Good Lord, between my second meeting with Dr. Reinhardt and Kol Nidrei this evening, and now this, I will have had about all the introspection I can stand.

See, this is one reservation I have about going back into therapy, and I know this is something I should bring up with her, and I will, but I worry about contemplating my navel too much. I mean, I think I know what’s wrong with my life; I just don’t know how best to make it better, and I don’t know if therapy is the best way to deal with that, or if just waiting it out makes more sense. This is undoubtedly something you have heard before, very likely from me, but it worries me, especially in conjunction with the money issue…which gets into what Dr. Reinhardt correctly identified as a brutal combination in my life right now: not being productive (insofar as providing for my family is concerned, and sometimes insofar as doing anything is concerned) and not having sex. I feel emasculated, not so much…well, that’s too trite a word. I feel like a nobody, a nonentity, just a guy taking up space.

I will go into this with her next week no doubt. She’s okay. I will get value from her, I think, and I don’t have the stomach right now to go looking for the perfect person, especially since you seemed to say that it was slim pickings in Ecksville as far as you could tell. Of course, if I were interested in pursuing the analysis route, I could always ask her if she knows anybody with space in their schedule. I don’t know. She talks more than you do, and I notice that I get more direct synthesis from her, more aggressive boiling down of my rants into useful themes…or tensions, or whatever. And that is helpful right now, when I need very much to have spelled out for me exactly what is missing in my life and what I should or shouldn’t do about it. Of course, I don’t really mean spelled out for me, although obviously that is a fantasy…just having someone tell me what’s going on and how to fix it. But I think you know what I’m saying…she’s been helpful, in a more…I’m trying to think of how to put it…I wanted to say in a more immediate way than I’m used to, but therefore in a way that feels a little more superficial maybe…even though it’s not. I don’t know…having to work for the insights makes them so much more orgasmic.

I need to start going to synagogue more regularly. I was in a bleak mood this afternoon, went into Kol Nidrei, and realized another thing that is missing in my life: gratitude. And to throw another cliché in here, I have so much to be thankful for. And putting oneself in the seat in synagogue where you are forcing yourself (if you’re really thinking about what you’re saying, which God knows I do too much) to put yourself in a position of supplication relative to an entity that has created you and everything around you. It’s not the image of God that I carry around with me every day, but stepping into that space, reexperiencing prayer not as a request for something, but an expression of gratitude for everything…it shines a little light into my mucked up soul.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me anymore. I don’t feel right, my psychiatrist says medicine probably won’t…will probably only do so much with all the psychosocial issues going on, Reinhardt is obviously skeptical of medication (I got a glimmer of this, and must follow up on it), I panic at the thought of having the marriage that I have right now for the rest of my life. I feel blank and sad and gray and no one and just one of those average faceless people who are going through their lives, muted and numb, just hanging out and bearing their troubles until they finally die.

I’ve been smoking a little. I’m not drinking much of anything…maybe a beer a day…I’ve basically given up pot after the Rosh Hashanah experience…did I tell you that? That I went to temple Rosh Hashanah morning stoned. And it was fine while I was there, but afterward, instead of keeping the critical voice at bay, it came out in, like, full force. Until I woke up the next morning I was in a space of not being able to get myself shut of the idea that I really was worthless and untalented, blah blah blah. So pot is not going to be a big part of my life anymore, until I can get my head in a better place, and certainly unless the setting is right.

I think my brain chemistry has changed. I think moving and the shock to my system and the reactive depression have changed my brain chemistry such that I no longer respond to the same chemicals the same way. Depression does change brain chemistry, as I imagine you know. Anyway, maybe this last move has destroyed my ability to indulge in pot as a regular escape…that really makes me sad, because it was so helpful…and has made set and setting much more important than it every was before. Like with LSD. Is this just me, or is this what getting older is like? My mom had to stop smoking because it started making her too paranoid. I really mourn that escape. It was gradually going that direction, in some ways. I would get a little too aggressive at is was wearing off. And that made me start to doubt the value of the drug. Anyway…

I think Reinhardt will be able to talk about things in the way I need for her to. What do I mean by that? I …She was able to discuss a billing issue that came up and have it be an important focus of the session, and to process what happened in a way that felt perceptive and sensitive and…you know that quality that I love about you, that is one of the things that makes you (or I suppose anybody) a good therapist, is to be able to hold these awkward feelings up and look at them without becoming swept up in them. I know this is what the training analysis is about…I think…maybe I’m full of shit…but anyway, she was much better at that than that woman I told you about who wouldn’t…who freaked out when I asked if I could take off my shoes.

