Monday, July 27, 2009

Guilty Conscience

I go to see a therapist – not really sure why I decided this will be helpful, but it seems like it might be a good idea and insurance pays for it so what the hell. The therapist is interesting (read: weirdish), until she tells me all about the stages of grief. How cliché. Yes, I know, anger, denial, bargaining, all that shit. I get it, I’m going through them all, trying to make my way to that acceptance finish line. One question though – where does "guilt" fit into all this? It’s not a part of the grieving cheat sheet she gives me. That’s a whole different area of fucked up apparently. Not that I think I’m the only person ever to feel guilty over a loss, but it’s becoming a burden I have to work constantly to shed myself of.

I have to force myself to recognize that guilt is not applicable to my situation. Yeah, like that’s supposed to keep me from feeling guilty – fault needs to be assigned somewhere (don't ask me why, it just does), so naturally I blame myself. I blame the couple of cigarettes I had before I knew I was pregnant; I blame the paint fumes I breathed on a job; I blame the vending machine food I ate during thesis; the construction adhesive I got on my fingers by accident; the massive quantities of peanut butter I consumed; the caffiene habit I couldn't quite kick; the myriad of other things I did wrong that probably didn’t mean shit but that I wish I could take back anyway.

You wouldn’t believe the idiotic rationale I find floating around in my brain – like this gem I thought up today: I’ve broken a lot of hearts in my life, never really had my heart broken by anyone. I was always the relationship-ender, always the one to make the boy cry. So I’ve racked up a truckload of bad karma in the past 14 years, and my account finally got audited. Certainly I’ve never had a broken heart like this.

There are a lot of little things that I don’t realize will cause me pain, and I have to wonder if they’ll ever not hurt anymore. Like how when I was pregnant and Phoenix was playing on the radio the baby seemed to kick me harder, and Scott and I would joke that baby had good taste in music already. Now I hear Phoenix and realize I’m not getting kicked, and it’s a fresh scratch on a healing wound.

1 comment:

  1. I'm here from APA. I just wanted to stop by and tell you how incredibly sorry I am for your loss. It's so unfair that any of us have to deal with this.

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