I must be okay!

I must be okay...

 

Sorry about my absence, dear readers, I was in the midst of a move and without any strong and sexy men to help me...timing sucks!  Anyway, my mind has been reeling in a million directions and I'm struggling to find my quiet place, listen to my thoughts and find the brain space to write.  For someone like me, I must write and it gnaws at me until I do.  For years I sent out emails to hundred of subscribers that almost always were preempted by stress and therefore my therapy.  There have been crazy, stressful, emotional days that I felt like I needed to run to the nearest computer, where I couldn't type fast enough.

 

Thankfully, through the magic of divorce, time, and a multitude of other changes, my life is much less stressful these days.  Sure, I have single mom stress, running a household stress, career related stress but most days, most days its a peacefully managed chaos.  Okay, except those days I am wonderfully distracted by boys, (yes I am still that 15 year old girls sometimes), and wondering if he will text, call, ask me out and did he like me really or not? 

 

I think I've mentioned before I started going to therapy this summer.  I find no condemnation in this...if I had a mom I probably wouldn't need therapy, but basically, I need a slightly older woman to listen to me and relay her perspective back to me.  My best friend is great at that, but sometimes it nice to have someone totally unbiased to do it, so yes, some days I feel like I am paying for a big sister, but I'm embracing it! 

 

Although Mrs J is a therapist by profession, we aren't really doing any modules of "therapy".  I've long pondered if she ever sits down and wonders "why is she here?"  Not because I'm overly confident in my psychological soundness...I have plenty of flaws, but I do happen to know I am fairly analytical and have good self-reflective skills which is often not the case with other patients.  I guess she really is part of my dating life, because at this point, I know what I want and I know she will tell me if I am heading down a path different from what I have told her.  Because I have screwed up boundaries with friends, I want her to police me in making sure I don't make the same mistakes with men.  So that's her role, besides being my older, calmer sister-for-hire.

 

Mrs J and my gal pal in New Zealand are really the ones who encouraged this blog.  Almost every week Mrs J tells me "You really need to write a book!"  I finally asked her a month or so ago if she told all her patients that, assuming she hears a lot of great stories on that couch, but she assured me I was only the third person she had told.

 

Mrs J is a pretty, southern conservative, church going, husband adoring, super mom and giving midlifer who

probably is often shocked about some of the stories I share with her, which of course I am sharing with you (there are more to come, be assured.)    Today, we were talking about dating and I was relaying the two questions men try to ask before even meeting that always surprise me.  (Hints...one is about grooming, the other is about back door play.) She was telling me I would make a great sex therapist because I am rarely shocked.  I am having a little career crisis and she's always trying to figure out advice for that, this is her latest, and she mentioned the book again.  I probably would make a damn good sex therapist...great idea Mrs J.  She is never judgmental about my particular love of sex and how open I am, really about everything in my life.  She doesn't over-psychoanalyze my childhood or my past choices in life.  I would be fine with her doing so if she felt the need, by the way.

 

We continued talking and at one point she said to me "Leah, you have taught me SO much!  In fact, I feel bad filing your insurance."  She went on to explain that so many women she sees in my stage of life aren't nearly as open as I am and so she doesn't have to read between my lines, which will help her in the future with others.  I get that open thing a lot.  I love that I'm so open but I also worry not everyone finds its so endearing, or a positive attribute, but I'm taking this as a seal of approval.  After all, if Mrs J says I'm okay and that's good enough for me.