There are two white Scottish terriers outside the doors of this Starbucks. They're quiet and alert and staring at all the cars going by. I don't know if their owner is somewhere outside or what. Gotta love the twin energy, though!
I've been sifting through past entries recently. I do this periodically, because I can't remember shit. Sometimes is not always, and now is not same as it ever was, but by golly it sure does feel like it. Incessantly. Hm. Okay.
...and now I'm to the point in my parking lot document where I stuck Ne. Do I even want to do this? No? There won't be a better time later? Okay. So, something happened in college that just about wrecked me. A lot of things did, but I've been carrying this particular thing with me as a Big Bad Thing I did when I was...eighteen maybe? Or maybe 19. I was going to outline exactly what it was, but upon reflection maybe not. Suffice it to say, it was dumb, it was bad, it did hurt people, and it was like a plot point from teen melodramas of the day. And I felt horrible and evil. I also don't think I took full responsibility for it at the time, but I did blame myself and I did feel...horrible and evil. And it really wasn't until earlier this year (20-ish years later) that it at all occurred to me that maybe it wasn't 100% my fault. While it wasn't great to let Ne into my bedroom in the first place due to some nonsense shenanigans that he was always on about, it truly didn't occur to me that this would ensue in What Happened. So, late-teens Clara: it wasn't completely your fault. Yes, it was 50% your fault. And you should have Done More Shit to Stop It. But guess what? At no point anywhere in your life up to that point did you have any experience in setting healthy boundaries in any context. And you're still not great at it now, age 38. I'm not saying cut yourself some slack exactly, but I am saying that it makes sense why it happened. And it could have been predatory. It was more likely just dumb kid shit, but still. And if I saw it happen to/with one of my younger coworkers I wouldn't really think all that much less of them. I would just be like, hm. There were reasons and there's work to do. It would have served you (Clara) better to have gotten to work on reparations and boundary work than emotionally cutting and avoiding accountability.
"What's new, boo?" you might say (if you called me boo - which you don't; no-one does), and I might give you stock response about "Oh, I started fieldwork and that's going fine." "How do you like the setting?" you might pry further. "It's fine! I could see doing it." I'd mumble. And then you'd be a little frustrated because that's no way to have a conversation! And you'd be so right. I'm still settling in, I guess? And I'm not hyper-excited, except when I'm actually in sessions. I kind of just...want to do the thing? Not talk about how it is to be doing the thing with members of my family. Which likely means that's exactly what I need to do. But I'm not. (Yet.) But I will. But I'm not.
I have been foisted off on a therapist who has Her Own Stuff Going On this Wednesday, and that's fine! It's the reason why I'm writing a blog entry at 11:46 instead of driving about having conversations about OT theory. (Oh, yeah. MoPs and FoRs I should ask about those, but I never do.) I like it! I like the kids. I'm just a little antsy. Maybe I'm doing my IIB feels early. We got told in no uncertain terms that we'd probably have menty b's during IIB and clinical practice b's during the IIA.
BUT ANYWAY. Let's talk about tarot. Not writ large, just in my little world. A card I pulled a few times when considering whether to just file for divorce already, how it would impact my kid, etc. was the 8 of Cups. It looks like the below:
This classically means moving on, leaving a situation behind, and fits pretty well with the "Dump him, girl!" narrative. Which I
did do (sort of), and moved through to the current situation in which S is currently back in the family this, in large part, because he has gotten sober. One tableau I pulled cards for this question was The Moon, another card which escapes my memory and I'm not going to look it up right now because I have one more thing to do before the next two appointments, and the 8 of Cups. Someone on the reddit tarot channel commented that it looked like myself and my husband on either side with our child caught between us. Well, the reason I bring it up is because I pulled the 8 of cups on Saturday and on that day I went to an AA meeting with S. We were leaving the meeting and I realized that perhaps the meaning of this card in my situation is leaving a very literal representation of...cups of alcohol. Leaving alcohol behind.
Speaking of woo, it was only recently that I discovered that even though my sun sign is in Virgo, my moon is in Gemini, and my Venus is in Libra (my mars is in Capricorn, but nobody seems to care about that in the astrology world). This is all hokum, probably, but one alleged thing about people with their moon in Gemini is that they can see lots of different sides of lots of different issues and other people don't tend to like this very much. Which: can confirm is true for me, personally.
How are the parks in your city? The ones in Anchorage are mostly fine except for the one nearest my house. I think I've written about this before, but it has become overrun with middle schoolers/young teens. On the one hand this is fine and on the other hand they have begun swearing extremely loudly at each other like they're auditioning for a walk-on role in a Kevin Smith film, and monopolizing the playground equipment and when asked to stop becoming increasingly threatening. S posted on the Nextdoor app calling for solidarity and when a local mom with three children tried to follow through by asking them to stop three of them threatened her and started following her down the path leading from the park to the neighborhood. She felt unsafe enough that she called the police. Who came...but refused to involve their parents. She took a picture of them which she sent to S when he asked. On that same day we'd tried to go to the park and made it a grand total of 5 minutes before two of the three hunkered down on the swings by L and started discussing dildos in a loud (uninformed) way. We just left. My instinct is to be like, "Time and place - this isn't it. And you sound ridiculous! Castle is halfway across town. And you'd definitely need a lubricant. Amateurs." ...and is that helpful? Probably - no. And then S tried to go talk to them on his own (because sometimes youths react better if they hear it from a man; misogyny! Alive and well!) and that went actually much worse and now we're at a total loss. By which I mean I'm probably going to go the witchcraft route. My only other thought is to call the police every time and hope that it's so often that they get sick of it and follow through. However, my experience at a high-incidence Siren is such that I think they'll probably just stop sending officers and say things like, "You've reached your yearly limit on police calls." Which...that can't be a real thing, can it? The operators are just making shit up, right? Lordt.
Today is the last day of school in the Anchorage School District. And wow will I ever not miss the power struggles that go with dropping L off in the morning at Current Optional School! Phew. I'm excited for exciting, new power struggles!
Unrelated: I think I'm getting the nausea side-effect from Wellbutrin (cry-laughing emoji). Oh well. Gotta be something, right?
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