...and so 45 approaches

Man, the older I get, the more I dislike the weeks before my birthday. It's not because I have issues with aging, it's because I have issues with remembering. It only makes sense that with each passing year, I have another 365 days of memories to ponder: good, bad or indifferent. Parts of my past slip just a bit further away. Sometimes I'm happy to have memories fade into a whiter shade of pale, sometimes I'm sad that milestones of my life are even further away from my present, like watching a boat cross the horizon that is that much harder to moor back at shore.
When I graduated with my Master's degree 5 years ago, I had developed a "five year plan" for the first time in my life. That plan was to apply to PhD programs when I turned 44 and starting a Forensic Psychology PhD program the fall semester of 2016, just months after my 45th birthday. Well, let me tell you: Shit happens and five year plans fall by the wayside. Priorities change, career opportunities present themselves (or not), your grandmother becomes a full time nursing home resident, the home where the absolute best of your childhood memories gets sold and you feel as if the planks that make up your life begin to separate and float away so you cling to whatever you find  just to prevent yourself from drowning in life on life's terms-not your own terms.
Which brings me to today: four days from my 45th birthday.
Some spectacular things have happened to me professionally this year: I got a promotion to be LSS's School Based Mental Health Coordinator. I spoke at a WAFCA (Wisconsin Association of Family & Children's Agencies) training about what it's like to be a licensed professional counselor in recovery. Today I received news that I am going to be a key-note speaker at the state convention for speech therapists and pathologists in February 2017 about trauma informed care-I'll be presenting for 1 1/2 hours to approximately 200 people. I've been interviewed by a local reporter about state government support for school based mental health. A colleague I worked with as an Older Adult Counselor published a book which includes my interview about depression and older adults. I've never felt more satisfied in my career as I do now. This is significant for two reasons:
1) I really thought that working with psychopathology in the state prison system was one of my "dream jobs" and working there would fulfill me intellectually so I tried that for six months in 2013 and discovered that it was not the place for me, for a number of reasons I've outlined in previous blog posts; 2) When I was in grad school, I completed a paper on the population I'd least like to work with, which was teens and adolescents and here I am, five years later absolutely in love with the students I counsel two days a week at a local high school and working to develop and expand school based mental health services at schools across the state.
Personally I've faced challenges this year, as everyone does. The two most significant being the only income provider at home due to my husband's depression and anxiety which has prevented him from working since January 2015. He's in the process of applying for SSDI due to PTSD. The second may sound somewhat trivial, but rocked my world when I checked my Linked In account in early February and discovered that "Paul G, MD from Montana" had recently viewed my profile. Sometimes I view him as a bad penny that won't go away and leave me the fuck alone and other times I long to re-establish any type of contact with him, "knowing" that we'd somehow reconcile, despite the fact that we're both married to other people. In therapy I refer to these thoughts as "Julia Roberts movie moments" which are completely unrealistic, but drag my heart into believing it's possible. These thoughts fuck with my mind in a major way despite the amount of time that's passed since we've spoken, much less were in a romantic relationship with each other. It's the nagging thoughts of "what if" that I'm finally processing in therapy. I've danced around it for decades (I know, it's a crazily long amount of time) but my counselor kicks ass and keeps me on task to finally deal with whatever I need to do to come to terms with this relationship.
So as my 45th birthday approaches, here I am: focusing on all of the achievements I've made this year and acknowledging what I need to work on to live a more balanced life. I know there will be more achievements and more challenges during the 365 days between 45 and 46, but for the first time in a long time, I feel prepared to welcome them both.

My "official" LSS website photo.

