What My Therapist Will Ask This Week

I’ve read four out of the five books I took out of the library three days ago.

If you’re doing the math, it’s 1.33 books a day. Part of me is proud; the other part can hear my therapist at our next session: “So, what are you avoiding?”

In preparation for this inevitable question (you know you’d prep too, because the alternative is to not tell her at all, which is just silly because lying to your therapist is a waste of money and time), here is my list:

1. Scheduling a mammogram. I am mostly avoiding this because I don’t like phone calls. It’s a silly and dangerous reason (esp. with my family history; I have to get them every six months. It’s obnoxious but necessary). I will do it this week, I promise. I also have to schedule a visit to my ob/gyn, and to another office to talk about HRT. It’s more phone call avoidance, and it’s largely because one phone call always leads to more. Ugh.

2. Sending my advisor and dean an email about the upcoming semester. It starts in two weeks, and I can’t bring myself to figure out if I want to take another course. I have been sitting on this option for over four months now, and I’m still not sure.

3. Budgeting. I’ve been delightfully avoiding it the past few weeks (hey, I mean, it is summer break), but it’s now unavoidable and driving me nuts. I know it will get done first, before everything else on this list. Details tend to overwhelm me, especially when they are number-oriented or don’t make sense. This might require multiple phone calls, login passwords, and a meeting with the financial department at my college. None of which I want to do, but it’s at the point I have to get it done.

4. Sending a text to a few potential new friends to get together. This one would more likely happen if I did the items in #1 first (I need more of those hormones that help one care about relationships 😝). With school starting, my introverted, peri-menopausal self doesn’t have the capacity to organize something or the energy to give to new/any friendships. Since my hormones have changed, it's so low on my priority (and desire) list that I often get irritated just thinking about it, as it feels like more work. More things to do. I spent a good chunk of the last decade organizing and putting in the work with friendships: parties, girls’ trips, getaways, outings, events, dinners, lunches, etc. Just thinking about this makes me irritated, because why can’t those friends or even new friends reach out and/or take a turn planning things? And now I am even more irritated because I sound like a brat. The reason they don’t do it is probably the same exact reason I am not, either. I get that. Mid-life transitions are wild.

5. The ultimate thing I'm avoiding: the second draft of my book. I haven't touched it since Tortola. My therapist and I have been digging deep, but I don't think the answer is at the bottom of a cenote. It's more like the 760,000-gallon Ocean Realm tank at Adventure Aquarium where sharks, stingrays, sea turtles, and a few thousand fish all incessantly circle. Every one of those creatures is a legitimate reason I'm not working on my draft. To me, the answer is simple: take all the creatures out of the tank except one. It has worked twice now: finishing my first draft during the lockdown in 2020, and my month in Tortola, where I had nothing to do but work on the book.

   School starts in two weeks, so I doubt I’ll get back to my second draft. There is a tiny chance I end up hating my classes enough to need the escape, or that I talk the dean into letting me work on it and call it an independent study. (Both of which would be solved if I'd just do #3).

Reading the list back, what strikes me is that it’s a closed loop. #1 unlocks #4. #3 unlocks #2, which unlocks #5. Nothing on it is actually hard. Phone calls, emails, a spreadsheet, a text. Maybe two hours of real work total, and I have been carrying it around this summer like a pile of wet pool towels I need to hang.

Somewhere between a lockdown, an island, and a Tuesday in September, there has to be a version of this where I write with the sharks and stingrays still in the water.

While I figure that out, I think I’ll finish the fifth library book first.