So. The fish died. All three of them. I’m a very efficient fish killer. The key appears to be forgetting to pre-treat the water. You’re welcome. (Also, whoops.)
Catie handled it so-so. There were a lot of tears, but then she got excited when I told her we could go to the pet store to pick out new fish. So, you know. We cope, we move on. Such is life.
Rest in peace, Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi.
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I don’t usually go this long between blog posts, and I think that staying in my own head this much is probably not good for me. The issue is that I’m not sure what to share, how much is too much. I’m having trouble deciding exactly where my boundaries are.
At the same time, writing things out usually makes me feel much better. So I should probably be doing more of that.
Where to start…
My mom is insisting that I need to see a therapist. She’s concerned about the dating thing. She thinks that I was so starved for affection in my marriage, that I’m greedy for it now.
[Side note: I know some people in Dave’s family still read this blog, and that previous sentence might upset them. All I can say to that is that the only two people who knows what goes on in a marriage are the two people in it. We each have our perceptions of what things were like, and that perception colors our reality. I’m not going to say anything negative about Dave himself, because I don’t need to. But I’m allowed to talk about my own personal experience. Also – if you don’t like the fact that I’m not going to be all happy & joyous about my failed marriage, perhaps you shouldn’t be reading my blog anymore. And yes, I see when you visit here on my stat counter.]
So, yeah. Apparently I’m greedy for affection, attention, positive reinforcement, etc., from men. Maybe that’s true. I don’t necessarily see the harm. If I want to flirt and have guys tell me that I’m cute, how is that such a bad thing?
I guess I could see it possibly being negative if the kids were being exposed to any of it. But the only difference is that occasionally they have a baby-sitter in the evenings, which is usually a big fun event for them. They aren’t being introduced to some revolving door of men or anything even remotely like that.
There’s really no reason for this picture to be here, except that I’m talking about myself, and good lord, I do love my hairstylist.
The therapy issue is kind of a weird topic for me. I was in therapy for a while last year during most of the really horrible stuff (both before and after the separation). And I’ve been in therapy a couple of other times in my life. In theory, I know it’s a positive thing, I know it helps people. But for me, personally? I’ve never gotten anything out of therapy. I think I have a fair amount of self-awareness already, and I typically leave therapy sessions feeling exactly the same as I did when I walked in the door. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, right?
(And don’t tell me to go to a support group for single/divorced parents, because I’ve heard that suggestion too, and OMG I would rather bash my own forehead into a hard, bumpy surface than endure that.)
I suppose you could make the argument that if it doesn’t work for me, I need a different therapist. And that might be an entirely valid point.
There’s a lot more I’d like to say about the issue of dating, but that’s at least 5 more blog posts right there, and this is probably long enough.
The upshot here is that I probably will give therapy one more shot, mainly to make my mom happy, so she can know that at least I tried. Maybe I’ll even learn something this time around. Who knows.
