Today Lily is two years old. Instead of blogging, Lily has asked me to put down my MacBook and go for walks and play with Mr. Monkey and feed her treats as part of her b.day celebration. She also asked me to share this video filled with cute Lily photos. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Speaking of treats, while I am off celebrating Lily, I thought you might enjoy the following (I know I have): Continue reading ‘Happy Birthday, Lily! ( and there are treats for you)’
I know it is not standard or customary for a wife to send a supplementary letter along with the cover letter and resume, but there are somethings I think you need you to know about my weasel. First, He-weasel’s resume may not adequately reflect this, but he is a workaholic. Really, I am a therapist and I know that workaholic isn’t an actual DSM-IV diagnosis code for this condition, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It does and he is and you will benefit from this. He will be the first one there in the morning and the last one to go home at night. You want to have a meeting at 2 a.m.? Want to have him come in on Sunday? Want a guy who will take your call anytime night or day? My He-weasel is your guy. He doesn’t know the concept of a 40-hour-work week. And breaks and lunch hours are in his mind childhood constructs that one ought to give up with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. He will work as if your company is his own and because of this we will occasionally fight about this and I will say things like, “You shouldn’t work harder than your boss” and he will say that he knows that I’m right and then he will go right on back to working as hard as he was before. You see, this all goes back to early childhood issues; He-weasel learned from his family working hard would get him love , acknowledgement, and approval. Because of this he is a fantastic and diligent worker. I have even, on occasion, acknowledged his parents for this as I am not quite as industrious as he and I am amazed by anyone who finds the idea of doing nothing to be objectionable.
He-weasel is a extremely dedicated husband and provider and would do anything he could to take care of me, this is one of his highest values. The more he succeeds the better he feels he can take care of me( this is his thinking, not mine) and the more he feels he has demonstrated his love for me, this all goes back to those previously mentioned childhood issues and some left-ever ideas that comes from being second-generation Greek-American. And you see, both of us REALLY-REALLY-REALLY want to get back to Chicago and jobs like his don’t come on the market everyday and, really, I am not just saying this out of any kind of self-serving motive, he is the perfect candidate for this job. You don’t know it, but when you wrote the ad for this job you were in fact writing the description of my husband. He is a brilliant at his job and he has all of the requirements you are seeking and more. You also might be impressed to know that he is so beloved by his employees that when he takes one day off from work (which he rarely does, he has six-weeks of unused vacation time, a pack of unused personal days and nearly all of his sick days. On one occasion when there was a pressing deadline he went into work with a kidney stone. How do you like that for dedication?). And then there is his loyalty, he has loyalty the likes you have never experienced before unless you have a dog. Even though he was born the year of the tiger, he is actually much more of a dog( I mean that as high praise). I see him as a delightful mix of one part working dog, maybe a German Shepherd, and one part curly coated Labrador Retriever. Not that you would be, but even if you were a bit tyrannical and had some unrealistic expectations of your employees, He-weasel would find nice things to say about you ( unlike me) and find ways of rationalizing your crap behavior. Yes, I would try and get him to see that you are too demanding and how it isn’t fair that you are asking him to do the work of two people and how at least if he is going to do all of that work that he should be paid more for it. He, on the other hand, will never complain and he will see if perhaps he could take on more responsibilities. Because of all these wonderful qualities we would of course expect him to get the high-end of the advertised pay scale.
I feel that I must tell you that He-weasel and I are very much in love and we have been happily married for nearly 18 years. While that may not seem important to you, I believe that our long standing and stable relationship speaks to He-weasel’s character. With He-weasel you won’t have an employee who is distracted by domestic disputes. And as I am an only child, an introvert and a writer, I prize my time alone—I just thought you might want to know that. We also have no children which means he won’t have to leave early for soccer practice or school fairs.