Coping

Coping: there's an interesting concept. I haven't coped well in the past, as evidenced by my multiple trips to rehab. So there's some serious shit going on now in my life and I can't (or choose not to) fall back on the old coping mechanisms, but I don't have a lot of substitutes in my bag of tricks right now.
I joined the local YMCA and had my first workout there this morning which was perfect timing because I "discovered" that my husband is yet again back to drinking. Actually it was kind of weird...last night I rolled over while sleeping and heard him pop open a can of beer. I know it was a beer because we don't drink canned soda. So I figured I had the right to tear apart the computer room today and found a small lunch-box sized cooler with empty Miller Lite cans in it. I had it sitting on the coffee table for a while this morning, but I couldn't stand looking at it so I put it back in the closet in which I found it. I hope I put it back incorrectly in a way that he will recognize, just to see if he has the balls to say anything to me. The way I found it sucked, I know that. To me, the fact that I had to go looking for it in the first place sucks even more.
I don't know what to do. We love each other, but love is not enough. He wonders why I don't tell him things about the bills and why I hide things and it's because I don't trust him. (I just figured that out this morning by the way.)
I'm still struggling with this depression and these situations don't help. I've had ECT in the past and I'm thinking about calling my shrink to see if he would prescribe another round. He'll tell me it's situational and I agree, but I've got to be able to lift my head off of the god-damn pillow in the morning and because of these "situations" I can't do that some days. I don't even really know if I need ECT. It's an option that's worked in the past and I'm running out of ideas here. Sometimes I wish it would just all go away....

Memory of You Haiku

Motherfucker. What
I thought, given. Unwrapped presents.
Only left: burnt remains.

Day 5

I just started reading the cover story of November's issue of O Magazine and I'm really liking it. It's about becoming the person you were meant to be. That's a heavy question, but it doesn't really have to be. We've been talking about this a lot in my Career Counseling & Development class and this idea that each of our lives has an intrinsic meaning, bestowed upon us by a power greater than ourselves or from something deep within us, is very Logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, based. Frankl is one of the great theorists of psychotherapy and if you ever want to read an inspirational story, I highly recommend his "Man's Search for Meaning" which chronicles his life in a German World War II concentration camp and how he finds his meaning through suffering...that there is meaning in suffering. That's an idea I've latched onto lately, given the current mental health crap I'm working through.

So one of the writers in this issues says, when trying to direct people to finding their authentic selves, "You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think yourself into becoming yourself." Truer words were never spoken...or written, rather. I may not know who exactly I want to be, but I for damn sure have some ideas of who I don't want to be. I don't want to have a job where I have to lie. I lie a lot at work: to owners, customers, suppliers, whomever is asking a question of me that I have been instructed not to honestly answer. Ever work in customer service? Then you've lied too. It's sort of a game because the people I talk to know I'm going to lie to them and they laugh it off as an answer they expected to hear. We all know the rules and for the most part we all follow them; it's called "being polite." Maybe that's it? I'm sick of being polite? Not in the "if you don't have anything good to say, keep your mouth shut," sense (I'm actually a big believer in that phrase), but in ALL the phoniness. I'm sick of having to talk to people I don't like. I'm not just talking about the people on the phone at work, but some of the people I work with, people I know socially, people I don't spend a lot of time with and don't know well. Why all the fakeness? Is that what gets passed along as "polite society"? I can't answer that question because part of me thinks it does. If I go through a fast-food drive through I always say back to the employee that hands me my bag of saturated fat, "You too," when he/she says to me, "Have a nice day!" I don't think that's phony; they wished me a pleasantry and I respond in kind: that's the type of person I want to be and, I guess, am becoming if I'm already saying it. I'm so looking forward to graduating from graduate school because when I'm a mental health counselor it would be unethical for me to lie at work, at least with clients. The truth doesn't have to be brutal and problem-solving doesn't have to be painful and I believe that we carry our own answers around inside of us, sometimes we just need assistance in pulling them out into the open. That's honesty, that's not phony.

On a completely different topic, things are getting better here on my home front. As I said in an earlier post, we seem to be better together on the weekends, when my husband doesn't have to deal with work. We argued a bit this afternoon about who is to blame for wrapping this blanket of misery around our house; he thinking it was entirely me and me thinking he has a large part in it too. Logically I think we both know we both play a role, but blame is so much easier, isn't it? So we sort of got over that without any resolution, and now we can at least acknowledge the fact that we're not really happy as a couple at the moment. We can move on from here. This is just one moment, not my entire life...but sometimes moments can be very very long, can't they? We'll talk more tonight or tomorrow, that's our way. We've become accustomed to these patterns in each other, knowing in the end it will all come out and to some resolution. It always has before and will this time too. If there's one thing I have complete confidence in it's our love and our relationship. It's not always glamorous or perfect or even easy, but it's real and something that we are both committed to. I love him entirely and he loves me completely, so we're a good match that way.

It's Saturday evening and it's time for me to watch my favorite TV program, "As Time Goes By" on PBS. Have an authentic evening.

Enjoy.