the afternoon and once in a brief while, into the early part of the evening) but work on my keyboard.

I.E. write on my computer.

Compile my writings and before you know it I will have a book.

Or a collection of writing.

Goodness.

I have so much writing.

His point was multi-fold.

One that no one wants to transcribe writing from a journal.

Two, that before long I would have enough material for a book.

I like these points.

And then I ran with it in my head.

We talk about it at dinner.

Dinner was sweet and romantic and felt a little like our time in the beginning of the relationship.

It’s been a year!

Give or take that month that we were broken up.

I will not diminish how hard that month was, but I can clearly see that the break up was a part of the relationship that needed to happen and that coming out the other side of it a few months back into being with one another, an opportunity to work and deepen the relationship.

Granted.

I do not want to go through that again.

And we are doing the work, good work, hard work, to be together and grow the relationship.

Grateful.

Anything worth having does not come easy.

And things fought for, I believe, will stick.

I am fighting for this, for him, for us.

Anyway.

I am not here to write about the arc of the relationship repair, but of the writing, the popcorn of ideas that bloomed in my head after our conversation at dinner, during a walk around Lake Merrit in the moonlight, after dancing at Days Like This, a community dance space in Oakland, I want to go back.

“Let me lead,” he said once while we were dancing.

I’m not used to that, but boy do I want to get better at that.

I’m not used to couples dancing, I’m usually out there on my own.

I’m not on my own anymore.

I remember back to my first long term boyfriend, who I broke up with right after we had “celebrated” our fifth year anniversary.

It did not feel celebratory, I had tried to break up with him the week before and he chased me down and begged me to come back, howled at the sky with heartbreak when I ended it, went to every place he could think of and found me in a booth smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee at Nick’s (Home of Good Food) where I had once been a waitress.

J. came in, wild eyed and red faced, the cold of the winter day brightening his high, tight cheekbones, and walked right up to the “waitress” booth (it was the one that all the waitresses used to take breaks in on their shifts, eating our shift meal and smoking cigarettes (back in the days when you could still smoke in a restaurant and no one batted an eye) in and drinking cup after cup after cup of coffee) and demanded to talk with me.

“I knew I’d find you here, please, please, please, talk to me, don’t do this to me, please come home,” he begged, in front of the owner who was behind the bar and my friends who were squeezed around me.

“You don’t have to go,” one of my friends said.

But I had to, or at least I thought I did.

I couldn’t stand him making a scene in front of my friends, in front of people that I used to work for, who were always kind and sweet to me, even long after I had stopped working there and transitioned to working at the Essen Haus and later the Angelic Brewing Company (both places my soon to be ex had gone looking for me first).

So I got up and went home with him.

In the twilight gloaming, in the grey falling light, in the dining room of that one bedroom house, with our cats nervously prowling around us, he begged me to stay, to not leave, “I’ll do anything,” he said, “I’ll learn how to dance, I’ll take dance lessons with you.”

Something I had asked him to do with me from the earliest days of that five year relationship.

“Let me lead,” my boyfriend said. He knows how to partner dance, I not so much, turns out I am the one who needs lessons.

How to not be a single lady, how to be in a relationship, how to be vulnerable and not lead and not be overly independent.

I quietly hatched plans in my head to work on dancing with my boyfriend, instead of around him.

And afterwards, after the dancing, the intimacy, the kissing and the falling asleep, I thought about what he had said about the writing.

I kept coming back to the same line in my head, “Stories for Charles.”

I told him about it the next day at breakfast, Mama’s Cafe, in Oakland.

“I didn’t tell you to write stories,” he said.

Nope.

He did not.

But that is what came to me, a compilation of stories.

I’m a story teller.

I like to tell tales.

And I have a lot of them.

“Carmen,” Alan Kaufman told me once, “writers kill to have the life experiences you have had.”

And that was eighteen years ago that he said that, I have had scads more experiences since then.

But specifically, what I was thinking about was the awe in the voice of my boyfriend, not sure it was awe, reverence, curiosity, wonder, that I can remember details from my past so clearly.

So clearly, that once he stopped me mid story and said that he didn’t think he could listen to my story anymore as I was talking about being in love with someone and we were early in our relationship, before he said I love you to me.

I wasn’t talking about someone I was in love with in that moment, in fact, I hadn’t been in love with that boy for decades, but in the story about my high school crush, I remembered so many details that it sounded present moment, as though it were actually unfolding in that very moment, in my Jeep as we drove up to go hiking in Tahoe last year.

I was a little miffed, I wanted to finish the story, there was a great climax to it.

But, also, sweetly touched, in that moment my boyfriend was disclosing to me how uncomfortable it was to hear about me loving someone else.

I almost told him that weekend that I was in love with him, we were on a hike up by Echo Lake, and I was dizzy with altitude and the beauty of the lake the mountains and he had just filtered water from a stream full of snow melt and I felt lightheaded and breathless and the taste of the sweet, cold water from the stream filled me I caught my breath looking up into his hazel brown eyes and almost said, “I love you,” it was just there, on the tip of my tongue, in my eyes, written all over my face, I am sure of it, but I stopped and kissed him instead and we kept hiking.

I am very much in love with him.

And walking back from Mama’s Cafe and getting ready to go climbing, my first outdoor rock climbing experience (!), I told him that I wanted to write down some of the stories that I have told him, and many that I have not.

Sometimes I get bashful, almost ashamed, of the way I tell stories, they become something way beyond me and I feel that I am rambling and the story is no longer interesting and I’m boring the person.

But I can’t stop telling it.

And maybe.

Maybe.

There is some truth to that.

But also.

They are good stories.

The boy I had a crush on.

The time I was homeless in Florida.

That other time I was homeless in Northern Wisconsin, in the Upper Peninsula.

The drive across country to move to San Francisco.

Getting my black belt in Kung Fu.

Getting pulled up on stage by Michael Franti of Spear Head at a concert in Madison, years and years ago.

Climbing trees as a child, and that one time I got stuck and literally the fire department was called to fetch me out like a kitten stuck on a high branch.

So many stories.

Oh.

Goodness.

