I called in sick today. In all honesty I am a bit shivery and my skin is all stretched and my scalp is tingly. I'm anxious - partly because I have taken a sick day. It always worries me because I feel like I am doing something wrong. My father wondered why I got up at 7am and said "you are a little late today, are you OK" and I said "I'm not going to work". He said "You're Not Going to WORK???" and I said "No. I don't feel well and I am taking a sick day as afforded to me by my contract". I felt like I was lying. I don't enjoy being indulgent.

I spent half an hour with they ponies. I took a bag of carrots in. Peanut got most of them - Trumpet is only just learning about treats. Prudence won't come up to me, so got a few that I threw in her general direction. Riley doesn't understand that you can EAT them. He sniffed at them and sniffed me. He lets me touch his nose now. His eyes open really wide and we both sense the wonder of what he is letting me do. I reached out to touch his shoulder and for a split second I touched a coiled spring before he jumped away. He is his mothers son. He should be weaned by now, although in truth I don't think Prudence lets him drink very much. He is almost as big as her.

I am going to see Amanda today. I am looking forward to it and am worried at the same time. I am looking forward to the weekend because it is a normal weekend.. I don't have any unusual chores/expectations like last weekend.

My fingers are all achey, typing this. I wish I was curled up in my bed but I can't relax, knowing I am seeing Amanda this afternoon. I need to keep myself busy.

I have washed my car, done three loads of washing. I am avoiding housework furiously. I suck.

I am bored with suspiciously circling the thoughts in my head and hope that I can start thinking them and be done with it.

I feel like I am waiting. I'm always waiting. At the moment I am waiting for the price of petrol to mean I never leave the house.

I am waiting for this sniffle to turn into a cold.

I am waiting to get fatter.

I have become unnaturally addicted to the Pieces of Flair application on facebook. Add. Now.

Last night went to see SATC... loved it!! Made me feel fat and ugly, but loved it anyway. Didn't help that the joint I smoked beforehand helped me to polish off caramel corn, M&Ms and fruit jubes. Something MUST be done. It is ridiculous.

We didn't run. My friend is having problems with Pan Boy again. She snooped in his cellphone and found that he had sent a text to an unknown female on Saturday night calling her 'gorgeous'. The obvious solution to this conundrum is easier said than done - she is going through the 'maybe there is an innocent explanation' phase.We had wine instead of running. Bad. Especially bad when you look at weed induced movie snacking. Urgh.

Amanda and Fiona have spoken. How strange.

The weekend was as tiring as I suspected. Not because the activities were exhausting or that I didn't get enough sleep - more that to avoid just going home and curling up on the couch I have to actively fight against anxiety. This is tiring. I had NO time curled up on my couch this weekend. This morning I automatically feel a little ungrounded, unrefreshed, unable to cope with coming to work. Luckily no one has been revolting to me - yet!

Last night I watched the final of Greys with my friend... we had a smoke and for the first time in I don't know how long, I got the giggles. It didn't matter that it was because I was stoned, it just felt SO GOOD to laugh uncontrollably for a few minutes. It reminded me of when I seemed to do that all the time over the silliest things. Life is too complicated when you get older. Look - I am playing the worlds smallest violin.

I did, however, take a moment yesterday to appreciate the cold sunny morning. Perfect.

If only I could make xanga upload the photo in the colours that it really is... something in the uploading has made the shade seem duller... the reds less vibrant...

I leave the house each morning and am blown away by the colours around me. Every sunrise and every sunset seems to me, to be Art. Sometimes I feel like I should pull my car over and say a prayer or something.

I have a busy weekend planned. Lots of driving around. (I don't mean to sound boring but all I can think of is the price of petrol! Insane. $2.06 a litre last night! Harumph.) I'm getting better at making plans to do things with my friends on weekends again.  

• Kevin 'gifted' me his half share in Pilot today! Said that he could tell that I really didn't want to sell him and he thinks that I am devoted to him and since I have put so much work in to him, I deserve to own him outright!


• I am meant to go to a meeting at EDEN tonight. I decided last night that I would pike. Haven't decided on the official reason yet.


