Reading: Forbidden Knowledge

Learning: I'd really rather bury it all.

Listening: Eurythmics, Touch: "Here Comes the Rain Again"

Viewing: Denver from the 20th floor.

29 November 1999: A young lady's walking-shoe

This afternoon I was going to put Babe back into his guard position with a "Talk to the Pig" sign again. Sometimes I really envy Dr. Manette's workbench. Find out the young man who's made your beloved daughter so very happy belongs to a family you've condemned to the end of its line, and bam! out comes the workbench and people leave you alone.

Obsessed Todd Anecdote:

At the end of my first semester, I came down with mononucleosis. No surprise, given the sundry Marks, the nightly Letterman followed by Dr. Eugene Scott, and Russian, in addition to the classes I had a hope of passing (unlike Russian). The week--Saturday through the next Sunday--I spent in the infirmary was bliss. A tall bed. Sleeping for 16-20 hours a day. My own bathroom. Grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup delivered bedside.

The staff got impatient with me wanting nothing but that, but mono kills your appetite and I was sick and chicken soup is what you have when you're sick if there's no strawberry-banana Jello around. Speaking of which, that would've been a reason to go home. The first night, I couldn't get in touch with either parent or with my grandparents or even, as I got desperate, with my aunt and uncle. Answering machines had been invented but not in my parents' domiciles for another seven years. My mother happened to call my dorm, and my hallmates referred her to the infirmary, but the infirmary would tell her nothing since I was over 18, and therefore she was convinced I wasn't getting good care. She wanted me to go home. To her house, with her, with the one bathroom on another floor--but with strawberry-banana Jello and my dog.

Anyway, my point was Todd. All of my friends visited me, bringing current gossip, and flowers, and toys, and the latest fashion news, of long sleeves (it was nearly Christmas).* One groggy evening a nurse told me I had a visitor, and I, wary and unkempt, asked for a name. She didn't have one but described a tall, skinny young man with brown hair. Todd.
"I don't want to see him."
The nurse turned to go and report this but there was the visitor in the doorway. "Lisa's tired now and can't see you," my protector said.
"She wants to see me," my visitor insisted, and at the sound of his voice I sighed with relief.
"It's okay," I told the woman. "I thought he was someone else."
PLT is of average height, wiry but not scrawny, with darker hair. He knew when he heard me deny the visitor that I thought he was Todd.
My reluctance then was followed, six weeks later in a huge biology lecture, by my ecstatic greeting of SLH.

* Aunt Gardiner told of long sleeves during her Christmas visit to Longburn. It's been weeks since I made a Pride and Prejudice reference. And today's title might be my first Tale of Two Cities reference. No, it's at least the second.

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I had an introductory counseling session today. That's why, coming back to the office afterward, I wanted to have a Talk to the Pig day or at least my own cobbler's bench. Self-confidence, as usual. That's what it all stems from. I wanted to talk about self-esteem as it related to my employment, since this service is free to Dot Org employees and not part of our medical benefits and it's supposed to be used for work issues. Or I planned to talk about that single issue.

But.

A standard background question is whether you've ever been on antidepressants. I answered truthfully, and the counselor, Mike, wanted to know about that, which naturally had me in tears in moments flat. I had been in such a good mood going in--suspecting I'm not grossly obese and pleased that two published journalers read me--that I was sure I could talk objectively about that discrete issue. Nope. Describing, however briefly sketched, my unillustrious grad school career, does make me cry. The counselor was nice and nonjudgmental (to my face) and asked all the other standard questions and of course I can talk talk talk about myself for hours (one of the sole common denominators of schizophrenia (not that I think I am but I'm making a point here) being narcissism), so I did, talk that is, prompted by his open-ended questions, for most of the hour. And I cried, not steadily throughout but once the dam is breached, further leaks do erupt with minor provocations I could otherwise bear.

Toward the end Mike asked what I had wanted to accomplish today. I laughed, hollowly, through my damp face. He's seen through me, I thought. I've wasted his time. He hates me. He knows what a shallow selfish prig I am. He reads Speaking Confidentially. (No, I have no reason to think so, but wouldn't that be just a scream?) He summed me up cogently. I paraphrase: I'm not a craven individual because I have an administrative job; I have a support position because I'm not brave enough to do something more. He sensibly saw that I have to be more myself first--he actually used the phrase "find yourself," which I had never before encountered from a live human being--and work that I enjoy would follow, rather than finding a wonderful job that my ego might follow.

I shall probably have second and third and infinite thoughts about whether to keep this online. I know Jeremy's sister reads Beth and that Heather's mother reads Beth (and presumably Heather) but I didn't know for certain until I read a post from her today in Beth's forum that Beth's mother reads Beth. Speaking of parents and self-confidence, I did tell Mike my father's greatest line ever: "I don't know why you girls think you have self-esteem problems."

And speaking of self-confience, can you imagine being so sure of yourself that you would know your sick friend in hospital would want to see you, and standing up to a nurse to tell her so, and being further so self-confident that even after hearing that your friend didn't want to see someone meeting your general description, to press on regardless? Just imagine.

That's from a book--which, where? The line is something like "Imagine, just imagine being that sure of yourself." Ah yes, Cat in the Mirror. Young girl ends with a hope of self-confidence.

And children's books are the only subject of human endeavor in which I can maintain my share of a conversation. No, not the only subject. There's always me me me.

And a good thing, that, because the counselor suggested long-term approaches. Therapy. Support groups. Heavy tranks. And a swift kick in the pants.

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I am going to finish Forbidden Knowledge by December. Just see if I don't.