November 3, 2003

• Necessary Madness

  
  

  Okay - here's my tip for the day, if you want a totally psychodelic mind-altering experience, there's no need to reach for chemicals.  Just start digging down through your psyche and confronting the places that you've been avoiding for a good long while.  I wrote yesterday about the experience of feeling disoriented after a session with a counselor.  I went to her with some specific ideas of areas in my life that I thought I needed to work on in order to be a happier and healthier person. 

  
  

  What I was confronted with was the possibility that these things were the symptoms, not the cause of my discomfort.  Oh, my.  There's a mind-blower.  I've long been fascinated with perception.  What's your perception of me?  How does your perception match or where does it depart from my perception of me?  In communication, I'm a big proponent of deliberate perception checking - "when you said ... I think that means ... is that what you meant to say?"  I've thought that I was pretty much aware of myself and that other people saw about the same things I did.  I've thought I was transparent. Well, I'm apparently about as transparent as mud to me, although I've gotten some really good insight from people around me lately.   

  
  

  There is a predictable curve for someone going through the kind of self-examination I've been doing.  The first part of it feels like insanity.  Because I have to question whether the things I've been thinking are rooted in what IS as opposed to what I wanted them to be, I have to question almost everything.  It's odd, my feelings are in some respects closer to the surface - but they are not the feelings I've thought I knew.  Things that are most familiar, that I would expect to feel the most comfortable, are tight, scratchy, and uncomfortable.  I'm sensing a separation between me and my life as I've known it. 

  
  

  On the one hand this separation is frightening and dark with the shadows of the unknown.  But on the other, it's exciting.  I'm alive, I'm energetic, and I'm accomplishing things that seemed so far beyond my grasp that I never considered them before.  (Okay, I vacuumed BEHIND the sofa today instead of just AROUND it like I usually do.  But admit it, that's shedding light onto a dark place ... ) 

  
  

  I talk to my siblings fairly regularly.  Not daily, and sometimes not even weekly but often enough that I feel like we are in touch.  In the past 24 hours, I've talked with all three of them for hours.  I don't often stop to think about my family and our closeness, but I am unusually blessed to have two incredible sisters and a brother who is - well, he's a nut.  My sisters called to see how I'm doing and to give those sisterly phone hugs that are really appreciated whenever I'm "going through a phase."  My brother called to see if I'd care to debate with him about a book he's just read.  That's his way of saying, "I love you." 

  
  

  I haven't heard from the school today.  Lets hope that's a good thing. 

  • 2:24 pm
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