That one about my dad when he was dating a woman, a girl really, younger than me, and the father of the child that the woman was raising found out and chased my dad around the dining room table at the house of the girl’s mother (how to even get into the details of this…there once was an alcoholic woman that my father drank alcoholically with, who lived in a house on Mifflin Street in Madison, WI, who had a daughter (the one a year younger than me) who had a baby who was under a year old (said daughter was nineteen to my twenty) and an older son, who was a budding alcoholic that I ended up having a one night stand with, who scammed money and cigarettes off anyone who would spare them to him, the mother of the two drank with my dad and I’m pretty sure had a semi-crush on my father–this woman drank her wine out of a baby’s sippy cup, fyi–and she let me move in with them all, on my father’s word that I would pay rent, no one else was, and I was sleeping on the couch and woke up to the daughter’s ex, the baby daddy, chasing my father, who was naked, around the dining room table because he was irate having found him, my dad, in his ex’s, the girl younger than I, bed).

It was a scene.

And just one scene amongst many.

There are so many stories.

So many.

Thus.

I hereby commit to.

First.

Get a new desk chair.

A nice, ergonomic one.

And.

Second.

Sit at my table and write.

Once a week, not my journal, not my morning pages, not my blog, not the book from my dissertation, just write and see what comes up.

And what I want to write is all the stories that are archived just so in my head.

All the details.

Like how the daughter was barefoot running after her ex who was chasing my naked father around the dinging table, the table covered with an old lace cloth, the candles on the table, a brass candelabra, the time of day, early morning, too early to be watching my father’s naked ass running around a table a few feet away from my sleepy self on the couch in the living room of the woman who lived on Mifflin Street, down the road from the IGA grocery store that my dad liked to go to because the soda vending machine in the front of the store sold Brach’s Rootbeer for 35 cents a can.

All the stories.

All the stories I have to tell.

Repair

I am no longer single.

My ex-boyfriend is once again my boyfriend.

I am not even sure how it happened.

Except that it unfolded in this beautiful, gentle, organic way.

He reached out to me the Monday after I had gotten my new tattoo.

He was in the city.

Did I want him to come over?

I did.

Except, well, I didn’t see the message.

I missed it.

I had already turned off my phone for the night and did not see it until the next morning.

I responded that I would have, that I wished I had seen it earlier and asked if there was a different time we could meet up.

None of the times work.

I was sad, but not devastated.

I was feeling a lot of neutrality.

And.

There was this small shift, a door opening.

We started messaging one another.

Not a lot.

But enough.

He showed me some photos of where he was traveling.

I sent him some messages.

We slowly, quietly were connecting.

Then.

The day before yesterday he reached out and asked if he moved up his flight to come back early, would I be available?

I did not miss that message.

I responded immediately, “Yes.”

And then proceeded to clear my calendar to give us space.

He changed his flight and came back yesterday.

We saw each other.

It was magnificent.

It was magic.

There was no hesitancy.

We were just right back in each other’s arms.

He spent the night.

We talked a ton this morning.

We worked things out.

We made the repair.

I am astounded and grateful.

I am also very aware that I had already done so much of my own work, so much writing, blogging, journaling, thinking, crying, leaning into friends, prayer, meditation, went to get a massage, went to acupuncture, did chiropractic sessions, went on long walks, did more writing, more crying, went out dancing.

I moved through it.

I got a “break up” tattoo.

And now.

It’s a breakthrough tattoo.

I was net neutral.

The worst had already happened.

He had broken up with me.

What worse could happen?

I had no agenda.

Sure.

I had some hopes.

But I had no agenda.

I was just there to experiment and see what would come of it.

Magic.

Connection.

Re-connection.

Profound love.

And, please, don’t get me wrong.

There are things I am going to have to work on and therapy that will still need to happen for me to be in awareness of how I am in relationship, but as my therapist said in my last session, “I really think the two of you belong together, you are going to heal through this relationship, experience tremendous growth if you can show up for one another, and if it doesn’t work out you will have done the work to be in a better relationship afterwards.”

But.

I don’t have to think about another relationship.

I am in the one I want.

He is my person.

And.

Yeah.

I know, it’s not been easy to get here, but I have to say that when folks demonized him, it did not help.

The voices that got through were judicious, kind, thoughtful, looked at the situation from many different perspectives and gave me insights that were invaluable

If it’s meant to be you can’t fuck it up.

If it’s not meant to be you can’t manipulate it into happening.

I didn’t try to fuck it up and I didn’t try to manipulate it either.

It just unfolded in this really sweet, beautiful, organic way.

I cannot tell you the bliss of being back in his arms.

I sense it will be odd and potentially awkward for some folks to read what I am writing about his, and I don’t care.

With the exception of I won’t link this blog to my social media.

I could stand a break from that.

I love how people, unexpected, wonderful, caring folks reached out to me, but I also don’t feel like talking about it on social media.

It is too fresh.

Too special to share.

This blog is anonymous, ostentatiously, I don’t have it linked to anything, unless I do it manually.

I almost didn’t sit down to write this, but I felt compelled to process it.

To celebrate.

To reflect, soft and dreamy, of kissing his sweet mouth and all the ways we fell seamlessly back together.

It was something else.

And not something that I feel like I need 1,500 “friends” to put in their two cents.

The people that I need to know, know.

And for the rest of it, it will come out when it comes out, or not.

I am not worried about it.

I do wish I had not deleted our social media posts, the pictures are gone, but not all.

I found a stash on my hard drive.

I also know that I shared a lot of photos with him and that I can ask for them to be shared back.

And we will make new photos on new adventures.

I asked him to come to Paris with me in April.

Probably too short notice for it to work, but I asked.

And.

I asked him to come to Barcelona in August.

And that he can do.

He wants to take me back to Mexico City.

or Hawaii.

Yes please to both.

I am so struck by how natural and kind the reconnection was.

Passionate too.

Let me not go into details.

But yes.

Passionate.

We had a few moments of breathing deeply, talking about tender things this morning, I did anyway, but what needed to be said was said, we both saw our parts, we both amended them, and we moved forward.

There will always be work to do.

We are busy people.

Life will happen.

Conflict will happen.

Conflict will happen in all relationships.

But we discussed a strategy to how to navigate it when it gets into old triggers and traumas and I feel hopeful that we will be able to walk into conflict, make repair, and walk out the other side.

And.

I believe we will grow.

Closer together.

And.

Stronger.

I cannot believe all that went into doing the work, but I can say, without a doubt that I am beyond grateful for showing up and doing it.

Even when it meant crying with my head on my desk.

It was worth it.

He is worth it.
I am worth it.

We are worth it.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, we are.

The Taste of Poverty

I was just having dinner on my pink velvet couch in my over priced one bedroom apartment in Hayes Valley, San Francisco and I suddenly had a sensory flashback to eating lunch when I was twelve.

Specifically.

A turkey and cheddar cheese Lunchable.