• I run and run, but I am still fat. Meh.

Just to get the therapy stuff out of the way.... Amanda tried to call Fiona and left a message then Fiona texted her... then Amanda texted me to say that Fiona had texted her and that they were going to speak the following day (yesterday) and then contact me but I haven't heard anything. Typical.

Yesterday I took Eddy for a walk on the beach. It was her first beach experience since she was attacked. When she realised where we were driving she got all agitated and panty... she seemed happy enough to be on the beach once we got there but also highly anxious... she was terrified of any other dogs. Poor baby.

My horse was a star to ride yesterday.. he has had a week off because I have been VERY wussy about going home to ride in the cold and dark. And was a star anyway. This is Mr Buck-o we are talking about here.

Last night I went out with my friend Ronnie and her girlfriend.. we hang out at the gf S's house first... had a joint. I had agonised over my outfit and had originally put on this dress that a friend gave me over jeans. A lurex sweater dress - black with silver and teal threaded through it.. v necked, slinky, big baggy sleeves. It looked really good over black skinny jeans. So, of course, I had to take it off and put something a little more boring on. They took me to this place called "Flirt".. which isn't actually a place but an 'event' that borrows venues. All women. I get the impression that they are just waiting for me to jump out of the closet. Funny. Anyway I didn't see anyone that I could be convinced to date/pash/flirt with whatsoever. Apparently, there isn't a huge pile of local lesbians who look like Kim Stolz from ANTM Cycle 5. If there was, I think we all know it might be a different story.

On Friday night, I amused? myself by digging out even MORE old diaries. (I used to keep diaries religiously. Pages and pages a night. There is a scary, comphrehensive snapshot of me from age 16 through to about 20.. then sporadic bursts through to now. Friday night we visited.... 1997! A pretty low action year - does anyone remember 1997? The first half of the year I did.. wait for it... NOTHING. I had just completed my first year at uni. Nearing the end of my first year I had decided that I would apply for a communications degree because apparently I didnt think my degree was right for me. ( I seriously don't remember this at ALL) but the application form was far too much effort so I just didn't fill it in. I have vague memories of telling my mother that I was going to get a job but not (apart from my work at the horse stud which was only an hour or so a day at that point). I think I mainly watched TV. Lots of Oprah and Dr Phil and napping in the afternoon. And writing in my diary. And going to therapy.

Fiona used to write notes each session. Usually at least one A4 sheet of paper, sometimes two. She would use carbon paper, give me the original and keep the copy herself. I stuck them all in my diaries and they really do round out the record of my life then. So fucked up yet so, well... BLAND. It seems that around that time, she was really trying to get me to talk about the same thing that Amanda is trying to get me to talk about. I had forgotten the extent to which the issue was dealt with... well, me not talking and her trying to get me to talk. I DO remember finding it very hard to talk for about 6 months... well actually I don't remember but I know it happened. If you look at the actual specifics of it... this phase merged into The Eating Disorder. I could talk... I was completely stuck and really very very distressed... it came out sideways and the rest is history. It makes sense to me now, that after all these years of seeing Fiona as a 'normal person' and really NOT feeling the way I do about he right now, that at a time when I am working on the same issues with Amanda, that I go back to 'where I left off' with Fiona. And my 'then' relationship with Fiona feels very, very current - and my ability to deal with it feels all stuck and caught up in things I should have said to Fiona at the time. I feel like I need to go back in time and say those things to enable me to go forward now. And this is where I sound like a freak - I feel that if I DID speak to Fiona, now, that I WOULD be going back in time. It feels totally seperate to how I actually feel about her as a person.

Interesting...

nb. interesting to me.

Although Amanda doesn't have any psychodynamic training, and we don't really do any process work together, I shared with her my last entry about transference. She was more interested in talking about it than I thought. She came out with something I really wasn't expecting - "Do you think it is time that you got in contact with Fiona and made a time to see her?" Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

She said that she thinks that if she was Fiona, and that she knew that I was having this amount of residual transference after this amount of time, that she would want to have the opportunity to address it. She pointed out that I had already done all the WORK... and that we both have the skills to deal with it...

