Break on Through

I

I'm in therapy, and I recommend it for everyone. 

I always get book recommendations. (Because I'm me, I also give them out to my therapist, but I suppose that's neither here nor there, or just some horn tooting.)

Yesterday was a particularly bad Day-Job day. To the tune of, I have been at the deathbeds of two "older folks" within a span of two weeks. I didn't sign up for that. Well, I didn't realize I did. 

You'll think I'm in the health care industry - I'm not. There are other jobs that deal with life and end of life, as I have come to learn.

So, hi. I'm grieving. I came to love these dang old ladies. Like my own grandma. Who died two years ago, almost to the day. (She passed 9/9/19.) (I was at her deathbed, too.)

Anyway, let me just tell you that I was a handful for my therapist yesterday, as I'd just come from the hospital, after driving in shit traffic and shit rain. And I was twenty minutes late, but I knew I needed to be there.

We talk about grief. We talk fast - we have a limited amount of time. We talk about anger, heightened emotions. When you're in the anger stage of grief, you can't brush off the things that generally bug you the way you ordinarily might. 

We talked about my level of empathy and care for these women. Am I just doing a good job at my job, or am I feeling their pain/ their family's pain just to ignore my own? And if I am, is that wrong? 

Hell if I know.

She mentioned    I politely interjected that I think I am really, really good at what I do because I care about these people. I think about how I would have wanted my own grandparents to be treated if they had someone like me involved at the end. 

And I had an epiphany. I am the way I am as a workaholic, as a competitive person, as an ambitious climber. But the rat race is all for me to "win" because I am stubborn. Because I know I "can." It's because I'm just like my grandfather, who died in the 1990's.

And I do what I do because he put me through college. And I do what I do because I know it would have made (sob) him (sob) proud.

(More sobs.)

Also she recommended the book UNTAMED by Glennon Doyle and told me there's a documentary out there about a person who literary can't feel fear. 

So, yeah. Therapy yesterday was cool. She even gave me an extra six minutes.