This has been like pulling teeth. On top of having my family over all last week it felt like…I don’t really feel like writing…well, like writing you. I mean I would like to. I enjoy this. I really regret that it’s ending because, as I’ve already mentioned, I value this forum and don’t really think that I’ll be able to duplicate it without you to write to for all of the reasons that I outlined last time I think. But I also am eager to get on to the next stage, to see what in fact it is like. And then there’s the money. I’m thinking of moving up to twice a week with Reinhardt, although this last session the other day gave me second thoughts. Perhaps the honeymoon is over.

Anyway, one thing I did want to do now, before we met on the…what? That Friday the 15th or whatever it is…16th maybe. Is to say that I think I would like to make this the last posting that you are expected to read insofar as I am paying you for it, and that maybe this is the point at which I give you the link to the blog and tell you that your letter or the session or whatever I’m calling it will be posted weekly as I have been writing you weekly (obviously sometimes it will not be on Sunday, like this week) and that I would love it if you felt moved to read your note (I still or at least for the time being will probably think of it as written to you) but that you no longer have to and that I don’t want to be on the clock for the time you spend reading it. That way, I can still have someone to write to, but I can also start to distance myself a little bit from you in advance of our meeting in a couple of weeks. (Not that I want to in my heart of hearts, you understand.)

Reinhardt is hitting me over the head with how much I am…well, it all comes down to how much I want to be liked, and how much she (as the therapist) figures in my web of social anxiety that I realized in the aforementioned last session was not as extensive as I thought it was, and that (which I also realized) I really do put my therapist in a special position when it comes to feeling anxiety about being liked. I don’t…I tried to make the case to Reinhardt that it was the condition of my existence, but then I realized that I don’t worry so much about what I say to most people in my life…although the truth is also that I don’t say to most people the things I say to my therapist.

Anyway, so she’s doing something that you never did, and which I called her on, and which I’m feeling conflicted about because I don’t know…well, there was a moment in the session on Wednesday when I started to launch into one of my sidebars on what I was feeling (anxiety about what I was talking about because I was talking about it in front of her)…specifically, I was talking about…uck, and this is something that all of a sudden I’m aware of a larger audience…I…well, I…I don’t want to say “hit,” because that brings up all sorts of…Persis got me really mad the other night, and I happened to have just taken off my socks, and I swiped her with the limp cock [!!! This was not at all intentional. I meant to write ‘sock,’ and I did not know until reviewing that this is how it came out. Too perfect to ascribe to poor typesmanship.] as an aggressive gesture, and the first swipe (I am tempted to say “blow”…it is almost as if I desire to bring down the calumny of the world upon me…this is not a first, I often find myself phrasing things…well, not often, but it has happened…in such a way as to sound (almost subconsciously) worse, more of an evil person than I actually am)…anyway, the first swipe of the sock was ineffective, so I did it again, and this time it whipped a little across her face and…I was kind of behind her…that doesn’t sound very good either, I guess…and it caught her in the eye…and I am as sure as I am that it hurt as I am that her reaction was exaggerated…anyway, I was telling Reinhardt about this, and I was very conscious of her being a woman, and what she must feel as a woman about domestic violence, blah blah blah, and so I started to hem and haw about feeling particularly self-conscious about telling her about this when she told me with a little bit of peeve in her voice that I should just stay with the feeling…something like that. And I went on because…you know, I know exactly what she’s talking about; it must be incredibly frustrating sometimes to be on the receiving end of my disquisitions in which what I am feeling about…what…disquesting?…I don’t know…figures as prominently if not more so as the thing I am supposedly narrating. Anyway, so I got her point and I continued on. But then I had to go back and kind of scold her for having done that…and what I wanted to say…ack, I can hardly voice this to you…

[Joel [haughtily]:] You know, I know what you were talking about, but…well, let me just tell you that Garth Goldberg, who is an expert psychoanalyst, would never have done that, and as you learn to be an analyst, you might remember this moment and learn that you shouldn’t do that.

Well, that was the feeling…but on the other hand, I also feel like I cannot. Ever. Get. Out. Of. My. Head. And so to have someone just say, “Shut up, go back to what you were saying, and don’t bother me with the reflexive commentary,” was actually helpful in terms of me voicing what it was I was there to voice: the feelings that I had during and around the sock incident.

And so that started me thinking, “Well, maybe Goldberg is just too indulgent. Maybe he should have – throughout those nine plus years – been knocking me out of my head and telling me over and over that my endless commentary was ultimately about my desire to please him, which was important to observe but ultimately irrelevant to the therapy…although it can’t have been irrelevant, since pointing that out is one of the essential steps in my learning to mitigate my endless selfsecondguessing when speaking to others.

And now I’m lost in the whole episode again. As I write about it I get all tied up in whether…or which pole is the “right” one: the “Just stay with the feeling” pole, or the other one, the Goldberg one, the “Let ‘em wander around helplessly in their own heads until they get sick of being in there” pole. See, because the get-sick-of-being-in-there point never comes for me. My head is safe. And if I were ever going to be moved to get out of it, it would have happened already. And yet being in my head is one of the most productive…is my central productive neurosis…I don’t know…I’m not thinking very carefully about what I’m writing…see, there I go again. I worry that you will feel that the words I am using are turgid, above my station, illconceived, and pretentious, and that you will not like me. So I insert that little thing about not choosing my words so as to excuse the thought, to banish the thought that I am afraid you will have by observing that I too have that same thought, that I am aware that that thought might be had by someone listening to me; and so to prevent you, to keep you from ceasing to like me for my poor communication skills, from ceasing to pity the poor guy who just wants to sound knowledgeable by coming up with a meaningless phrase like “my central productive neurosis.” What the hell does that mean? I am ashamed for not having come up with something crisper. Even though that is the point of this stream of consciousness format.

