◊

I’m irritated with therapy lately. I don’t know why I still go. I don’t know why I bother with the process.

Don’t misunderstand me. I think it’s valuable. I think everyone needs it. But I have been doing it for so long – seventeen years – that my mind just works psychotherapeutically.

I spend hours a day, every day, writing about everything that motivates me.  I write about what I remember and how it makes me feel. I write about how I think the past influences my behavior.

I’m constantly running to the computer. I have notebooks on me always. I think about associations, of what situations remind me of.

I do all of this reflexively. Then I go to a therapy session. I look at my therapist and think: She’s a nice woman. She’s smart. I like talking to her. But why do I need her, exactly?

I’ve been in therapy longer that I haven’t been. It’s like the process is part of me. It’s part of my consciousness. Sometimes it really annoys me.

I psychoanalyze everything. I can’t turn it off. Everything is filtered through the psychoanalytic model. I psychoanalyze authors. I psychoanalyze characters. I psychoanalyze movies and lovers and friends. What’s going on in their heads? How does it make them feel.

I psychoanalyze myself and my feelings. Ugh, my feelings! I’m so in touch with my feelings that it annoys me.

Day after day I’m exploding in fits – crying and raging. I feel like I’m vomiting.

And there’s no reason to it. I just get irritated by something small. I start screaming. I end up weeping. Then it’s gone. It just comes out of me.

Sometimes I miss my deepest depressions. I miss being numb.

◊