July 3, 2013

A few weeks ago...

I always find myself coming back to this blog like an old friend each time I just need to type something out, express some of my feelings or something, not sure exactly. I even attempted to start a new blog, but I always find myself wanting to come back here to this one. I guess maybe it is familiarity? This blog has history to it, I have been posting here for so many years, albeit posts few and far between, that this blog really is like a friend.

Anyways, on to the point of why I have returned to my dear friend.

A little over two weeks ago I went back to visit friends and family in the state where I went to college. It was so wonderful to see people, some of whom I hadn't see in over a year and a half, and to reunite like we had never spent a day apart, I loved that. One of the first friends I was able to meet up with was one of my supervisors from my internship which I completed during my final semester of college. In my previous posts I have referred to her as C, this post and this post mention her, there may be more but I don't remember. She is a pretty awesome woman. She knows some things about my struggle with self-harm and has struggled with self-harm herself. We had agreed to meet up during the week prior to my flying out there, and so I texted her when I arrived and we planned a meeting place, a little coffee shop near where she lives, date and time. I was incredibly anxious about meeting up with her. I basically always get that way in social situations, always thinking that people will think bad things about me. I know it pretty much doesn't make sense at all, but it is always where my mind goes. Anyways, after some initial awkwardness where I was having to force myself to breathe and listen and laugh when appropriate we got into having a nice conversation. We talked about pretty much everything, from religion to self-harm to tea to basically anything that popped into our heads. It was so natural, as if we were long time friends and had continued talking for the year and a half where we actually were out of touch other than the few texts sent back and forth. We literally sat there outside of the coffee shop with our tea growing cold and talked for three hours before they started closing up the coffee shop and we realized how late it was getting.

She encouraged me in a lot of things. She encouraged me in my counseling while also sharing how she has been doing with her own counseling and even confessing that she still has thoughts about self-harm even though it has been years since she last did it. That really eased my mind. I guess sometimes I feel like those thoughts should just disappear if i am doing things right, which of course is not the case. Courtney is very strong in her faith and I guess I would say that being around her makes me wonder if maybe there is a god out there somewhere who really does care. She has such a strong belief, but she didn't push it on me. She shared about her own faith story but didn't force her beliefs on me. I don't know how to explain it really, but basically she shared things that are a part of her reality but treated them as an opinion instead of a fact and treated me like I mattered even if I didn't necessarily agree with her. I am going to say that she is a really great person. She encouraged me to pray (again, not in a forceful way, I really don't know how to explain it...) She said "Pray for something specific and you will see your answer" and "when you decide what to pray for let me know and I will pray too because I firmly believe that when two people pray for the same thing it will happen."

I really appreciate her offer, and have even tried to figure out what on earth I would like to pray for, but I don't honestly know what I want. I want things to change and stay how they are. I want to be me and to be more not me. I want to feel something inside of me that could lead me to believe in a higher power but I also just really don't give a fuck. I want so many things but want nothing at all. I want to know what I want and what will hold meaning for my life but I have been searching for so long that I don't know if it exists.

Anyways, as it gets later and later my mind is beginning to ramble and lose concentration. Tomorrow I have a counseling appointment again. I had almost decided to just give up on counseling, but I think I want to try to be assertive tomorrow (I teach my kiddos aka clients about assertive communication, if I can't put it into practice then why should I think that they can?)

Goodnight.
Emmy R.