Friday, June 5, 2009

In the face of disappointment...

I've been working with a new therapist for a few weeks now. I've been painting my most accurate picture of my life- where I've come from and where I am now, and he's been constructing his own hypotheses about how to help. Yesterday he told me that he thought I was probably searching for something that one can get only in childhood, from one's primary caregiver, and that basically I missed my chance when I turned about six years old. In other words, there is a lack that will always be there. A sense of meaningless that can never be fully healed. That the best I can do is to grieve. Not that the grief will transform anything-- which as a Scorpio rising is of course what I'm after-, only shrink the pain a bit, allowing me to "put it on a shelf" so that I might be able to salvage something from the rest of my life.

Needless to say, I was disappointed and thought how such disappointment is in many ways the mark of my life. Not that I experience disappointment often. I don't. I don't allow myself to get my hopes up; to want; to desire something enough that it's lack of obtainment would translate into diappointment. I have learned to cut this off, for the most part. Every once in a while, though, my desire rears its head and I find myself back in that place of disappointment, and the humiliation that comes with it.

Today, I decided not to let myself fall into the depression that was waiting for me. Instead, I put on my favorite, barely-there, mini-dress; red heals; drove around too fast with music playing too loudly; went to the book store to buy more music to play too loudly and some books on architecture; & then bought a cup of coffee with extra sugar to bring back to my office where I'm also listening to music, writing, and enjoying a bit of a sugar high. The meaningless is humming very softly in the background, but I'm not paying it any attention... not today, anyway.

2 comments:

Tony White said...

I liked your cure for depression!

I must remember that one.

Sarah said...

Thanks. I'm getting better at inventing these "cures"- day by day.