Apr 13

Today was supposed to be therapy day. And. Probably wrapping it up. An end.

Irony.

The therapist has cancelled due to a cold.

So. Postponed til next week.

I think now is the right time to halt the therapy. I have sat and thought about it and talked it through a little. There are some benefits to it - just in the turning up and talking. Even about nothing in particular. It forces a schedule on me. It forces me to grit my teeth and push against my bullshit to meet a given time and place. Whilst that is unpleasant and accrues a certain amount of cost. It's also beneficial. It can stabilise me out for a short period. And having someone listen and understand without the need to argue, correct, or need explaining to catch them up. Is a friction free process. Which helps.

On the other hand. I very much feel like I've read the entire book at this point. I felt like that before this year long bout of therapy. But. On the offchance a long bout of talking to someone would magically fix it all - even though I was very clear it wouldn't. Clear that that's not what it does. But. It always pays to dot every i, and cross every t. Even if you kinda know the outcome. Do it anyway. Keep an open mind. It's always the things we can't see that trip us up the most. So.

Done that. Been there. The journey has been useful from a meta point of view if nothing else. I have had a large number of suspicions, theories et al verified. That's bad. I am not imagining it. Yes that's likely it. No I am not delusional. And beyond that. A lot of things verified beyond that. This is how therapy works. That's what people are like. I am not typical.

It has not addressed anything that could make a huge difference. But. That's on me and who I am rather than the nature of therapy itself. I already had a very good understanding of this that and the other. An unusual inner observer of the meta. And a bunch of other things. That always meant therapy for me was not going to be what therapy typically is for everyone else. And the fundamentals. Loss. Sorrow. The juice not being worth the squeeze. And on. And on. Are not. Baseless. Irrational. Mistaken. They are sadly correct. Battle tested. Firm. This path is not for everyone. There are different paths that don't skate so close to existential truths. And in simple terms. A dog's journey through life is a great demonstration of this. Not lost in the sauce of existential truths. Just living in the joy of the moment.

There are consequences to each path that is walked. My path has taken me on a journey of understanding. Figuring out problems. All the problems I can lay my hands on. The big ones. And it gets you an understanding. The cost. Is that it is not conducive to living. Particularly not to living like a dog does. It is the antithesis of that.

The meta conclusion then becomes very much what I thought to be true anyway. You can know things or be happy. Knowledge comes at a cost of innocence. Overall it's not a binary, it's a scale. You can know somethings. And leave others in mystery or beyond your reach. Some responsibilities. Blissfully unaware of others.

That is one facet of where I am. In terms of balance, stability, happiness, sustainability. I have walked too far. And there is no walking back - you can't undo footsteps taken. You can only add more footsteps, like you cannot take back beats of your heart, only add more.

There are no* solutions to this. At least none I've found. None that philosophy or therapy or theology has to offer that aren't themselves just pasted on bits of nonsense. Belief in a higher power that makes it all ok in the end and there are no tragedies of loss. Sure. It's a pretty lie. If you can believe in it. It will make you sleep sound of a night. But it is a lie. And that's the problem of knowledge. Knowing when things are lies or not.

Anyway.

I think now is a good time to stop therapy. Which doesn't mean I won't go back. For one thing. Testing the impact of *not* going will be a good experiment to run. It will offer perhaps some direct evidence of how much it helps in just a presence kind of way if nothing else.

The problem with anything in life is that habit is part of the human condition. We get used to the things we get used to. They can quickly become behavioural crutches. You can debate what is or isn't included in there as a crutch. Or whether it's useful to label it that way at all. The fact of the matter is that people do better with things around them. Structure. Interactions. Nonsense. We integrate rituals into our lives. We seek out partners to quell the noise of isolation. We build places that keep the darkness at bay. Coping mechanisms. Some of them so ingrained we have formalised them and called them normal. But. Maybe that is normal. Coping mechanisms might not be the side entertainment. It might be the entire point. Life. As one long coping mechanism. An engine running with lubricating oil, and one running without lubricating oil. Perhaps it is the nature of the thinking bacon in our skulls. It needs a little... fantasy... to not self destruct. A little happy lubrication to prevent the friction of nihilism eating it alive.

But back to the point. Habit.

I do not want to have a weekly therapy session end up one of my "habits". There have been at times a few tugs like this. The thought of stopping or changing therapists. A little. Anxiety. Attachment. Meh. It is to be fair minor. But still. A sign.

As much as I hate adpating and changing, I am aware that you need to keep a little of it alive. Losing it entirely is another nail in the coffin. Although on that end. I think that nail for me is almost entirely nailed flat at this point. The chronic bullshit does a number on being able to adapt.

So. Therapy will stop next week. Unless the therapist has a major pushback about it. I can't really see them doing that. My guess would be they won't be happy but will suppress it hard. That they will perhaps run some counter arguments up the flagpole for a mixed bag of reasons - some personal, and some therapeutic. This would be my estimation of the human response, if not the entirely professional one. On the one hand I have an instinct there to make sure they are ok. On the other hand, everything people tell me to be, urge me to be, the therapist has strictly told me to be, is to think of me. And not them. They. Are irrelevant. As much as I want to laugh at that notion. They are not irrelevant. But that's what everyone else is telling me to be. Therapist included.

Lately I have been missing my mom. I have been thinking of her. There is that paradox. Despite all the harm she did - and it's kind of immeasurable - despite her being for a lot of her life to me pretty awful. I still miss her. She was different with me for the last 10 years of her life. I know she was not different to my siblings who she was still off and on awful to. I miss that mom. Not the horrible one. I miss the mom I used to talk to. And who would listen. And I would listen to her. I miss that person. And I am sad about what she went through in life to make her cause so much pain. I can see the happy young girl she used to be. And something between there and then turned her into a problem.

So I miss her. I get it. It's a very human thing. Despite the paradox of pain.

My parents had, have, an odd dance between them. Very different people. Very fucked up in different ways. My mom was much more in your face horrible. My dad was more.. vacant. Neglectful. Self obsessed. It's easy to paint my mom as the main dealer of damage in that relationship. But. The dance they both weave around each other. One makes the other worse. I don't find myself missing my dad. I have... no relationship with him. He is not interested. Does not care. Doesn't engage. Not being emotional about it, but, it's like a brick. It doesn't care about you. It just is. Doing it's own thing. And so. You don't miss it. It. Doesn't even relate. Is not a thing ? But bigger picture. It means you miss out on that relationship. It's not there for you. It's arguably worse than having an actual missing parent. There are reasons for that. Death. Or distance. Or something. There is something that moves out of choice and becomes necessity. But where there is still choice. It sits different. No. Someone is there. They just. Choose. Not to care. Hits different to someone who is dead and can't care. If you see what I mean.

I can see the damage each of my parents inflicted on me. And my siblings. Different beatsticks.

I see the echoes of some of that behaviour in my siblings. Choices made.

The conclusion I come to is in that aspect, I am fucked up. A broken toy. It's just more grist to the mill that I am a mistake. And sticking around is stupid. A fucked up experiment. A failed bit of carpentry.

Eh well.