Mabye the Catholics are onto something...

I got home a little while ago from my therapist appointment. She's a new therapist. I saw a therapist for a year or so after my mother was diagnosed with cancer and my boyfriend of 11 years left me. I decided soon after my mother died (July 2007) that it was time to start again, but I found excuses not to go back for a long time. Finally this summer (August--right when I spent a week at a close friend's father's home to help them deal with the sudden announcement by her mother's doctor that she was expected to die within 48 hours--I was there to help them deal with the last few days of her life, arrangements that were made after her death, etc.), I decided to get on the case and find someone. I mean, reliving her own mother's death one year later through the incredibly similar death of your friend's mother can bring up a lot of issues for a girl. So finally in the first week of December I got around to an actual first appointment.

I think this was my fourth or fifth session with her and things are starting to click between us. I was worried they wouldn't get there but they did. Today we talked about my Baby Sister. Baby Sis is in her mid-twenties, whereas I am eight years older than her. I've always felt a special closeness with her because she is the family member most like me, but our age difference always meant we didn't have a peer-level relationship. Now we are both adults and we've been dancing around how to relate to each other in this new stage of our lives. She was the only family member who knew about and read my old blog, so in that way I kept her as close to me as I could, given the emotional walls I have with everyone I know.

But she was never able to have that same confessional relationship with me. Today (well, yesterday but I just read it today) she sent me an email, the contents of which could easily have been a post on a blog like mine. It was her confessional to me. It was a broad-brush stroke of all the things you have to live with every day--all the things you have to manage to forget about for long enough to make it from the start to the end of every day.

Many people--at least the most interesting people--have these things. I try to forget that my mom is never coming back. A friend forgets that she was molested by a relative growing up. I forget the worst thing I've ever willingly and purposefully done so I can manage to feel worthy of other peoples' love and friendship. (Sorry, you don't get that worst thing this early on in the life of this blog.) A relative must try to forget that he moved halfway across the country so he could live with his husband in peace. You get the idea. I have a lot of these things, and now I've found out that my sister does too.

I am thankful to her for sharing her things with me. I am thankful to you for giving me someone to share my things with. I understand the appeal of the Catholic confessional. It's nice to tell all your things to someone whose eyes you don't have to look into. It's nice to have someone listen, to have someone else know. Just that is a help.