Dr. Eric

I have been carpooling with my friend, Mel this week to avoid being overtaken by my stalker who resurfaced Monday.

After work, Mel and I parked the car and went into a few little Silverlake boutiques before we split up so she could get a coffee and wait for me to finish my appointment.

I'd never been in the first shop we went to and I can't remember what it was, well yes, now I can but just in case the stalker is reading this I don't want to give specifics. And just in case he is - Hey there you crazy mother fucker - Let's get something straight,! I am NOT now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be your soul mate, you little fucktard.
I think you are a creepy, mentally-unstable fucker. Additionally, I am married to my best friend and am madly in love with him(which is just why I married him) so why don't you crawl back into your little fucking hole and never send me any of your crazy-pants poems or bizarre hand-crafted gifts ever again so I can go on living my life.
You did not have a spiritual awakening; you need professional help!
Oh and PS - MOVE! Why on earth did you think moving close to me would make me be with you? It wont! I will never want to be with you! So move away because I don't want to run into you ever. I was here first- get the fuck away from us!

Namaste.

Anyway, back to this cute little shop I was in,and then I will tell you more about the stalker and therapy as I intended to. The woman who owner,only buys from local independent artists. I bought myself this little necklace to replace my lucky one that I always wear - which I may have written about - a heart-breaking loss. The new one is a little gold envelope. Inside it, there is a little card that says "I love you". At first, I showed it to MJC and told him if he could pretend he'd given it to me, that would be great. But then I thought about it as a lovely little symbol of strength. I love myself. I do.

This whole thing is not horror movie scary, more like Hitchcock scary. It's been going on for 15 months now and nothing terrible (knock on wood) has happened. The reason I am scared is for the the next word I dared not to write in that last sentence - yet.

In The Birds (my parents first date movie by the way) when the birds are slowly landing, one by one on, the jungle gym at the school, it seems perfectly natural and banal. But as the shot pans out, the telephone wires around the school come into the frame and so does it's roof line, all covered in rows of black birds. And as the zooming out continues, you see a few little black birds flying in to join their friends and one-by-one they don't look menacing. But when you see them en masse in the small shots you suddenly feel terrified with a different perspective on the same scene.

This week in therapy, we discussed how I am remarkably calm (you would not know it from my outburst above) about a creepy stalker and yet become almost paralysed with fear and neuroses when I have to confront a friend who is not being friendly. When my Doc asks me about this, I say quickly "I cannot control a stalker, all I can do is protect myself, stay informed and alert and then live my life. If he ever chooses to hurt me, I wont know it until it is happening so it is not worth getting upset about."
Dr. Eric says that I am doing remarkably well.
This "compliment" begs me to ask myself why this kind of thinking is not applied to all of my worries. Dr. Eric asks, "When you are upset about a friend, or worried what they might think...can you really control that either?"
Again, my mind is blown.

My thoughts swirl wildly in my head - That is different! Is that different? So if I am worried about Liz judging me and thinking x,y or z that is the same as an insane person thinking I am his soul mate? It is the same in that I can only control myself not either one of them! Wait! What? What? Am I a control freak? I never knew that. Okay, I maybe kind of knew that? This is nuts. How come I don't freak about big things but I am consumed with small things? Dude! (And yes, my thoughts are purple)

Here is the thing. Obviously, no one knows what to say when something like this happens to a friend of theirs. No one seems to know what to do either, including professionals. That in and of itself is okay. My friend Liz had two curious and frustrating responses to this situation. "Well, everyone always thinks their life is harder than everyone else's. "
AND
"This is not a tough year. Every year has tough things."

Here is what I should have said to her if I had the presence of mind.

No. I actually don't think my life is harder than most people's. Most of the time, I try desperately to understand things from someone else's perspective instead of getting angry, which is why for two years I have thought about all the reasons your life is challenging and you may be having all of the awkward, not at all friendly actions and responses that you have and I have tried to empathize with you instead of confronting you.

Secondly, I think this HAS been a tough year for me, filled with situations out of my control. In a regular year, people have to deal with inconveniences. But the things that make me say this was a tough year were not colds or traffic jams or quarrel ls with friends. The things that upset me were: a stalker, a criminal subpoena to testify AGAIN against a murder, lay-offs at our company, my brother and brother-in-law, and sister-in-law all being laid off from their jobs, an emotionally exhausting and yet world changing presidential race, three ovarian cysts, two car accidents (one for each me and MJC - neither were our fault) and my last great auntie biting the dust. This is not a regular year.

If Liz got a tattoo and I got to pick it out for her, here is what it would be:

"First of all...if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." Atticus Finch