It always comes back to the catch-22...

Hey. It's me again. And I am a bit drunk. You know... like last night. Even so, I have a moment of clarity here and I figure I shouldn't waste it. It occurs to me that a display of regret and a dream with a pleasant part (first paragraph of this post) cannot eliminate history. Yes, I'm talking about Old Guy. Do you want to know the other parts of the dream? The ones that weren't so pleasant? The dream began with the good part (sort of like our relationship in real life). I was crying, a big mess and I had no clothes on (I was starkly honest and undefended). I was so alone and frightened and I went looking for him. When I found him, he was at a party. I was afraid to go in there because I feared being cast out on account of my pain, but I was desperate. It was down to either going in there to find him or dying on my own. I went in. His wife did not seem pleased, but he didn't turn me away. He let me cling to his body and he wrapped a blanket around us and just brought me along while he attended to his guests. Sounds good, right? When the party was over, I was still naked and had to find my way home with no clothes on (and I remember being woken up briefly with pain in my vagina because my father was the first and main person who let me cling and that came at a price).

The dream switched to me finding out from someone else that Old Guy was leaving for three months, not intending to work as a therapist when he came back and not telling me about any of it. I found him again in a courtyard outside of his house and he promised that he would make special arrangements to stay in some kind of contact while he was gone and still work with me when he came back (just like the 'special arrangement' he once made in a crisis right before he used it to annihilate me). In the dream, there was a catch to the new arrangement he made for me. I would have to see him in a church (the church of mindful lying?). I told him I am an atheist and he insisted that he was only using the space of the church and it had nothing to do with our therapy (the mindful and rationalizing lie of a proselytizing Buddhist).

I struck up a friendship with a girl who was his daughter in the dream. She was 'mindfully happy', though it all seemed very fake to me and I couldn't quite stomach her. Still, she was his daughter and I wanted to like her. But I couldn't. She was just too fake. And do you know what Old Guy gave up being a therapist for in this dream? He'd bought a bar. That's right, he swapped therapy to serve up mindfulness/ dissociation/ impairment. What a perfect metaphor. One night I came to the bar to see him, but I came by myself instead of with his put-together lush of a daughter. He was behind the bar and he noticed that I was not with his daughter and so he informed me that there was a certain price for drinks for me if I was there by myself without his fake daughter (he doesn't even really have a daughter). No matter what I wanted to drink, the drink was exactly FIVE DOLLARS (if you watch the video at the end of this post, you will understand what Old Guy represents in my unconscious).

Do you see what has happened to me? I'm beginning to. And I don't like it. The dissociation was crumbling and I couldn't rebuild it with the same old bullshit anymore and he needed me to make the trauma go away or else he would hurt me some more and then leave me to die in it. So I found another way to do it. I made it go away in the only other way I knew how and I brought thirteen years of SELF-MADE sobriety crashing down around my ankles. Now I have to find a way to do something about this. I don't know how, but I have to find a way. I can't go on like this. It will kill me if I don't do something. And I don't know what to do. Medication? Been there, done that. It's the same drug in a different bottle. Don't believe me? Throw out your pills and see what happens to you. Or you could keep taking them indefinitely until you end up diseased. I guess it's totally up to you and whatever brand of koolaid you choose to drink. And AA is out. I've tried and I couldn't even PRETEND to like those people. HUGE bunch of pansies in there. They are "powerless", self-blaming, and deny the cause in favor of relying on the magical thinking of a god who will change them (dissociate their underlying trauma). I can't be around morons of that caliber without vomiting.

And Christian readers, please spare me further proselytizing. Telling me to depend on a god would be like me telling you to depend on Tinkerbell or to go out and pray to some rocks and trees. Have a little respect, huh? I don't even want you to pray for me. Please don't. That would be like me praying to some house plants on your behalf and even if I were inclined to do such a thing, I just wouldn't insult you that way. That said, whatever you choose to do in this regard, you are still welcome here. I am for freedom. I don't believe in your god, but I still love and care for each of you very much and I would fight to the death for your right to your own beliefs. My request, out of simple respect - I appreciate the thought, but just don't pray for me, okay? Please. If you want to do something for me, please HOPE for me and my abilities in a way that doesn't deny my actual reality. Instead of praying for a solution, maybe you can hope with me for my ability to discover one or create one from scratch. I am the only one who can fix this and I am well aware of this fact. As always, I accept complete responsibility for my own actions. And as always, if I want something done right, I'm going to have to figure out a way to do it my damn self. Because I'm a real American. And because some things never change.



"No matter what I wanted to drink, the drink was exactly FIVE DOLLARS (if you watch the video at the end of this post, you will understand what Old Guy represents in my unconscious)."

Here is the video.