Anyway, I’m tied up in knots. I’m stuck with this therapist whom I’ve liked and am now doubting, whom I’m thinking of seeing more than once a week, and who I am worrying about if she will actually help me or if I am just diddling in my head.

I like therapy. As I’ve said many times before. And that is what worries me. I would go every day if time and money permitted. Because I love hearing myself talk and feeling like I’m making connections. But what does it all really do for me? I don’t know. It keeps me sane, maybe…and I should clarify what I mean by that, because “sane” is an awfully flip way of talking about the value that I get out of therapy.

I feel like therapy is an exhaust valve, a pressure release valve, that enables me to get out the stuff that I need to in order not to explode. You know what I mean. But it’s an awfully dear way to go about that, no? I could play basketball for free. I could go to synagogue more often. Why do I enjoy this particular route toward inner peace? (“Inner peace.” Just shoot me now.) I think it’s because of the intellectual component. Here’s an opportunity for me to endow a nameless faceless person (figuratively speaking) with intellectual prowess and then to attempt to please that person with my intellectual prowess.




Hmm.





There it is.










That’s depressing.




How can I get out of this loop of having to earn the approval of someone whose intellect I pedestalize[, which approval I must earn] by my own display of pseudointellect--

I also devalue the efforts that I make to display my intellect.

These are these moments when I think I should be an academic. Because that’s what everyone is doing in academia: endowing people (or denying people) with intellectual prowess and then trying to impress them (or writing them off). I’m just talking out of my ass now. It’s late. I have fifteen minutes to go, and we’re leaving tomorrow for Persis’s brother’s wedding in Boston.

Let me take a minute to get you the link.

No, I’ll email it subsequently, because I might change the address this evening.

Anyway, I’m not liking myself much tonight. Not in a condemnatory way, really; I just think I’m a little pitiful. The intellectual equivalent of the guys I would see walking out of the video store (you know it probably: Odyssey Video. I used to work there. I had my first real job there. And this was before all these newfangled delivery services, before DVDs, etc., when the video store…before Blockbuster even…when the video store was like movie central. And these squat lonelylooking middle aged men would come in and rent, like, six pornos at a time and …if I remember correctly, bring them back the next day. I mean, what the hell did they do with these movies, watch them all night and all day? Can you imagine? Anyway, I always thought they were kind of pitiful, in a sad, not a contemptuous, way. And I feel like I am always…I feel like I am the same guy from an intellectual standpoint. Unfulfilled, unstimulated, trying to create this environment around myself of intellectual whatever and then trying to show off to it. It really is like masturbating to porn.

I’ve stopped taking my Wellbutrin because it’s been giving me these nasty (at least I think it’s the Wellbutrin; I’m determined to figure it out by using myself as a guinea pig) side effects…nasty is probably the wrong word…just really…they’ve been around for a while now, and I’m starting to realize that the effect…it’s referred to as “brain zap” in online communities, and I have no idea what the scientific term for it is. I doubt there is one, because my psychiatrist didn’t really understand what it was I was…anyway, between 3 and 7 pm is when it’s worst, and whenever I move my eyes to the right I get this sudden jolt of electricity blow[ing] out my peripheral nervous system, out my ear, to my hand, to my foot, more prominent on the left side, and not very pleasant at all. So I’m stopping the Wellbutrin and trying to determine if that’s what’s causing it. I’ve experienced it before on my maintenance dose of Effexor, and if it doesn’t go away in about 10 days, I’m going to go back on the Wellbutrin and start phasing myself off the Effexor. I don’t want to live long term with this shit. It’s not fun.

Why I am telling you all this? Because you’re my friend, right? And I tell friends whom I haven’t talked to in a while about what’s going on with my life. Blah blah blah. I wish there was a way I could continue to communicate with you.




What now?


Five minutes.


Anyway, I’ll email you the link, but I won’t be emailing you these postings anymore. And also, I’ll…well, I don’t really think you need that…I was going to say, I’ll email you the file that I…in which I keep track of the substitutions that I make so I stay consistent. But you don’t need that. You’ll figure it out. Of course, you’ll probably never look at it, so what difference does it make…the blog I mean…you won’t look at the blog.

Things with Persis are okay, except she’s taking advantage of the fact that I’m off one of my antidepressants to blame all of my outbursts on the fact that I’m off it. And that just gets me going louder. Like teasing a fenced up dog.

Burt is amazing. But I wish he’d grow up already so I can have my life back.

My office is a mess.

I’m killing time here.

What am I avoiding?

(I look back to see where I started talking about irrelevancies…)

The intellect stuff. I just don’t know where to go with it. I don’t think, without a substantial change in my life, that it’s going to resolve itself, that that part of myself is going to be satisfied.

And the being in my head thing. Only pot was good at fixing that, and I can’t smoke pot anymore because it doesn’t work for me in the same way as it used to.

I hate the fact that I look back so often on earlier years and wish that I could go back and experience the carefreeness of them. So clichéd. And I’m only 35.

Happy birthday on Sunday. That’s the bell…