It was delicious.

I could actually taste the melt of the processed cheese in my mouth, the little circular slab of pressed turkey meat and the knock-off butter cracker round and how if I chewed it just so I could savor it for long moments at a time.

It was one of the few things that had enough preservatives in it that it did not spoil in the heat.

Unlike a lot of the kids I did not have a cooler for my lunch and things could go bad quickly in the humid mid-summer heat of Wisconsin.

Especially when said lunch was being stowed underneath an interior seat of a yellow Blue Bird school bus that had been parked by the corn field I was detassling.

Detassle.

To remove the female sex organs from a corn stalk so that the corn does not impregnate itself.

(Definition now from Wikipedia: Detasseling corn is removing the pollen-producing flowers, the tassel, from the tops of corn (maize) plants and placing them on the ground. It is a form of pollination control,^[1] employed to cross-breed, or hybridize, two varieties of corn.)

I was a corn detassler.

It was my first job.

I was twelve.

I worked for Kaltenberg Seed Farms.

Kaltenberg was able to get away with paying children less than minimum wage to work in the fields due to a law on the books in Wisconsin which exempted farms from having to pay minimum wage as farming was a “family” business.

Kaltenberg was not my family, but it didn’t stop them from hiring local kids in the area and underpaying them for working in the fields eight hours a day.

It paid $2.75 an hour.

If you had near perfect attendance through the summer without missing more than three shifts you would get bonused to $3.25 an hour.

That was my goal.

And I made it.

I had perfect attendance.

I detassled corn for three summers, I think, it might have been four, although the last summer I was a “rogu’er” which meant you stalked through the fields cutting down with a hoe the “rogue” corn that would ocassionally grown gigantically tall in the fields and suck all the water and nutrients from the other corn stalks around it.

I had gotten put on the rogue crew the summer before at the end of the season, I was tall, and strong and I was asked if I wanted to make “extra” money that summer by helping rogue the last three weeks of the season.

It overlapped with school, but I did it anyway, on the weekends.

That summer I saved all my money and went to East Town Mall and bought a brown bomber leather jacket with a white rabbit fur collar.

My first fashion splurge.

That’s all I bought, fyi, there was no more money to spend after that.

I remember when one of the very popular, tall, thin, beautiful blonde girls on the swim team, envied my jacket after I got on the swim team bus home from a meet.

I couldn’t afford to eat at the McDonalds that the coach took us too, but I could assuage my hunger with the envious gaze of the tall swim goddess who briefly, impulsively reached out to stroke the white fur of the collar as I slid by onto the bus, muttering, “so soft, so pretty.”

I ate out on that for the ride home amidst the smell of cheeseburgers and french fries.

This all swam up in my mind as I sat on the couch last night, I started this blog last night, but then I started making phone calls as I have been in distress the last few days and I called my people and cried on the phone.

So much crying.

My stomach has been so upset that I have had very little appetite, dinner last night was a couple slices of cheddar cheese and some turkey slices from Whole Foods.

The turkey cheese combo made me remember the taste of a Lunchable and how thrilled I was whenever I got to have one for lunch when I was detassling.

Most of the time lunch was a plain raw peanut butter sandwich on very dense whole wheat bread that my step father got from the Willy Street Co-op in Madison.

I have reflux when I get stressed and it has been on fire this week.

I am also in perio-menopause, huzzah, and I had thought that my hot flashes were under control, but hahahah, no, stress flared them right back up, I’m about to have one right now as I am writing.

Sigh.

Anyway.

I keep waking up at night hot and weepy and tired and heart achy and my stomach rumbles and my head hurts and then I can’t go back to sleep.

My brain on fire.

I thought I would put out my gastrointestinal fires with plain cheese and turkey, a banana and water.

Simple food.

And it made me think about all the foods or lack thereof, that I had as a child.

Granted, I have some gratitude for the experience as I learned how to cook and how to make food stretch, how to season things and how to scrape up a meal with all the paltriest items in a pantry.

I learned also how to make soup, pie crusts from scratch, jelly, jams, canned tomatoes, tomato juice, apple cider, sauerkraut, pickles.

So I have appreciation for not just my Midwestern, uprooted from California, roots, but gratitude for the learning and the power of stretching a roast chicken through a week and a half of meals for four people–Bisquick, people, remember that yellow box of joy? You take the left over chicken shreds picked off the carcass, throw them in a skillet, add an onion, some garlic, peas, and a can of cream of mushroom soup, make biscuits, from the box, just add water, or milk if you’re feeling fancy, bake them up, pop them out of the muffin pan, split in half and top with butter, then ladle the gravy with chicken bits over the biscuits– meals for days.

I also can reflect here, in my home, that I can go anytime to Whole Foods and drop a ridiculous amount of money and buy only organic food.

Or I can go to Rainbow Grocery, a local worker owned co-op, and spend even more money, and do the same.

I used to dream about being able to spend whatever I want at either of those stores. I would often walk around with a pad of paper and a pen and literally tally up what was in my basket so I didn’t go over my budget for food.

I still have a spending plan for food, but I no longer carry around a piece of paper, I feel like sometimes I just willy nilly throw whatever into my cart and happily pull money out of my wallet without thought.

I am still shocked but I don’t express it and I don’t pull food back from the conveyor belt and ask the clerk to remove it from my purchases.

I also no longer eat: government processed cheese, hot dogs, ramen, canned tuna, powdered milk or instant potatoes.

I am grateful for the memory of the Lunchable.

Granted I wouldn’t eat one now if you paid me.

It took away the stress for a moment and reminded me of how far I have come from that little girl walking through the corn fields eight hours a day in the summer pulling out the hearts of corn and looking forward to cool cups of water in paper cones from the orange coolers by the bus. The taste of a turkey cheddar cheese cracker in the shade, while squatting in the dry grass and dirt with my back against a tire, looking out at the field of corn shimmering under the noon day sun.

Small musing from this heart of sorrow while I look out the window of my apartment into the memory of those summer days in Wisconsin.

You’ll be ok baby girl.

You’ll be ok.

Listening to French Music

And writing you poetry in my head.

It has been a long time since I have felt the prompt to write my blog.

Of course you came up with a solution.

One so simple and elegant that I felt momentarily abashed to not have thought of it myself.

Use a Word Document, write the blog, then cut and paste the Word document to your blog.

Smacks self on head.

I still had some push-back, I like the way it feels to be in the blog space.

Aside.

I know using the terminology, “blog” is anachronistic.

But so it goes.

