Truth . . . Tooth and Nail

When you start counseling,  whether it’s at a church or an office.   You have two choices.

To tell the truth,  or to hold back and try to keep certain things secret.

 

For the most part if you want solutions,  you really can’t hold back that much.   But having

a “if it’s not asked about I’m not going to volunteer it” policy has always worked for me.    When it comes to counseling services,  I have my trust issues.

 

I first started going to counseling when I was 19.  I was doing the lump on the couch bit after not graduating high school.   Having had a total mental collapse emotionally I was looking for answers.   Whether it was chemical or situational and could it actually be solved.    Going to the office,  sitting there and talking to the doctor for the medication or talking to the therapist for the allotted 50 minutes (but yet getting charged for an hour).   It pretty much became a routine.    Then finding out that what I was saying and what was being reported was two entirely different things caused me to reconsider quickly whether this was a waste of my time.   That reconsideration took all of 10 minutes when I showed them the one finger salute and said see yak.

 

Off and on during the next 20 years trying medications,   dropping them because they weren’t working or things were getting better.  It became a circle of denial that I could handle the problems by either just ignoring them,  or stomping them down with the increasing of attitude problems and circling the wagons of my own life.   

 

But something changed in the past month or so.  With the passing of Freija,  it drove a stake somewhere that hasn’t been able to be dug out.   My compassion for the human race was at an all-time low.  But somewhere I lost a little bit more humanity and it dropped below the threshold of survival.    I never became depressed enough to leave the world.   That just isn’t me anymore.  But I closed up the walls and started shutting out the people and the things that meant the most to me.  

 

Which leads me to the counseling I’m currently seeking now.    It’s through my church (yes,  for those keeping score at home,  I go to church.  Deal with it).   I”m not sure how the program will work for me.  Every time I’ve even looked at counseling through the church I start poking holes in it.    Put two people together you get spirituality.  Put three people together you get religion.  Put four together and you get hypocrisy

 

Now,  to set the story from the start.  The counseling is from someone who I have known in the church for 30+ years.    Where it’s very difficult for me to trust people in the church,  they are close to reaching that line of being able to trust them.   At least til I feel the knife in the back.    Some of the knowledge that has gone on in my life directly inscribes from the church and some of it’s actions.    The trust issue that exists is well deserved as a whole.    There are benefits of being ignorant.

 

My first assignment was to write about how I felt about my brother.   If there is one thing I learned while writing it.  I can’t write essays worth crap anymore.  It was disjointed and rambling.  Partway 1st person and partway 3rd person.     So if it became an English grade I failed miserably.  But the paper hopefully touched the high and low points of my relaitonship with my brother.   

 

This week’s homework will entail on how I feel about God.  I think it will probably start off with the idea that he has a wicked sense of humor if he has servants like us.    And just how many people will stand in front of him saying “I did this for you” and he will look down and say “Really?”

 

I wonder just at what point will my relationships with others start to be questioned.    My mother in the past couple of weeks has been asking some very strange questions.    Today’s was “If I moved to Indiana would I move there with her”.    Think everyone knows that Indianapolis is on my short list of where I would move

and plan to ultimately.    but her questions was about moving to the evansville/booneville area.  I honestly have as much interesting in moving to that area as shooting myself in the foot with rocksalt and then adding acid just for the extra feeling.   

 

I was reminded when Laurel was living with me a couple of years ago.  Now understand we never dated

and it was made plainly clear that sudden ice storm in hell would happen before it would occur.    So when I asked her what she was going to do when I moved to another town,  she had told me that she was just assuming she would go with me).    Now I’ve always believed that it’s fine if you are moving and someone you’re in a committed relationship with will move with you.     But pretty much have no plans on dragging a roommate with me if/when I was moving.    And even now I would feel the same.   So it would be really strange for the idea of moving to Indiana just because my mom moved there.    Think it would be just one more nail in the coffin of being a mama’s boy instead of a man on my own two feet.

 

Along with the discussion with my counselor.  I wanted to make one thing very clear.   That the minute we got to a point that I was told that I should act as a victim.  I would be done.  I am no victim.   I may have been victimized in my past with relationships and have some major issues.   I refuse to stand and say “pity me,  I”m a victim”.    Noone gets their problems solved by being a victim.  They just get temporary help and never find their way out of the mudpit of their own devices.

 

Part of me still wonders if this is the road I should be taking.    So many glitches in the system on how I feel about organized religion and the church in general.   I wonder if it’s possible for them to actually help or will it just become a temp bandage.   Only to become infected again and have to look inside for more safety.

 

BTW>  I restarted this journal simply because I needed the Truth.  Not to impress or to confess or even to

mesmerize people with my writing abilities or lack of.   If you read this,  don’t like what I have to say or if it offends you.    Sorry to hear that.    If you find yourself looking less of me.  Sorry to hear that as well.

 

Be good. .  Be Bad. . . just never be boring

Why We Apologize

Yesterday while I was trying to make it through a day with the small ones at church,   someone from my past approached me.

 

I guess they were in town for a visit.  I had heard smatterings of what they had been doing with their lives.   But for the most part it was something that I had set aside and really didn’t worry about.  

Just before I was going to go home,  mostly because I had been having a queasy stomach for the past couple of days.  They wanted to talk to me.   We sat down and he proceeded to tell me that he had felt he hadn’t been fair to me when we had been growing up.   Somewhere he had felt the need to apologize for what had occurred.

 

Now,  the problem existed for me is this.  I really don’t remember what happened if anything happened between us.  I’m pretty sure we didn’t swap anything in the shower or that my face was never pushed into a snow bank.   Other than the normal average things that occur between kids growing up.

 

This doesn’t preclude the idea that there was some social assassination happening behind my bank.    I never considered myself a popular kid,  and for the most part kept to myself.  Trying to be who I was.   Sometimes this irritated the masses because I wasn’t revolving around the social circles and would interfere with my goals and be successful when it interrupted theirs.  

 

But in the long run,  I really couldn’t remember anything that required an apology.  But I felt he was sincere in wanting my forgiveness so I offered it to him and then went home.  But it brought my mind spinning to the idea of what could have occurred that made him have to gain my apology.  But then I guess everyone needs a cleansing of the soul once in a while.

 

It did make me wonder why people apologize.   If there is truly a way of apologizing to someone if they don’t remember what occurred.  Or even if there is an all encompassing apology that covers everything.   Without the need to spell out an idea of what happened.  

 

Or the idea that it really wasn’t for my benefit.  But for the benefit of the person who asked for my forgiveness.  

 

Way too many things to wonder about a simple conversation I guess.