Two Years Later

Last Thursday was the final session with my third (or fourth) counselor. Towards the end of our last session, he promised me that he "would work on finding" me a new counselor so I could continue "treatment." Yet, I must admit that I am not sure another counselor would be any more helpful than all the previous ones.

Overall, I feel disappointed by this counselor. Another part of me feels that my lack of progress is not really his fault. For starters, he is inexperienced. He was on his student internship, a fact I had only found out when he revealed that his leaving was due to his graduation from his student program. Our last conversation seemed like it was filled with his subtle promptings to declare my progress. I felt a little pushed by it. It felt like his agenda to make himself the "good doctor" was conflicting with my reality as the depressed patient. Secondly, I have only had five or six sessions with him, and I am fairly certain he never really came to know me or my struggles in any way that was not automatically superficial. To use the cliche, we were only beginning to scratch the surface.

I am not sure I am finding these counseling sessions very helpful. It feels like I go into someone's non-descript office and pour out my litany of bi-weekly sorrow, reflecting on its roots in the failure of my romantic relationship (as partially documented in this blog), only to begin to reach a deeper level of depression than before I had started talking. I usually leave the sessions feeling worse than when I came in.

Okay. That's the background. You also need to know that, although I am no longer living with my (ex?)-girlfriend, I have been seeing her off and on since she moved out of the apartment we shared at the time. My visits to see her occur no more often than usually once a month. Sometimes, the intervals between our visits have been as long as three months. Usually on these visits I spend a day with her, and maybe, I might even stay the night. And these visits are nice because I can share with her the same emotional intimacy we had when we were together without the unreasonable expectations that she sometimes placed on me and the relationship. There is room for me to be myself. Of course, the reason she has released her unreasonable expectations is because she has given up hope of us ever being together in a committed relationship, a fact for which I am nearly positive she blames me for. She has constructed a narrative of our relationship primarily based on her misreading of my actions and motives. In her eyes, I am a inadvertent villian of self-centeredness. And this is where, for me, all of the sadness creeps back in.

And, yet. Despite the fact that she consciously and/or unconsciously blames me for our bad relationship, I cannot stop having deep feelings for her. I think about her just about every day. I want to be with her again and move back in with her. Intellectually, I know that nothing has substantially changed on the issue of her expectations, and the worst part of my depression could come roaring back the moment she expresses her frustration over things I cannot help. I can not be in that place ever again. But, I still want to be with her! How crazy is that? I objectively see this person filled with anger and blame towards me, and emotionally I want to be with her again. Is this love? It certainly feels like love to me. I love her in spite of her faults.

But then, during this last session with the counselor, I spoke about my position and how I came to be here, and it all seems to center on the disaster of our previous relationship. I lost so much personally because of it, and I am also left with serious emotional scars. Yes, I have had a tendency to depression my whole life. This is true. I saw one or two counselors even before my bad relationship began. But, I think the main reason I am still seeing counselors now is that I am trying to piece back together my life from the pain and catastrophe of that relationship.

It feels very unfair. She has a steady job and a house now. I lost my job and my graduate school career because I couldn't function under constant personal (physical, verbal, and emotional) attack. I had to move back in with my parents. I haven't found a steady job yet and am trying to get some "retraining" in a new academic field. I have spent so much time in school, my prospects for finding a well paying job capable of paying off my debts is constantly diminishing. I feel broken. It will take a few more years for me to "get back on my feet," but it will take even longer for me to get over what happened to me. Maybe the scars will never fade.

My life is dominated by mental illness (mine and others), and I hate it. I could say more about all of this here, but I think I have said enough, and frankly, it is just making me want to crawl into bed and try to go sleep as a way of forgetting (albeit very temporarily) this whole thing.