I am a heavily tattooed, anti-conformist who is polite to a point, sets an alarm to get up, thanks the crossing guard at the crosswalk, still sends out thank you cards and birthday cards in the mail.

And holiday cards.

And buys stamps.

And yeah, so blog, blog, blog, not essay, not article, not whatever else is the new slangy vernacular out there.

End aside.

I am writing.

When I had the push-back it went something like, well, I like the format, I understand the feel, it elicits a kind of experience that I don’t have when I am in Word.

Yet.

Here I am.

And yes.

It is not quite the same. But it is not too different.

Using the Word Doc also gives me the experience that I have been struggling with in WordPress.

There is a glitch in the format which does not let me type fast, or backspace to delete.

The longer the blog, the slower it gets, until I am typing at a glacial pace.

I type almost as fast as I think.

What you, dear reader, are getting, is nearly a stream of conscious experience when I write.

Sure.

I go back and I edit a touch, but not that much.

I like how it feels, like I am having a conversation with you in real time and just letting the thoughts drop onto the page.

The reason I have been wanting to blog more is to refresh my writing chops.

I am working on putting together a book from my dissertation.

I am working on letting go of the judgment that two years after the oral defense I have not written the book.

Oh.

There have been iterations and ideas and I have sketched things out, had conversations with my best friends, journaled, thought, paced, even cried in frustration.

Before, not so gently, resigning that I either had nothing to write, it wasn’t the right time, circumstance, idea.

Then finding my way back in, feeling inspired, feeling heat, feeling like, oh! I’ve got this, here it is! Compelling myself with projects and incentives and dancing around the project like a manic Maypole dancer in spring intoxicated with the first soft white bell lilies of the valley flowering in the grass.

Big sigh.

And then I would stop.

And sit.

And perseverate.

And step slowly and quietly back into a state of judgment.

Funny thing this.

I forget, thank you to my therapist, that the art is sometimes, oft times, a process.

And I needed, desperately, to rest, to recoup, to heal.

For six and a half years I worked full time and carried anywhere from one to four, to five jobs and did graduate school full time.

I did not have days off.

I did not have good rest.

I was locked and bound into a kind of relentless frame that had nothing but work and school and occasional recovery meetings interspersed.

I was grinding.

I cried a lot.

I stuffed a lot of feelings and just pushed, pushed, pushed through.

Oh.

And there was that pandemic thing that happened too.

Good grief.

I just needed to rest.

I also started my own business.

I also did extraordinary, and painful, therapy work of my own, aside from being a therapist.

Art takes time.

And practice.

And I have been plotting my return.

Once I was gentle to myself, acknowledged that I had to rebuild the reserves, find the space, sit in the sun, read fiction (oh fiction, you balm to the soul), hang with friends, open myself up to actually being available to a loving romantic relationship and then sit in the sun some more, did it quietly come forward.

I am a writer.

I have always been a writer.

I will always be a writer.

And I have never stopped writing.

I just stopped posting.

Graduate school, work, teaching, the pandemic, my own therapy work (which continues apace, I am not done), transitions, so many things, all the things, they were not holding me back, but they crowded the playing field.

I feel that it has cleared a bit.

I feel rested, even when I am deep in the therapeutic space and holding a strong container for my clients, the grief of the world, the pain writ on the global stage.

I can still come home to fresh flowers in a vase.

Hot soup in a bowl.

French music on the speaker in my kitchen.

I can light candles.

Pet my cats.

Sit on the couch and resource.

My book project is coming.

In fact.

Many book projects are coming.

Poetry.

A collection of blogs, ahem, “essays”.

Heh.

Restructuring my memoir.

I am thinking of fictionalizing it a bit and self-publishing.

I am not sure if admitting to fictionalizing it on this platform is actually being transparent or silly, but whatever.

I do try very hard to be aware of my impact in the world, on my family, on my friends, on my people, on my person.

Sometimes.

I think.

I worry too much of what others will think.

Then I get angry and say, fuck that, this is my space.

My head, my heart, my words, my process.

Messy.

Beautiful.

At times artless pain.

But I know when it feels right and good and this it does.

Even when it’s not quite the frame that I want it to be.

This gets me back to the page and damn.

It feels real good.

Real, real, real.

Good.

I will take it.

And the poem that I was noodling with is not quite ready to be birthed here, but it is here.

In my heart.

A line of words, like a bright cloud underlit by the setting sun.

Waiting to come forward into the world.

Like the aftermath of love.

Mayhem and reckoning.

A bright augury.

Star burst from a crucible of torture that I walked through to get from here.

To there.

Come now.

Follow me, dear heart.

We are back in it.

Yes.

We are.

Come, give me your hand.

We have places to go.

If you will let me take you with, I will not let you down.

Promise.

Back at it!

After nearly four weeks off, I went back to work today.

I started out this morning by guest lecturing (remotely via Zoom) at CIIS in the Clinical Relationship class on erotic countertransference in the clinical dyad.

That was fun.

I did that for about an hour then transitioned to my first client of the day.

Fortunately for me, a phone session.

Followed by another phone session.

Followed by a video session.

Then a break.

Phew.

Break much needed and yes, yes I did, I took my first unaccompanied walk!

It was just a block, don’t freak out.

And I went super duper slow.

Like.

Ridiculously slow.

I walked to the mailbox and mailed my rent check for December.

It felt great to be outside.

Though intense, and I walked back much slower than I had walked to the mailbox.

Then I had lunch in bed.

Now.

I will say that was my only meal in bed and for that I feel pretty happy.

I had breakfast at my “desk”, aka, my kitchen table and tonight I had dinner in my living room sitting in my reading chair.

Normally I like to sit on my pink velvet couch and enjoy the view of the night sky out the window framed in soft yellow string bulb lights.

However.

My couch is too low to sit on comfortably and get back up from.

By the end of my sessions tonight I was definitely feeling stiff and I had gotten a bit swollen up, but I really didn’t want to eat dinner in bed.

Although, I will say that I did not force myself to write this blog at my desk.

I’m writing from bed, propped up on pillows, three behind my back, two underneath my knees.

I can push myself a little, but I’m not a masochist.

And I know that going too hard back into things is not good for my healing.

Gratefully I am in a profession that is not too active.

Granted prior to my surgery I have a times found this challenging–being so sedentary.

Before becoming a psychotherapist I was a nanny, in fact, I nannied a good way into being a therapist–nothing says good times like juggling full time work with full time school and getting my hours to become a therapist.

In a sense, until very, very, very recently, I was working six to seven days a week.