In closing, I have included attachments of anticipated moving expenses from L.A. to Chicago. It would be our preference to make the move before Winter begins. Moving once there is snow on the ground is not ideal, but we would be willing to do it if you can’t get your act together before November. I also wanted to reiterate, in case there is any doubt, He-weasel is your guy. Have I made that perfectly clear? Oh, and to demonstrate the above, He-weasel just walked in the door. He said, I didn’t realize how late it was. He was at the office and realized that everyone else had long ago gone home.
Thank you in advance for your consideration. I look forward to meeting you at the Holiday Party. I will be the one next to He-weasel who is raving on and on about how lovely it is to be back home and how lovely Christmas in Chicago is.
Very sincerely,
Belette Rouge, aka Mrs. Weasel
p.s. I assure you that once you hire He-weasel you won’t hear from me again. And I promise, should my He-weasel get the job to write only wonderful things about you and your company on this blog and on all other electronic and print media. I also assure you that any complaints I have about how you overwork him or any other such grievances would be saved for my therapist and not aired on this blog.
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Writers note: Any overstatements, exaggerations, or hyperbole in this document are purely accidental, unintentional and would be motivated by the purest and best of intentions.
I have never been big believer in double-sessions. I have never had one with Igor, even though there have been times that I was sure I couldn’t get out everything I needed to in an hour—I have never asked for more. As soon as the plane landed I emailed him and told him I needed a double on Thursday. I hadn’t written the entire time I was in Chicago, not even in my journal. But as soon as I got on the plane I started wrting and I didn’t stop until the flight attendent told me to put my chair and tray table in an upright position. I had, by the end of the flight, written 42 pages. And, I’ll have you know they were not the kind of ramblings one keeps in one’s hidden journal. All 42 pages were intended for you. That said, I realizes 42 pages of long hand prose might be a bit much for the blog.
But as I have much more in my to say about Chicago, at least 82 more pages, I knew that a 50-minute session would be completely inadequate for all I have to say. I need to tell him how good it was to be home and what a good time I had. I also need to tell him how much it hurt to be back home and how it felt like I had just walked back into my life and my impulse to go to my house and take out my keys and open the door and crawl into bed and go to sleep and wake up from the bad dream I have been living. I want to take him the bottle of Lake BLuff sand that I took from Sunset Beach and let him smell the soil that stirs my soul. I want to tell him about passing the first house we lived in Lake Bluff and how we went by so fast I wasn’t able to see if anyone was living there. And then I need to tell him how I couldn’t go past our house, I couldn’t even look in its general direction.
And then there is all I need to say about yesterday and how very different it felt when I was alone in Chicago and not with my lovely host. When I was alone it was really like I was back in my life and not just on vacation. When I took the train to Lake Forest all the feelings I had anticipated I would met as soon as I arrived in Chicago greeted me. He needs to hear that even as much as it hurt to be back *home* that he was wrong and I was wrong and that I can go home again and that all the baby shit didn’t hurt like I thought it would. The babies and kids don’t get to me the way they used to, at least most of the time.
Perhaps most importantly I want to tell him that I want to move back. No, really, I mean it. No more of this trying to make L.A. work, I want to go home. I want out of L.A. and I want out now. I was wrong, you can go home again and I am going to go. All of that came to me when I went to Walgreen’s in Lake Forest, not a place that one would imagine would create such strong feelings. I went there because my stomach hadn’t been quite right for days and being back in LF was doing nothing to settle my stomach. And so I went to Walgreen’s. I have actually been to the LF Walgreen’s many times in the last couple of years. I am sure I have told you already, sometimes when I am really homesick I walk the streets of Forest and Bluff in my mind. I walk down Scranton Avenue and try and remember all of the houses in the right order. I walk around the shops of Market Square and I try and remember the windows of the stores and the brick under my feet and the sounds of the fountain. And sometimes I walk the aisles of Walgreen’s. When one has undergone IVF for two years and has had a cat with cardiomyopathy and another with diabetes one spends a lot of time in Walgreen’s.