And she’s able to relate to my missing you in a sensitive way, and not get personally involved in that either.

But her room’s a little too warm, and she talks a little too much, and she doesn’t give the sense like you did that you were every so often landing a big one instead of little jabs all the time. And her office environment is different, and the billing is weird. I could tell you about all this, but it hardly seems to matter.

Persis was away this weekend, as I told you, and she came back and we were both really trying hard to cooperate with the other and avoid the trouble spots. And I was very disappointed to see that it was my irritability that would always end up breaking the peace. If it weren’t for the fact that I have a hair trigger these days, I think we would be getting along much better…which isn’t to say that there aren’t valid complaints I have…but this is something that I really don’t know how to get under control. I saw some information on testosterone deficiency that made me think maybe I should get a hormone panel taken, since I’m diving into all these medications.

The medications are kind of working. There’s a little glow on the edges of the picture, but the whole thing on the whole is still pretty dark. I listened to a radio program called Speaking of Faith, which I don’t think we get in Platte, but which is a really good weekly hourlong discussion of faith and ethics and issues. There was a program called “The Soul in Depression” that I found very helpful to listen to, because it was like, yup, that’s me, that’s what I feel like…checking off the boxes.

Let me give you a link for that show, in case the...what?…extremely weighty value of my recommendation should propel you uncontrollably to seek the program out. That’s a fantasy I have…that when I say something’s good, that people go listen to it, or see it…anyway, pardon me a moment…





http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/depression/index.shtml



Oh, I guess we do get it in Platte, on Sunday evenings. Not exactly primetime. Oh well. I don’t know if you…aw fuck this, if you have any interest in it you’ll listen to it and if not…maybe you’ll just go play basketball or something.

I can’t get over that feeling that seeing you play basketball would make me feel very aggressive toward you. It’s like there’s this colleague of Persis’s here who everyone says is bound for bigger places. He’s this scrawny guy with a really sexy wife. Both are Ivy League graduates, and she works in Capitol City. I really like her a lot. But this scrawny guy…ew…and listening to him talk about his precious fucking ideas…”Oh, Phillip, that’s so interesting, oh my God, you’re so smart, Phillip.”…Puhleeese. Anyway, one of the first times that I brought Burt down to Persis's office so he could nurse, Phillip was in shorts playing pretty serious basketball with some of the students. Made me hate him. I would love to bed his wife, just to show him that I’m not a nonentity, just because I’m fat and don’t play basketball and bring my son down there to nurse. That babysitting is sometimes the most productive…I mean, significant thing I do all day. And he’s writing about -----, blah, blah, blah. I hope…Aw, what use is this?

You playing basketball… What kind of expression do you get on your face? Are you gentle, like you are in the office, gentle and precise and removed? Do you play outside most of the time, just stepping in, expressionless, when it’s necessary and making some great play? Or do you growl? Do you try and intimidate your opponents with a snarl that I’ve never seen? With the great mop of hair on your back? Do you foul them intentionally? Did you get that nose wound in a fight, for having knocked somebody down in the middle of Kettle Hills park…do they have courts there?…I fantasize that they do. You get into a wrestling, punching match with some oil and gas lawyer up on Ridgeline. You foul him, knocking him down, and he gets up and pushes you, and you wrestle each other, and maybe at some point the oil and gas lawyer in a Spokes jersey hurls that basketball right in your face. And it stuns you, and you reel back, dazed, bleeding from the bridge of your nose…from the ball? Did the lawyer who has a home office on Ridgeline scratch you? Or punch you? You can’t remember. But the ball in the face dazes you, knocks you back into that removed place, and you just stagger back, the analyst versus the oil and gas lawyer, two big wigs, reduced to little boys on the playground because they just needed to get out of the house and let off some steam. Do you move quickly on the court? Do you score a lot? Why, oh why do you like basketball? It crushes me. You cannot like basketball. All this time, I have not known you. It makes me sad. I want to be the guy who makes you bleed, because you like basketball. I want to show you that I’m not someone who just sits there on a couch and rants. I can kick ass too, you Wiltshire Park mother fucker. I played a game of broomball on ice a couple of years ago on my friend’s birthday and I was on fire. They said I had game. Yes, I got game you distant liar, you, you, you…

Time’s up.