So this down time I’ve had recovering from the surgery has also been surreal.

Lying in bed watching a lot of videos.

I did some reading too, but mostly I think I just slept and watched videos and tried to not be in self-pity when the weather was screaming gorgeous out.

I literally missed the best weather of the year indoors for three and a half weeks recuperating.

That being said.

Once I am fully healed up I will be outside and moving and doing all the things.

My next post-op appointment is December 10th.

At which point my surgeon will let me know when I can start exercising again–more than just walking.

I sense it will still be a slow journey towards being as active again as I was prior.

I cannot wait to get back into the swimming pool.

Or!

To go out dancing.

My, oh my.

I have missed dancing.

I mean, pandemic quashed that in a major way, though I definitely had a lot of private dance parties by myself in my kitchen.

Then I had a burst appendix in February, followed by my first surgery, the brachioplasty, followed by the belt lipectomy.

My dance moves have been severely restrained.

I have a friend who is all about the dancing and keeps sending me invites and I’ve had to turn them all down.

I had a teensy narrow window of opportunity when I was feeling better resourced after the brachioplasty and able to move my arms without feeling like they were going to rip apart, and I had just defended my dissertation, that I could have possibly gone out.

But.

My friend was out of town and I spent that weekend getting my household prepped for the next surgery.

Considering how slow the healing process takes, it will likely be March, April, May of next year before I’m really able to hit a dance floor again.

But it’s there, just on the horizon.

And today gave me just a tiny glimpse of hope for that.

In a sense, I had a full eight hour work day.

I lectured for an hour, then had three sessions, had a break and then did four more sessions.

That was a pretty big day to start back in.

I’m tired.

And also.

Just a smidgeon exhilerated.

It was so good to see my clients again!

I missed them.

And I missed my morning routine.

It felt really nice to make my breakfast this morning, make a coffee, sit at my desk, read my emails, eat, drink my latte, write my morning pages in my journal. Rather than get up, make breakfast, bring it back to bed and crawl back into bed for the majority of the day.

Sure.

I was stiff sitting at my desk and had to keep my core still, but fuck, it felt so damn good to be back to a semblance of my normal routine.

I am also grateful that I have a late start tomorrow morning.

I will let myself sleep in and I will take it very slow in the morning.

I also normally have a late session on Mondays, but not today, and that helped.

I checked in with my person at lunch too and let him know how my day was going and said out loud that if I felt like it was too much I would cancel on my evening sessions.

I did not have to do that.

I did have to be careful to sit still and be really gentle getting up and out of my chair in between sessions and taking bathroom breaks.

And I did it.

Such a relief!

I got through my first day back.

Such simple joy in getting back to my routine.

Grateful.

Seriously fucking grateful.

I’m back in the saddle again.

It’s Been A Minute

And I almost, but I didn’t, didn’t write.

I was all like.

Ooh, Hulu, get me some Hand Maid’s Tale.

Then I thought, really, when was the last time you blogged lady?

It’s been a minute.

There’s been a pandemic.

The thing is still happening.

And life for me did not slow down.

Pro tip: next pandemic, be enrolled in a PhD program.

I was so, so, so busy with this semester.

And it was hard, like hella hard, ridiculously hard, over the top.

Add one pandemic and make your academic career triple fold with stress and anxiety.

There were a few weeks when I couldn’t get it together.

I cried.

A lot.

I pushed back on my studies.

A LOT.

I did want to do it, I thought about dropping out, I didn’t.

I wouldn’t.

But I did think about it.

However, in the end I am so grateful I pushed through.

I wrote some tremendously good papers.

I scored a perfect 50/50 on my Method’s Comp Exam.

I had a professor tell me she cried while reading my work.

That was nice to hear.

I’m still waiting for my Lit Review to get returned to me, but the draft that I turned in before the final draft, well, the opening comment from the professor was “Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!” So I feel pretty confident that the final paper was well received.

It was a push though.

I was so grateful I rallied and got through.

I have one last goodbye Zoom class call on Saturday, but pretty much it’s done.

All done.

I have officially finished the three year course work in two years.

Now I head into the proposal phase of my PhD program.

Which I hope to get done over the summer.

There will be plenty to do and I gave myself this last week “off” sort of, to chill, although in reality I did no such thing as chill, I was just not doing homework.

I was instead training.

Yeah.

So many trainings, so many screens, so many videos.

I felt so burned out from it yesterday.

Over it.

OVER IT.

However, also ridiculously grateful.

I was hired to be an interim therapist for the Jefferson Union High School in Daily City.

Technically I was hired through Daily City Partnership, which is a non-profit that supports the high school.

I will start next Wednesday.

I will be seeing 10-15 teenagers a week, doing an hour of supervision, and and estimated four hours of paperwork.

20 hours total.

So pretty much right back to being busy.

And like I said, stupid grateful.

First, busy will help to deal with the shelter in place deal.

Second, those oh so elusive child and family hours.

I need them to get fully licensed as an MFT.

I am 261 hours away from the required 3,000 hours the state of California requires one to have to get the MFT license.

A part of that requirement is 500 child and family hours.

I have been acquiring them by working with couples, which count as “family” hours, but I don’t have enough couples in my current practice to get all the hours in an expedient way.

So when I was approached about being a therapist over the summer to support the high school kids I was thrilled.

Due to the situation with shelter in place and COVID-19 the school board allocated extra funds to bring in a therapist over the summer to support the kids.  Typically they don’t have a summer therapist, they get therapy during the school year.

But.

There’s been such a demand for it they decided to help the kids over the summer and I was approached and applied for it and last week Wednesday I was interviewed and hired on the spot.

That felt pretty damn good.

The pay is shit.

But.

It’s pay.

And really I need the hours so even if I didn’t get paid I would have probably taken the job.  In fact, dirty little secret, most therapist don’t get paid when they go after their child hours.  It’s pretty rare.  Most of the schools rely on unpaid interns.

I could rant about that quite a bit, but I don’t have the energy.

I am just super happy I get to help out some teenagers and get my child hours and get paid and get through the summer by staying busy.

I have 22 clients in my own private practice, which is pretty damn good, all things considered.

A lot of folks in my agency have lost clients.

And I did too, but I have also maintained clients, worked with them, drop my fees when and where I could, implemented a lower sliding scale, and I picked up a couple of clients too.

So I’m holding steady.

And God damn am I grateful I can work from home.

I feel so lucky about that.

I am still paying rent on my office, but so it goes.