Yesterday when I went to Lake Forest I had planned on stopping at Talbots and Jcrew and Helanders, but I didn’t imagine I would go into Walgreens. However as soon as I was in the store I knew I had to go back to the pharmacy to see if my cats’ photo was hanging on the pharmacy wall. It was. Then the tears began. Then the feelings, that I am still not far enough away from to put into words, overtook me.
You may be asking yourself, “Self, why are there pictures of Belette’s cats hanging in the Walgreen’s pharmacy?” You see the pharmacist was a big animal lover and because of this she had done many special orders and special favors for my feline friends. One day after a particular act of kindness I decided to print a photo and have the cats *write* a thank you to the pharmacist. As soon as I gave the photo to the pharmacist she hung it on the wall. That photo has been there for almost four years. As soon as I saw the photo I lost it. I was flooded with feeling. This photo on the wall that has been there the whole time I have been in L.A. said to me louder than any person could say, “THIS IS YOUR HOME.” When I heard that message I began to decompensate. I wanted to call someone and tell them what had happened so they could come and pick me up and I could fall apart. Only there was no one to call. I called He-weasel and told him what had happened. I told him I needed his help. I needed him to help me stop crying. I couldn’t be crying on the streets of Lake Forest. I had to stop. He-weasel was confused. For the last 19 years we have been together, every time he has told me not to cry I would get angry with him and so when I called him and asked him to help me stop crying he said, “Go on and cry. It’s okay to cry.” “No”, I explained, “I have to stop. I can’t cry here, not on the street.”
Right as I quit crying I asked him to do something I haven’t asked in almost three years, I asked him to promise me something. I asked him to swear to me that we would get back here. “We’ll work something out.” His admirable statement was not what I was looking for. I was looking for a promise. I needed swearing. But the truth is that even if he did swear that I wouldn’t believe him. Years ago I had asked him to swear we would NEVER come back to L.A. and he, despite his best efforts, wasn’t able to make that happen.
So I want to go to Igor’s tomorrow for two hours and I want to tell him that I am done with L.A. I want to give him my metaphorical two-week notice on this place and tell him that this time I am really serious. I have had it with L.A. I want to go home and I want to go NOW. And then, in the safety of his office, I want to do all the crying that I couldn’t do on the streets of Lake Forest and I want to make him understand that he was wrong and that I was wrong and that I can and that I will go home again.
No, that is not a misspelling of a very ugly word that inspires all kinds of bad behavior and ridiculous legislature. I am talking instead about a phobia that isn’t listed in the official list of phobias and yet I am sure that others, besides me, have. This non-official phobia has many manifestations. The types of Casa-tastrophies one might fear are many. There is the pediatric version of this disorder. I definitely had that one. No one wants to go to a place where one is likely to be met by drunk people who are mad at you for something. When that happens frequently enough you begin to fear going home. The adult version is more varied: There is the fear of buying or committing to a home because one feels trapped like an animal and one’s respiration level increases so severely just thinking about signing a contract to buy that a paper bag to the mouth is the only way to restore one’s breathing to normal. There is the fear that I don’t presently suffer from that one’s property value is going down-down-down and that they have more debt than equity. Then there is the terror that one’s house is a hungry and sadistic monster that conspires to eat one’s saving by continually needing unexpected repairs and maintenance and rewiring just out of spite. I imagine there are other home-a-phobic manifestations that I don’t have, maybe someone has a fear of having a house fall on them or maybe there are others who the word home is a kind of psychic black cat that they do their best to avoid.
Lately I have been feeling some serious home-a-phobia and that home-a-phobia has been constellated by my travel plans to Chicago (which by the way, as you read this I am on the plane to Chicago and so I will be scarce on the blogosphere for a while). I am talking about the fear of going home. It seems counter-intuitive for me to be somewhat apprehensive (and if I am being completely honest I am a closer to terrified) about returning to the place that I love. But I am. I am not afraid of going to Chicago ( no fear of flying here). I am not afraid of being in Chicago. What I am afraid of is being there and then having to come back here. It was so hard for me to leave Chicago when last we met that I haven’t gone back in over two years.
