enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Thanks for the advice and good wishes! I'll sort it all out.

Oh...so...I feel much better now.

Of course.

In the end I didn't call the counselor(s), but I'm holding those as an option. I'm going to see my doctor first, and also the career counselor. I have two names of recommended counselors, and I'm likely to call one of them, but I have a few reservations.

The thing is that I've gone through the counseling thing before - when I was having panic attacks in grad school - and although the counselors were nice and I enjoyed having someone to talk to, they really did very little good. I've made quite a bit more progress on my own in recent years. That's not to say that counseling can't work - I think it can - but I think that my problem has a lot more to do with changing my own attitude. I have a feeling that if I could just flip one switch suddenly the illumination would begin.

Part of the problem of course has been that I haven't been going out much. I mean, for years. I've isolated myself, apart from a limited few friends. I've known for a while that getting out and developing a friends network is essential, albeit difficult. I've been at a disadvantage for my entire life, because I've never lived in the same place for long enough to have a network of people to support me. We stayed in the same place for my first five years of life, but then we moved every single year after that until I hit grade 9. We did stay in the same town during high school, but during that time we moved twice, my dad left and was too ill to participate in my life much after that, my step-father turned up literally a week later, my mother was too busy for me and left me to care for my brothers...you get the picture. I wasn't allowed to go on field trips or to dances, and apart from the math competition club and the band in which I was forced to participate, I didn't have a social life. All I remember about high school is that...I was depressed.

Of course I didn't know then that I was depressed, just that I cried A LOT, and I also didn't get any help because my mom thought that because I had perfect grades I was OK. But who wouldn't have been depressed in those circumstances?

I was thinking about the thing I wrote yesterday about how I became an economist in order to be loved - that's about the most hilarious thing one could ever write, I realize :) - and it's exactly true. I did well in all of my subjects in high school, but where I really stood out was in math. And my school was very strong in math. So I realize that not only did I cling to my good marks as some way to BE something that I felt that my family would love and approve of, but I was likely even striving for approval from my teachers.

I mean, what I've realized is that all of my life I've valued myself on the basis of my academic prowess, since I was always told as a little girl that I wasn't pretty or a good athlete (which is wrong, I know, but it wasn't done particularly maliciously), which means that when I don't feel as though I'm excelling at my work I have nothing else to fall back on. It's a terrible path to be on.

It's not that I haven't been able to make friends over the years. I have made a great number of close friends over the years. But I'm simply not someone who is connected easily to a large group of people. I don't put in the effort.

I expect, therefore, that the next few months should be an interesting test for me. I am, for the first time in my life, going to go out and socialize often. I went out with four people last night to dinner and yoga, as I noted, and even though I felt a bit depressed at the beginning, I ended up feeling pretty fine by the end.

I've talked about this for ages, but I do believe that getting out as often as possible to courses and to social activities will help me a great deal. For whatever reason, people once they get to know me like me. Once I go out I always have lots of invitations to other things! I actually have an engagement every single night in the next two weeks but Saturday. I don't think that that's a regime that is in the long run healthy, but it's important for me to try, for the first time ever, to open myself up to something other than the things that I can control and that make me feel safe(e.g. books).

Anyhow. THAT was a ramble. I do want to talk to a counselor, but I want to do it WITHOUT raising my expectations. Also, frankly, one of the things bolstering my reluctance is that I really don't want to talk about my mother and my father and my relationship with them. I feel as though my entire life has been dominated by ruminating on the subject and I just don't want to go there anymore. I know that that sounds very lazy of me but I am so tired of the subject. :)

Well...I should eat something. I had a nice walk with Dan after work but I haven't even changed out of my uncomfortable skirt yet.
:)

7:36 p.m. - 2008-11-06

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