I did let go of one of my offices, but I’m holding onto the other for a bit yet, I don’t know how long shelter in place will go and I don’t know how many of my clients will feel comfortable coming back into my office when it does, but I don’t want to give it up yet.

I know a lot of therapist have.

Many are going over completely to the idea of telehealth–video and/or phone sessions.

I will be doing a mix of it when things all settle out, whenever that is.

I now have clients in and outside of San Francisco because of being able to offer telehealth and I will keep these clients when I go back to my office.

Things are good.

Weird.

Don’t get me wrong.

Fuck.

I miss people.

I miss people something bad.

But I’m busy and grateful to have things to do and that I live by Ocean Beach and can take long walks, and I’m fed and housed and safe.  I’m very fortunate and I know it.

I hope you are well and taking gentle care.

Biggest hugs!

Dance Party

Because ain’t nobody watching and I need to move my body.

And why the hell not?

I’m officially on day, what, three of shelter in place, and it’s getting goofy in here.

I live in a one room studio.

Thank God I have a deck.

My own deck, not my landlords, no access to anyone else, a good distance away from the neighbors, on the second floor, above the backyard that is never used (it’s a tangled jungle of over grown weeds and bushes), my deck floats, a little tiny haven.

A tiny piece of heaven.

With two white Adirondack chairs and flowers in pots from Sloat Garden Center that I bought a few months ago when only the faintest of faint whispers of the corona virus where in the air.

I do have to say, though, it felt like something was coming.

I didn’t think it was a virus.

I thought maybe the tech bubble was going to burst in San Francisco again.

I moved to SF a little while after the bubble burst and I was also here during the crash, it had the same feeling, something was looming.

But this?

I had not predicted this.

Shut in, shut down, shut away.

So yeah, I got my dance party on for a little while tonight, I still have the music going nice and loud.

I am alive.

I am in good health.

I am sheltered.

I am really grateful.

I am extraordinarily grateful.

I can still work.

I am still “seeing” clients.

Not in person anymore, I was the last woman standing in the building where my office is on Monday, I had thought I was going to have a full week of connecting one last time with my clients and I had just literally sent out emails to all my clients saying I could meet until March 23rd.

I was actually upset the first time I got that date from my agency, I was petulant, don’t tell me when I have to stop seeing clients in person, but I also recognized that this was not about me and that I needed to follow along, especially since I work for an agency and they are the ones signing my paycheck.

The money from my clients does not go into my pocket.

It goes into my bank account that my agency controls–I can put money in, but I can’t take money out.

So.

Yeah.

Need to comply, even if I felt really secure in my health and the protocols I was taking at my office to make sure that it was clean and sanitary and safe.

Sigh.

Therefor I was a bit bereft to get the email saying wrap it up and switch over to telehealth by the 23rd.

I stomped my foot a little, but I did draft all the emails and I did comply.

And then.

Ha.

Shelter in place was announced.

Literally twenty minutes after sending out the last client email saying, hey (much more formal, thank you, I’m not a complete heathen) there, happy to continue seeing you at my office, unless you don’t feel comfortable, then we can do video or telehealth, but yeah, I’m here all week.

Nope.

I am not in fact.

I get the email from my agency saying shelter in place is going into affect and I have to the end of day to see clients.

Well.

Fuck.

I craft a new email and start sending them out, while also fielding emails from clients who were coming in that day who didn’t want to anymore because, mother fuck, got to run to the grocery store and secure more toilet paper and beans and rice.

More sighs.

Of the five client sessions I had scheduled, one showed up in person, two did a video session, one rescheduled for later in the week and the other said, hey, we’ll get back to you once we figure out our lives.

More sighs.

I didn’t charge any cancellations fees, I sent out copious telehealth consent forms, I got myself together and I went into my office to see my last face to face client for who knows how long.

The shelter in place is at least until April 7th.

I have to say, I think it may go longer than that.

So I also did some pro-active things on my end.

Because even though I can work from home, I knew I was going to lose clients.

Lost one today.

And client sessions, either due to cancellations, clients running out of money who aren’t working, parents homeschooling kids, panic, fear of financial insecurity, etc.

That I knew I had to take care of myself.

I paid April rent early.

I reworked my spending plan and I cut out $700.

I might even be able to trim a little more.

I’m obviously not going anywhere.

I canceled, ugh, my trip to San Luis Obispo and my weekend at the Madonna Inn.

Bless their hearts, they gave me a full refund on my room.

Which I promptly spent stocking up on food and toiletries at Rainbow Co-op.

I have actually never spent as much as I did on one grocery shopping trip.

Mostly because I bought coffee in bulk (y’all worried about toilet paper, I’m making sure I can sustain my caffeine needs) and toiletries in triplicate.

I did buy plenty of food too.

My fridge has more in it than I think I ever have seen.

I shop two to three times a week since I don’t eat sugar and flour, I cook a lot and I eat fresh foods.

I managed to secure a lot o fresh stuff, but I also did get food to prepare and freeze and can.

And back up of my favorite breakfast foods and some nice sugar free chocolate, because I’m going to need a damn treat once in a while.

And though I cannot see where this all leads, I can see that I am really lucky that I live in my own beautiful space.

It may be a studio, but I don’t have room mates.

And.

Oh thank God.

I live two blocks from the beach.

So every day I have gone outside and walked to the ocean and watched the surfers still paddling out and felt the wind on my face and walk through Golden Gate Park and breathed in deeply the fresh air.

There are people out, but we give each other wide berth and there is much kindness when doing so.

There may come a time when I can’t go out and walk, but fingers crossed that won’t happen.

I do know, though, I cannot peer into the future and I can’t live in the anxiety of not knowing.

I have to stay present and presented minded and strong.

I have therapy clients to help.

I have service to do.

I need to stay focused and clear.

Which is why dance party.

I had to shake the ya ya’s out.

Big love to you and yours.

Be gentle and stay in good health.

And.

When the mood strikes.

Dance.

Really.

No one is looking.

On The Eve

Of my fifteenth year of sobriety.

I had to stop and ponder and wonder in awe at the scope of my life in these last fourteen years and 364 days.

I have come so far.

So fucking far.

It leaves me breathless with awe.

I’m a psychotherapist.

I live by myself in the most expensive city in the United States.

Although.

I still cringe at my rent, I can afford to live alone and I understand what a precious gift that is.

I work a lot, it’s true.

I’m still working six days a week and two jobs.

But!

Soon.

I will be done nannying.

I have been a nanny for thirteen years.