I knew that at the very worst of times when I was seriously HATING L.A. and in acute shock that we were actually living here again that if I went back I would have likely decompensated on the front yard of our old house. I would have been the crazy lady who tried to retake her old life and lost it when her key didn’t unlock the door. The very friendly Lake Forest Police Department would have been called to take me away and perhaps take me to Lake Forest Hospital for psychological assessment.
And even when I was starting to feel a little bit at home here in L.A.( just typing that sentence makes me feel more than uneasy) I had some serious apprehension about going back to Chicago and then having to come BACK to L.A. again. Here is how I thought it would go. “Hi, He-weasel. Uh, I know my flight is booked for 11 a.m. today, but I cannot get myself to go anywhere near O’hare. I am not coming back to L.A. I can’t. ” He-weasel would talk slowly and calmly the way you do when someone is having a panic attack, “Honey, you have to get on the plane. Your life is here. I am here. Lily is here. We miss you. You can do it”. When that wouldn’t work then he would go to phase two: “You don’t have a house there. Where are you going to stay?” When I tell him that I am going to go check into the Lake Forest Inn and await his arrival then he would begin to panic, “But I don’t have a job there. My job is here.” I would blithely ignore the practicalities of his perfectly rational statement and go back to the unalterable truth that I cannot get on the airplane or even get within a five-mile radius of the airport.
Soon I will be *home* again, only it isn’t really my home anymore. Ugh. Tears come just from typing that. I can’t imagine the tears that might come when I drive down Greenbay Road, the road that inspired me to say out loud each time I drove it, “I am so lucky to live here.” The thought that comes to mind when I imagine driving down it in the next few days is “I am so unlucky not to live here”. Must remember to pack Kleenex, Visine Eye Drops and Igor’s phone number.
After two years of Igor I don’t imagine that the Lake Forest Police Department will have to be called in or that I won’t be able to get on my return flight next Tuesday. That said, I can imagine that being in Chicago for five days in the Fall will be a total delight and that seeing all the places I love (Sheridan Road, The Art Institute, Portillo’s, Lake Michigan, JCrew in Lake Forest, etc.) and seeing my favorite non-Paris city in my favorite season will make L.A., by comparison, feel really unattractive.
Soon the trip will be over and I will be back home in L.A.. I will be back in the place that doesn’t feel like *home* and there will be feelings and grief and loss and I will spend my days comparing and contrasting Valencia to Chicago and I will be even more dissatisfied by the bland, treeless, and lackluster environment that is my current mailing address.I am dreading the post-Chicago grief that I will undoubtedly feel. I feel some anticipatory grief just thinking about it.
Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again. What he should have called his book was “You can go home again only when you do you won’t likely want to go back to you new home and when you do you are going to need an extra session with your therapist to process all the feelings that come up.”
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While I am gone I hope you will be so kind as to pop over to my pal Laura Munson’s blog. She kindly invited me to contribute a piece on phobias. It was so lovely to collaborate with my Lake Bluff friend that I met through her book, her love of the Lake Bluff Fourth of July parade, and a Post-it note.
I am a Summer hater. The older I get the more I hate it. With extreme Celtic heritage and skin that requires 45 SPF sunblock for after-five events, the heat makes me incredibly cranky. Anything over 79 degrees and my inner mental state, no matter how cool or calm or adult-like I may be acting, is that of a terrible-two year old who falls to the floor and kicks and screams until the world aligns to his will. I also hate the clothes of Summer. I hate the weather demanding that I show my arms in all of their non-Michelle Obama squeedgyness. And, while I am whinging on, let me also tell you that I hate the sweating that melts away my well applied makeup and all the tourists that crowd Southern California’s freeways and all the kids out of school and how Summer reading and films are known for their fluffiness and lack of substance and I hate white wines that are supposed to be crisp and refreshing when they really just taste like an overpriced bottle of turpentine. I am much like Snow Miser, I hate all Summer time things, except the fresh produce. Peaches, corn, berries, and other summertime produce are the only Summer things I really like( while I feel sure that Snow Miser prefers to get his vegetable from the grocer’s freezer section). So the promise of fall has me giddy and smiling more broadly than your average Jack-o-lantern.