A bunch of things here. Obviously I LOVE the idea of seeing her again, even if it was only once! I also abstractly like the idea that this may help me in ways that I haven't factored in. APPARENTLY I have issues with relationships in my current life. Pft. It would, of course, mean that I would have to be prepared to either let her fall off her pedestal, or keep her on her pedestal and very firmly draw some boundaries around her again - which means that I have to accept that I don't have contact with her anymore. All big questions to ask myself...

I was a little worried that Fiona might not agree to this - after all, even in the context of what we are discussing, it is a little fucking out of the blue and unusual. And to be honest, I think her rejecting me could be more damaging than continuing lugging around a little kernel of transference. So we have decided that Amanda is going to call her today and suss out the situation and then go from there. SCARY.

One of the things that I was seemingly destined to be in this life (you know, opposed to my potential other lives waiting in the wings, for when I fuck up this one) was a Client. 

I decided I was going to find a therapist when I was 18. I rejected the first one I saw after one session, I recall, because she was 'crusty'. Also, she disclosed that she didn't own a television set and I couldn't see how we could have anything in common. She was not the young, funky, New Mother of My Dreams that I envisaged employing to be Warm and Empathetic. I went back to the university health system for another referral. I think I may have actually said "I want someone younger". I got Fiona.

I had a complex set of transference issues just sitting there WAITING for a host, and from memory, I lumped them on top of her within about 5 minutes of meeting her. As it turned out, she was most deserving. Well, good at her job. In my idealization of her as Perfect, I turned a blind eye to her, well, what I see now as flaws, and assumed that it was something to do with ME that she wasn’t always the best at following things up or remembering things. (I am friends with one of her current pupils, who reports that she is still like this and that it infuriates people). I didn’t even realize that at the time. I was too busy idolizing her. For someone who hasn’t been in the exciting swirls of a deeply psychodynamic relationship, it might sound more than a little, well, psycho, that she was the most important person in my life for about 3 years. (And here I sit, almost a decade later, blogging eagerly about the woman). I thought about her, and our sessions, constantly. And by constantly, I mean, constantly. Most of what I thought about wasn’t real. It was a fantasy, centered around how I was certain she would reveal herself to be “if only I”… it doesn’t take a genius to work out that there was no way I was ever going to let her topple from her pedestal. To be honest, it was this fantasy that got me through most of my days. Embarrassingly, it is catalogued in excruciating detail in several diaries that I kept during this time. Occasionally I did them out and have a flick through them – I can see the dynamics quite clearly with the luxury of a)hindsight and b) 10 years of maturation. At the time, I really did think I was a nutbar. A total, total nutbar. I knew about transference, I knew about idealization.. I knew all that. It just didn’t seem to describe the complete and utter obsessive infatuation that I had for this woman!

Until I read this book over the weekend – and found examples of almost exactly, precisely, what I experienced. I don’t know whether that makes me LESS of a nutbar… perhaps it just puts me in the company of other identical nutbars. Meh.

It made me wonder (in that over-analytical, slightly obsessive pattern) how much of that she was aware of. I know that we spoke a little bit about my expectations and boundaries and there was a lovely turning point where I was able to articulate that I wished I could have MORE from her and she responded well and ultimately the bond was strengthened through boundaries, etc..) It made me wonder if I had worked through all this transference at the time, I wouldn’t still lug around this strange baggage, years later. I wonder if it is still possible to work through it NOW. Or is this IT… is this fantasy relationship the gift that keeps on giving?

When I was reading the book [In Session], I started remembering things that she said. A combination of things that were her offering support, concern and warmth and things that could possibly have been her own issues of counter transference. She said once that she felt like she had stepped into the role of ‘aunty’ (auntyfiona was my email password for about 6 years!), that she felt like she almost had the opportunity to ‘reparent’ me (corrective emotional experience?)…she cried in our last session. I wish that I had been more ‘present’ in the real relationship, not the fantasy one, to have derived more comfort and support from what she was actually offering. (I suspect Amanda said something along these lines a couple of months ago). Those are real feelings of a real person… shows how strong transference can be when I didn’t really realize at the time – even though it could have easily fed into the fantasy if I had really been paying attention.