That’s a lot of time to be in any career, let alone one in which I have gotten to have so much unconditional love poured into my heart.

Nannying has been a tough job and the most incredible gift too.

I have never had children.

Shit.

I have never even had a pregnancy scare.

I have occasionally thought of what it would be like to have my own child, but really, I have gotten to raise so many beautiful, sweet, amazing children.

I have had so many children tell me they love me.

I have had so many babies fall asleep on my breast and in my arms.

I have felt the soft sweet breath of a child on my neck so many times as I lay them to sleep that I cannot count them.

I have sung a lot of lullabies.

I feel replete.

I do not feel grief stricken for not having had a child of my own.

I have had children.

I have also gotten to give them back at the end of the day and go my own way.

I will be hanging up my nanny clogs soon, my last day with my current family is February 24th.

So by the end of February I will just be working full time as a psychotherapist and a full time PhD student.

Just.

Hahahahahhahahaha.

Oh.

I also got my grades back for this past semester.

Straight “A’s.”

Not like anyone has every question someone with a PhD, “hey how were your grades during your course work?”

Most folks don’t give a fuck, you got a doctorate, you are doing great kid.

I had a 4.0 all through my Masters and I am looking to repeat that with my PhD.

I have also received the news that I have been granted the first person I requested to be my PhD committee chair.

Over the moon.

I found out from a fellow in my cohort that my pick only chose two of us to work with.

I am thrilled and honored that he took me on, it’s going to be some work, the work is nowhere near done yet, but it’s still a great big wonderful thing to be entering the last semester of my course work.

And I’m doing it in two years.

Most of my cohort is doing it in three and some in four years.

I know one other person who is doing the course work at the same pace as I am and we made a pact to get through the whole damn program in 3.5 years.

I am still on track with that.

I am also really on track with getting my hours for my MFT license.

I am 737 hours away from being able to be on my own without supervision, without having to pay extra for supervision and fees and stuff and things.

I will get my hours before the year ends and I am fucking thrilled by that.

My life is pretty amazing.

I looked at my things today, I looked at the art on my walls and the pictures and the beauty that I have surrounded myself with.

I am not rich.

But I am awash in beauty and prosperity and abundance.

I am so grateful.

I have slept on cardboard.

No more of that.

I have been homeless.

I have had to go to food pantries and be on food stamps.

I have worked some pretty grimy jobs.

I have struggled and worked and struggled some more.

I own a car.

What the hell?

A new car, my own car, the first new car I have ever bought.

I go to yoga.

I still can’t always get over that.

Who is this person hopping into her cute little marshmallow colored Fiat and heading up Balboa Street to do yoga?

I have nice clothes.

I bought in Paris. 

I used to wear hand me downs from my youngest aunts.

I used to have only one pair of shoes.

I have a lot of shoes.

I mean.

A girl likes her shoes.

I have framed art that I have bought in Paris too.

I remember having posters pinned up to my walls, when I had walls, I didn’t always.

Or magazine photos taped to my walls.

I always have liked to look at things.

I have gone to so many museums.

I have traveled the world.

Not a lot, but a good amount you know.

Paris, New York, London, LA, Miami, Chicago, Anchorage, Marseilles, Rome, Aix-en-Provence, Austin, Havana, Cuba, Burning Man.

Not bad for a girl raised in an unincorporated town in rural Wisconsin.

I have some pretty amazing tattoos.

I have gotten to meet and hang out with one of my musical hero’s–more than once.

I have extraordinary friends.

I have a way of life that is full of purpose and meaning and service.

I have love.

I have had terrible heart ache and I have survived it.

I have resiliency.

I have lost dear friends to death far too soon.

I have danced under the stars until dawn, in underground clubs in Paris, on top of speakers in dancehalls in San Francisco, arts cars out in deep playa at Burning Man.

I have narrated my story and performed  in front of 100s.

I have recited poetry to audiences small and grand.

I am in the world and I am alive and I am so grateful for that.

For this wonderful, sometimes painful, but always so full, so amazing, so extraordinary, beyond my wildest dreams, life.

Here’s to (almost) fifteen years of sobriety.

And many, many, many more years to come.

So many.

 

Hello Old Friend

Ah.

Sigh.

Hello my lovely, it’s been a while.

I’m back.

For a little while, a few days here, maybe a couple of weeks, I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I am going to try and post up some blogs and stay a little regular for a little while.

At least until next semester hits.

Then.

Buh bye.

This semester was by far the heaviest work load I have carried in school.

I did a bonkers amount of reading, researching and writing.

All the time.

It just was a constant grind.

And.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmm.

I turned in my final paper today, this very afternoon.

I am done!

I am done!

I am done!

It feels so very nice.

I already know that I have gotten “A’s” in my two other classes, I completed one last week, turning in the final paper a little early so that I could focus on the last final project I had.

Said project cumulated in a 176 page paper.

Yeah.

I said that.

176 pages.

I pretty much put together a god damn book.

But when I think about it, that’s basically what a dissertation is, a book.

This was not my dissertation but it had some thematics that I will pull in for my work.

And I didn’t write the whole thing all in one shot.

It was broken up into four parts over the course of the semester.

I basically wrote four good sized papers and then connected them all together for the final compilation.

I am so grateful it’s done I can’t even believe that I don’t have a book to read tomorrow, a discussion post to write, a paper to write, an article to read, research to do.

All I have to do is supervision and see clients.

All.

heh.

Yeah.

That’s the other thing.

I have been busting my ass building my private practice.

I currently have 24 clients!

I cannot believe that.

It just amazes me.

Yes.

I am still nannying.

Although!

Not for long.

This week I officially dropped another day, so I’m down to working two days a week and neither day is a full day.  Mondays I’ll be working 9a.m. to 4p.m. and Tuesdays 11 a.m. to 4p.m.

And!

I gave my notice.

That’s right.

I gave my mothefucking notice.

I am so over the moon.

It actually eclipses finishing the semester, I am going to stop being a nanny.

After 13 years of nannying I am going to finally hang up my nanny clogs.

They are not the same clogs I started with, but I am ready to toss them.

I had a really good talk with the mom this week and I am giving them a very healthy notice.

I will stay with them through February.

My final day will be Tuesday, February 25th.

I am sticking it out for another couple of months for two reasons–my imminent trip to Paris and my second semester PhD retreat.

I will be missing two weeks of client sessions while I go to Paris and I will miss another week of sessions in January when I am at the retreat.  This means I will lose three weeks of revenue and that’s a lot.