Autumn is my favorite season and ‘autumnal’ is one of my favorite words. It makes me think of sweaters, cider, cranberries and the scent of hopefully non-cloying scents of the season such as pumpkin pie, Carmel lattes or beef stew (no vanilla candles or lotion, if you please, as those scents turn me into a crotchety and unpleasant human being who will refuse to buy a couch from you. Yes, Stacy B., at the Pottery Barn, that is why I didn’t buy the sofa or the side-table from you. I could not stand the scent of you and your Bath and Body Works Vanilla Body Lotion. That lotion is my personal cryptonite. I hate-hate-HATE it. Okay, enough of my olfactory peculiarities, back to Fall….). Another reason I love the word ‘Autumnal’ is that it reminds me of an extremely overbearing supervisor I once had who had trichotillomania and a dog that she brought to the office who she, for reasons unclear to me, insisted on feeding large amounts of cruciferous vegetables to disastrous and odiferous effect. Well anyways, this supervisor once heard me use the word autumnal and her immediate response was, “You were an English major, weren’t you?”. If I hadn’t had so MANY challenges with this supervisor and her stinky dog, and when I say many I am saying that this woman was a cuckoobird who used to count how many envelopes I used and would get furious with me for sitting in her chair, I might not have found her major leap from a SAT word for Fall-like to be sort of odd but since she was not just a thorn in my side but an entire rose garden of thorns in areas well beyond my flanks, I found her leap to be completely ridiculous and proof that she was indeed a nincompoop.
Just being in the month of September has me happier than I have been in months( and the fact that the temperature has gone done from 106 to 79 in three days hasn’t hurt either). I have decided that today I will go through my closet and start making room for the fall clothes that have spent two unhappy seasons in storage. Also, I have decided that it is time to bring out the marroon, plum and red lispticks that are bold and opaque and the kind of shades that can hold their own against crusty breads, hearty stews and glasses of Bordeaux, these shades have been out of rotation since well before the Easter bunny brought me a big basket of Laura Mercier pale, beige and boring pink lip glosses and a Cadburry egg. Speaking of food, I am swapping my William-Sonoma salad cookbook for their more soul satisfying soup edition.
I, however, have reasons other than the Autumnal season to be happy about:
1. I got accepted into the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. In 24 short days I will, every Thursday, spend my afternoons learning about Bion, Klein, and all the other Post-Freudians. No longer will my post-Igor afternoons be spent lunching in Beverly Hills, instead there will be a menu of transference, counter-treansference, and attachment issues and for dessert schizoid and manic defenses which are much more satisfying and figure friendly than my far too frequent trips to Sprinkles for a cupcake. That said, there still me be an occasional trip to Sprinkles.
2. In two days I will be in Chicago. This is BIG for me—HUGE, even. I haven’t been back to Chicago for over two-years. This is such a loaded topic for me that this deserves a post of its own. But for sure having a trip planned to Chicago just as Fall arrives has me feeling very happy.
3. I am waiting to hear from someone and I have that ‘waiting for big news’ feeling. It is nerve wracking and yet highly enlivening.
4. My gorgeous friend, Enc at Observationmode, played stylist for me this weekend and she put together a gorgeous outfit for me from JCrew ( the cardigan and sparkling pencil skirt below). Something about shopping with Enc made me want to throw out everything in my closet and hire her to help me come up with a style that really suits me. Enc has much better taste than I do and I was amazed to see what a difference a great stylist can make. Now I just need a life so I have someplace to wear this gorgoues wardobe I feel sure she could create for me.
