I know something.

I was at therapy yesterday taking inventory of all of the things that are on my mind and cause me personal stress and pain.  The list isn't that long but the items on it are large I'm grieving the loss of several things, none of which I wanted to lose, but all of which were probably necessary to be without.

Anyway, we talked about Maslow related garbage for a while and then she pointed out that it's possible I've been shoving things into the hole that was left when I lost my Mom and now that most of those things/people are missing I still have unresolved stuff with that loss and just how, generally speaking, my world view changed when that happened.  I no longer felt like the world was a safe place I felt like I had no harbor and no home.  Not in the shelter kind of way, but a sense of an emotional fortress in which to lick whatever wounds I accumulated.  I agree with most of what she said and it was a very hard thing to admit out loud to someone else.  The trouble with admitting things out loud to someone else is that you can no longer lie to yourself about those things.

I want to be over things that my heart simply won't allow me to be over so I pretend to be over them and it works fine as long as I perpetually keep myself distracted.  It always comes back though and always yells a bit louder than before until I attend to it.  I poured.  She listened.  It was cathartic and authentic.  I don't want that though, I don't want to be in mourning... of anything, ever.  Plus I can cognitively see the benefits of all the loss I've experienced in the last six month and I'm already in a better place with my own self image than I ever was in my previous 2 relationships.  There's just no way to get rid of the feelings that exist, that sense of longing, the guilt, the hurt, the anger, the sadness.

So, it was a powerful day, but the moment that brought me back to tears of peace and gratitude was after we talked about all of this.  My financial ruins, my destroyed relationship, the resurfacing of grief for my mother, my social isolation, my legal issues, my checkered past, my uncertain future, my boring present... the fact that my life as I knew it a year ago has been completely and totally destroyed and washed away.

Then she said to me, "What does it say, about the man that you are, that you're in the single worst situation of your entire life, and you're not drinking."  I replied, "Well, I don't really know, but I know that I don't want to drink and... I am NOT going to."

And she said, without hesitation, without batting an eye, in a powerful, authoritative tone, something I've never heard in my life.

"I know you're not."

And I knew, in that moment, that I wouldn't.  I knew someone understood me.  I knew that someone who mattered had been watching me and seeing that I was no longer afraid, no longer a prisoner.  Despite all of the things I have going on, despite the fact that in some ways I am shackled, I have never felt so free.