To offset that I am going to stay with the family until the end of February to make sure that I have enough coming in to self-sustain.

Last week I hit my number that I need to be able to just work as a psychotherapist.

It was wonderful to see that number pop up on my Ivy Pay app–I use Ivy Pay to charge clients and it tallies what I make and when my goal number rolled over I was just over the moon.

That’s it.

That’s what I need to make weekly to be able to quit my nanny job.

I can do that!

I can.

If I wasn’t going on vacation I would have quit by the end of the year.

But.

I am going on vacation, and it is needed, I am so ready for a break.  And I don’t want to worry about covering expenses or not enjoying myself.

I want to do some clothes shopping and go to museums and eat nice food and go to the ballet.  I want to go ice skating at the Grand Palais, which has the largest indoor ice rink in the world.  I will probably fall on my ass and get run over by small children, but I don’t care, it looks marvelous and I can’t imagine anything more spectacular than ice skating in a giant palace in Paris.

I mean.

Seriously.

I also am staying at a really nice Air BnB and I dropped some dimes on it, but I know it’s going to be worth it.

So I didn’t want to worry about spending, I will likely get a tattoo while there, I like doing that, a souvenir I carry with me all my days, and if I want to order a second cafe creme or fuck, a third, I will.

I get to enjoy myself and so that means a couple more months of nanny.

So be it.

It’s worth it and there’s a light, oh there’s a bright light at the end of the tunnel.

I am almost there.

I am almost 100% fully self-supporting as a therapist, as an Associate Psychotherapist at that, I actually could afford to quit my nanny job is I was a regular MFT, but having to pay agency fees, supervision fees, administration fees and the 12.75% cut the agency takes, I have to work more.

I don’t mind, I’m just paying my dues and the end is in sight.

It’s a lovely sight too.

I’m remembering my birthday dinner last year, yeah, that’s coming up soon, next Wednesday is my birthday, and how I made the intention that I would be quitting my nanny job and have a full therapy practice.

I cannot believe it actually happened.

But it did.

The week before my birthday I hit my number and I gave notice.

Amazing.

I think my intention for this upcoming year is that I be engaged to be married by my next birthday.

I’m dead serious.

I want to be engaged.

That’s the intention I will set.

Somewhere in Paris, having dinner, rare steak or a tartare, a cafe creme and a cheese plate for dessert.

I will set my intention.

Oh yes I will.

No Bandwidth

I mean.

Ok.

Maybe a tiny bit.

There is some.

But it is small and slight and I chose to write a blog instead of using it for homework.

Don’t worry.

Shh.

Anxiety be gone.

I will work the homework is a serious manner tomorrow.

I promise.

I had one client cancellation, there will be homework done then.

And after I finish with my last client at 2p.m., aside from lunch, I have no plans except to bury myself in the work.

My fucking god.

There is a lot of work.

And I have been doing some over the week, don’t get me wrong, I have attended to it.

JESUS FUCK.

I am so grateful I just caught that, I had an assignment due.

I actually don’t know if I would have caught that if I hadn’t been writing this.

I stopped and popped into my online classroom and saw correctly that I had something due.

Good grief.

I am so glad I caught that!

I already had done the work, I just hadn’t formatted it to turn in.

Whew.

It’s turned in and now I can go back to whining about how much work this all is and when the fuck and am I going to have the time to do all the reading.

All the reading.

So much reading.

So much.

I have seven, seven, new books that have arrived in the mail this week.

I’m going to say that again.

SEVEN.

Ugh.

I keep reminding myself that I just have to do what’s in front of me today.

It really becomes impossible if I look at that stack of books, like maybe if I just sleep at my desk and never leave it and never move I might, might, get through the stack by the end of the semester.

But.

I have a life.

A big life.

A full life.

I also have a private practice I am trying to fill since, well, that’s like my income.

Not fully.

But soon.

Today, yes, today.

Today was my last Friday as a nanny.

I am still nannying, but I am reducing my hours down to three days a week as opposed to the five days a week I’ve been working for like, forever.

Thirteen years, give or take a few other odd jobs here and there, I have been nannying for thirteen years.

There is an end in sight.

And maybe that’s why I needed to write tonight.

To mark this.

It’s a big step.

Next week I work two days less a week as a nanny.

And soon, by the end of the year, by February at the latest, I am hopeful that I will be done completely as a nanny and be fully self-supporting as a therapist.

It’s a big freaking deal.

I have been working so long and so hard to get here.

I remember when I turned ten years sober how I was putting the finishing touches on my application to my Master’s in Psychology program.

That was four and a half years ago.

It’s been a long road, but I have been on it, working and working and working and the working, well, it does seem to be paying off.

I reflected this morning while I was doing my morning pages (I still do that, I may not be blogging every day like I used to, but I am still committed to that practice, I can’t not write, I would die) that I have really come far since last year.

I moved into my new place September 15th of last year, I started my first year of a PhD program, I was hired in August to work for Grateful Heart as an Associate MFT to establish my practice.

I left my other internship where I was not paid to transition to Grateful Heart in October.

I had four clients.

Now.

I have eighteen.

That’s a pretty damn big deal.

To make it through a year of a PhD program, work full time and set up a private practice therapy business.

I don’t know that I held down the fort in all areas all that well.

Oh.

And yeah.

I broke up with my soul mate, the love of my life, the one.

The fucking one.

I have been grieving that a lot lately.

It’s been a lot of sadness and tough at times and I don’t write much about it here.

Aside from the odd poetry post that I happen to throw up.

Tonight’s full harvest moon is also not helping.

It’s been excruciating when I think about the language of love that we spoke to each other through the moon.

How many text messages and phone calls looking at the moon wishing for him?

So many.

Crying for the moon in the sky, crying for him.

Crying all the time.

I still cry.

It catches me off-guard sometimes.

I think this last time it’s been different, more final, more ending.

Hopeless and heartbroken.

And still thriving.

Still alive.

My therapist reflected that to me this week after I shared some things about the current issues I have around the ending of the relationship and how I am still affected by it.

She said, “you can be heartbroken and thrive too.”

Heartbroken.

And.

Thriving.

And overwhelmed by the work, but up to it and ready for it and grateful for the lessening of nanny hours so that I can work more on my dissertation and my course work.

So that I may cultivate more clients for my therapy practice so that I may, sooner, oh please, rather than later, stop nannying altogether.

I don’t know how it will look or when it will happen, but I sense it is out there just around the corner.

Just there.

Under the shadow of the moon.

Like my love for you, my love.

Always just there.

Lit by the moon.