Note to Enc: What do you think of the skirt paired with opaque grey tights? I think I am loving them, but I would love it if you would green light them for me or not. If so I will stop at Wolford today and pick up a pair. Le sigh, just the thought of soon being able to don opaque tights has me in a near euphoric state.
5. I have created a playlist for my trip to Chicago. “Chicago” by Frank Sinatra; “Autumn in NY” by Billie Holiday; “October” by U2; “Pale September” by Fiona Apple; “The Last Day of September” by the Cure; ”September ” by Earth, Wind, & Fire; “September Song” by Frank Sinatra; “Things have changed” by Bob Dylan (this song makes me think of Wonderboys which always makes me think of Fall). So any ideas on the theme of the playlist? Come on, take a guess…don’t be shy.
6. I have the new Preppy Handbook, “True Prep” on its way to me and I cannot wait to read it. I just hope that the book doesn’t make me overly scentimental for the Sperry Topsiders, whale print turtlenecks, duck print cloth belts and madras bermuda shorts that I long ago gave to Goodwill.
7. Lots of good TV lately: The U.S. Open is still on (I am loving Monfils and Djokovic and, of course, Nadal). There was an Anthony Bourdain marathon last weekend that I have taped on my DVR so I can watch him over and over and over again. And there is MadMen and Weeds and other shows and books and films of gravitas that go well with a snort of Port and a nice chunk of cranberry chutney covered Camembert.
8. I can excercise more now that isn’t so G.D. hot. So that should up my mood too. I am happier when I exercise and happier still when there is some viable hope that I might actually lose some weight. Losing would weight would make me really happy and would perhaps necessitate me hiring Enc sooner rather than later.
9. He-weasel admitted that I was right about something that I have been trying to convince him that I have been right about for the last 18 years. I have been actively working on not being attached to being right and I have worked VERY hard to let him find his own way and to not be attached to him doing things my way. But now that he sees that I am right I find myself REALLY happy about that. I am working on being happy about this in a quiet way and not in my usual, “I TOLD YOU SO” way. To thank me for my lack of doing my traditional “I told you so” dance I was rewarded by someone cleaning the house, doing the laundry and making me poached eggs just the way I like them. There are benefits to biting one’s tongue.
10. I get to see Igor today. I haven’t seen him since before the big trip to Portland. I have a whole lot to tell him. And feeling like I have worked through a ton of stuff in the last two weeks and that I don’t NEED to see him today the way I thought I did last week.
Tomorrow we are leaving. And I feel all kinds of nervous and fidgety and ill-prepared. I haven’t gone to the bank. My nails aren’t done. I have a pile of clothes on top of a bench in my bedroom–but as of yet there is nothing that has made into the yawning abyss of my orange suitcase. I do have my emergency kit packed. I am taking a large bottle of Ambien even though I only need 10 of them; something about not taking the whole bottle makes me feel like maybe those ten little pills might get lost without a container holding them safely with all their other Ambien friends. Then there are the other mental health tools that I am carrying with me at all times: ear plugs, journal, I-phone, Ativan, Rescue Remedy, Calming aromatherapy oil, lavender hand cream, chocolate and Advil.
I am also taking books (more than I will be able to read in a week)–lots of books. Oh, you want to know which books? You Can Go Home Again: Reconnecting with Your Family, The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays by Camus, The Plague by Camus too and a whole bunch of books on psychotherapy: In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists , Inside Therapy: Illuminating Writings About Therapists, Patients, and Psychotherapy, and Developments in Infant Observation: The Tavistock Model. I do think that there should be a couple of lighter books that might make for good vacation reading but the truth is that I am not really one for light books intended for vacation reading and, anyways, my book bag is already really heavy.