And because I love this kind of thing, I looked hopefully for signs of some juicy transference in my current therapy relationship. (Easy, fascinating insights.. my favourite topic – ME… a nice distraction from painful, hard topics that might, you know, actually make a difference to my life) I don’t understand why it isn’t there. Yes, I think she is pretty fantastic – but that is hardly a red flag! I look up to her in some ways – but that has to be normal – she has helped me enormously, plus is doing things with her life that I always wanted to do, professionally. Yes, I wish I had met her in another context and been friends but I really do think that this particular cigar is just a cigar. I even realized that my boundary issues in therapy aren’t even restricted to that sort of relationship – it appears that I am globally inappropriate. Is it because I went into this relationship with an awareness that I am Transference Queen and was able to recognize things as they came up early on and nip them in the bud? Is she some sort of Uber Transference Zapper that sees these issues as they arise and skillfully deals with them WITHOUT TRANSFERENCE QUEEN EVEN KNOWING? Or are all my transference issues still happily tied up back in 1999, playing themselves out in fantasies that don’t even exist anymore (let’s face it, eventually cynicism can puncture even the most robust transference scenario) ? Is it because Fiona was more psychodynamically oriented? Or is all of this just a non issue that I have constructed out of overwhelmingly self absorbed narcissi? [yes, spell check claims that narcissi is the correct word here. Who am I to argue with spellcheck?]

Long weekends are fantastic while they last. Tuesdays after long weekends are kind of sucky though. Hmm. Deep.

Long weekend... Saturday was the usual. Went for a run, taught riding lessons, rode pony. Spent the evening with my friend playing playstation Wii. Anyone else played this? Hilarious! I get a little overly vigourous and usually injure myself - good times. Was home by 10:30pm and my father was in bed so I thought I would have a quick smoke... next thing I know my father is out of bed, downstairs sniffing around - what is that funny burning smell? er... I lit an aromatherapy candle. It doesn't smell very good though does it. No, it woke me up! haha! Oh well, that is ok then. And off he goes to bed. I know, it seems infantile to lie but it also seems unnecessary to appall my incredibly conservative and protective father with "oh I'm smoking drugs".

Sunday night went to the movies. Should tell the whole story here. Met up with my friend Ronnie about 10 minutes before the film. We took a quick walk and smoked a joint. (Sorry I'm such a skank) and went into the movie quite cheery. The film was "Happy Go Lucky" and the opening scene was a slim brunette riding a vintage type bicycle through city streets wearing a skirt and high heel boots. I'm like OH MY GOD, g!!!!!! It was so funny. Since we were sitting in the second row from the front AND I had had a smoke, before my eyes adjusted it really was easy to pretend it WAS g! I really enjoyed the movie, although my Issues got an airing - it was a NICE movie but I was waiting with increasing anxiety for something terrible to happen. After the movie Ronnie, who was more stoned than I, came out of the theatre and went smack into her therapist. The expression on her face was priceless.

By Sunday afternoon I had also started getting anxious about meeting up with Marek on monday. I was so worried about it... my worries are irrational and based around the fact that our relationship has a sexual componant and I am inclined to completely disregard/avoid/deny my own sexuality. It is hard to be with him. Monday morning, I went out for coffee alone before hand. I had to just stop thinking about it! I read a book. it was a book about the bond between women and their therapists - so didn't entirely distract me from the Nutbar Status but was fascinating nonetheless. As it turns out, I was able to keep the situation nicely contained. We were chaperoned, and when it got to the time that I had decided I was going to leave anyway and he tried to get me to go out just the two of us, he didn't push it. So, just going to see him was a huge step but once I did it it was hard to feel 'proud' for doing it because it blatantly didn't seem like a big deal and I just felt foolish for scarpering and not doing the actual scary thing of being alone with him.

Last night I had a dream.