So tired

O tempora, o mores!

 of all this.  

My senior year in high school, a year during which I was often depressed and suicidal, this was my favorite song on the White Album.

The friends who love me don't want me to be still grieving, even though I've told them over and over that it will take at least 4 1/2 years for the deep grief to end.  They want me to be better right now. I know they want the best for me but they have no idea who I am or what is to live in my mind from day to day.

I've decided it will be easier just to lie from now on. 

Many of the widows in the FB group do that.  They've given up being honest with the people around them in their desire to spare their friends suffering. Maybe lying to my friends from now on will be my way of showing them love, not making them have to deal with a crazy person. As Kathy Walsh and Mel Robbins  suggest, treat having friends as a job, not a natural source of affection and salvation.

It's interesting that both my parents AND Will refused to let me get decent mental health therapy when I was young and poor and they could have paid for it.  When I finally was able to afford a psychologist, my second year at COCC, she told me maybe I should leave Will.

How many therapists have I had since high school, starting with Mr. Anderson? (Who told me sex was like ice cream -- delicious, but you didn't want it all the time.)

Let's see ... I tried the ISU free student therapists, when Will wouldn't pay for help, but just got angry when they judged me right out of the gate because my view of sex was wrong.

I went to the free shrinks at Utah for a bit, just to get anti-depressants (which I no longer use). After taking the MMPI the lead psychiatrist there told me I had serious anger issues, that I had schizo-affective disorder, and that graduate school was worsening, not bettering my mental health.

When I got to Bend I started off with group therapy through one school year. (Several years later one of the other people in that group would turn up in my interpersonal communication class.) At that point I believed I had multiple personalities because there was such a gigantic switch between what I would consider my workaday mind and my personal relationship mind. I often experienced my thinking as coming from two different places. 

After that, Susan Dragovich was my first psychologist to see regularly.  I quit her when I thought she started repeating herself.

And this is it. Once I feel a therapist has done everything they possibly can for me I act like I'm well (and I will be well enough to function for awhile going forward) even if I'm not.

Since 1990 I think I've had 10 different therapists over the 38 years I've been here.

One of the ladies in the Widows group said she uses therapy like her friends get pedicures -- as a form of self care.  

Another lady made the excellent comment that when she and her spouse, who both came out of abusive backgrounds, they created a world of two so when she lost him there was no one else.  And that's kind of how I feel. Maybe I should talk with Sarah about "trauma informed grief therapy".

I am so grateful to have friends who care about me.  

And I am grateful to have enough money to buy the intimacy and support that my friends can't give me.   

I've been asking Jesus to take the wheel but He's been acting like he lost his license.