I thought I was going to make travel themed play-lists for the trip. I would create an amusing and inspired array of songs about travel and home coming and maybe about fathers. Maybe Vacation by the Go-Go’s, The Passenger by Iggy Pop, Graceland by Paul Simon, On The Road Again by Willy, and Daughters by John Mayer, etc. No such play-list exists. Then there was my plan to go to ToysRus and buy travel games. I thought it might be fun to play Scrabble on a magnetic board once I got tired of counting cows and I had run out of amusing things to say and He-weasel had gotten deep into the Zen of driving. However, I have not managed to make it to the store to buy Scrabble: The Travel Edition. I hate ToysRus. It is an evil store that those who are childless not by choice should never have to enter. Maybe it isn’t too late to make a play list.
I was hoping I would have a dream before the trip. We psychodynamic therapists are big on what dreams happened prior to big life events. I have been waiting all week for such a dream. No dream. I am writing this Tuesday night…so there is still hope for a big dream or a little dream or some kind of dream that might give me the smallest clue about what my psyche thinks about this journey. I think that the reason that I am not dreaming this week is that I am really tired. I am the kind of tired that has you falling asleep during your favorite show. When He-weasel convinces me to get off the couch and go to bed, I am the kind of tired in which I seriously consider not brushing my teeth, washing my face or applying the various creams, potions and jams and jellies that make up my pre-sleep ritual. I have interpreted my extreme fatigue and my inability to wear anything for the last week but the same black Gap tank top, black yoga pants and a black long sleeved tee, that I wear when I get cold because the air conditioner is too high and yet if I turn it down I will be too hot, as a depression. Only I don’t know what I am depressed about. I have nothing to be depressed about. I have asked myself if maybe I do and if I do what it would be—no answers have come.
It’ll feel strange for 12 noon to come tomorrow and to not be at Igor’s. If I was there instead of driving on the 101 I would have told him about how K-Line, Mardel and I were Tweeting and how out of some jokey banter I came to realize, thanks to K-line, that I have this phobia that I have never told him about. Actually, I have never told anyone other than K-line and Mardel about it. He-weasel doesn’t even know and I didn’t even realize that I had never told him. When I go shopping I have a completely irrational fear that something will fall off the shelves and into my purse and I will leave the store and I will be stopped by store security and I will be in BIG trouble for stealing something that I didn’t take and I didn’t know that I had. The only way that I can preempt my fear of accidental shoplifting is to be sure that my purse is completely zipped up and snapped shut—even that doesn’t always prevent the anxiety. The theme of this fear is that I am afraid of getting in big trouble for something I didn’t do and that no one will believe that I didn’t do it. I think this all goes back to being born to parents who weren’t married. I arrived into my family BEING in BIG trouble even before I had taken my first breath. My Aunt wouldn’t talk to my Father because I was born. My grandparents disapproved of my arrival. I had, without doing anything, caused a lot of trouble. And I didn’t, for years, know why everyone was so upset. No one told me.
Last weekend I bought a pair of sandals at Macy’s. I decided that I wanted to wear the shoes out of the store. I sat down in the shoe department and I put my new shoes on in full view of the salesperson who had sold them to me, the shoes that I had paid for, and then I started to panic (mild panic). I imagined that store security didn’t see me pay for my shoes and that they were on their way down to come and get me. In preparation for their arrival I got out the receipt and had it ready for theml and I walked nervously out the door—preparing to be stopped by security. No one stopped me. They never do. It has never happened. This fear is completely baseless and knowing that doesn’t stop me from having it.
Did I mention that as of yesterday I can no longer read the Tivo menu on the television without my glasses? That has to be symbolic of something. The timing of it is too weird to just write off as normal and devoid of any kind of greater meaning. Okay, gotta go, I have packing to do. Next time you hear from me I will be out of L.A. I liked writing those words…I think I’ll do it again. I will be out of L.A.
My name is Tracey, aka La Belette Rouge. I am a psychotherapist and the author of Freudian Sip @ Psychology Today. I blog about psychology, my therapy, dreams, writing, meaning making, home, longing, loss, infertility and other things that delight or inspire me. I try to make deep and elusive psychodynamic concepts accessible and funny. For more information, click here .
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