1.
“Who knows what memories lie deep in the ice? Who knows what curses? Earth’s whispers released back into the atmosphere can only wreak havoc.“
Split Tooth
2. Cfr. Valeria Luiselli’s collection of echoes.
3. Thank you people who have lived and live close to the earth. Thank you.
4. Chthonic
24. (What if) I had conversion therapy as a kid and I almost died from it.
25. (What if) I am so fucking angry cuz of it.
26. (What if) I had more conversion therapy in the psych hospital and I almost died from it.
27. The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Desiree Akhavan.
28. But in the hospital you have no rights even thought there’s a Patient’s Rights sign on the wall that you read and read with incredulity cuz not one of these rights is being given to you and the sign is a mockery and a travesty right under your nose and there is nothing you can do about it.
29. So this is when I start feeling really bad about myself, that I’m a bad person, when I think of all those who hurt me cuz I was nothing and they could do whatever they wanted with me and the only explanation for that is that I was (and still am) a very, very bad person.
18. The first day of the year. So many things this year. My heart was smashed and through the pulp and gore new space grew. Space for my analyst, my husband, my beautiful girlfriend, my new dog(s), art, maybe a wheelchair. So much goodness, so much wisdom and tenderness and peace.
19. Today I talked to someone about a friend we lost in 2019. How easy it is for everyone to judge quickly and harshly. There is always a story. It doesn’t always condone what is done, but it’s there, a fully fledged story no one will ever know fully.
20. My analyst is a remarkably humble human. I hope one day to have half her humility. She’s epistemologically humble and interpersonally humble.
21. Humility is not thinking poorly of oneself. That is not humility.
22. I watched Disobedience today. I think I have seen it before but it was new enough. Maybe I never did see it. What a lovely movie. A woman director would have given it a different ending. Maybe.
23. I too was told once, “Try to love men.” I wish I had been told, “You will always love women, let’s find a way to make you happy.”
17. Happy new year!
10. One year when I was still in my birth country, on my way to work I drove through a small valley full of apple trees in bloom. It was near Soave. I was a sub teacher and my tenure at this particular school lasted for a short enough time that the apple trees were always in bloom.
This is what a blooming apple tree looks like. Imagine a small valley packed with them, and the road curving through it, ascending and descending. The valley opened up after a turn in the road, and every morning I took the turn with great anticipation, and every morning my breath stopped.
I loved being a sub teacher. I saw many rural places I didn’t know and loved the kids and the classroom passionately. The smell, you know? The smell and the books and all that mutual teaching and learning.
11. One must thread the land of memory with great care. Sometimes it’s wise to stay away from it altogether, take a rest
12. The Luiselli book is in part about Luiselli’s own work as a documentarian, and her passion for documenting everything about her life. I am the opposite. I shed traces of the past like a ruthless conqueror who burns his enemy’s fields and tills them with salt.
13. In spite of the salt my past grows like kudzu. I try not to see the kudzu. I shut my eyes.
14. I take my past into my analysis and we grieve it together.
15. I have my memory. I don’t need documents. I don’t want documents. My memory is enough.
16. For now.
9. Day three is a day without fighting. We laugh hard. I often dissolve into silliness and euphoria when I am tired. This is good tired though. Maybe it isn’t even the tiredness but the sheer relief of not being angry.
10. My dog loves me.
11. The year’s change is not easy for me, but then few things are. One holds strong.
4. I am reading Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli.
5. I am watching Watchmen and Mrs. Fletcher.
6. I fight. I calm down. I fight again.
7. I stay the course.
8. I find hope even though Jews are murdered, Black folks are murdered, refugees are disappeared. I find hope in love because “truth without love is unbearable.”
1. On day one I fight. I don’t remember what it was about though it was mere hours ago. After I fight I become despondent about my irredeemably evil nature and decide to punish myself with poison.
2. I watch Netflix’s The Two Popes instead. I am delighted by its representation of weak men who hold each other up through charity, compassion, and humility.
3. I think of Janet Malcolm’s Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, which I have of course not read, but about which S. told me the following: the patient kills the psychoanalyst; the patient needs to kill the psychoanalysis in order to get better. It’s an old book, but I am once again disappointed by the mystique this discipline bestows upon the psychoanalyst and the almost deterministic passivity it bestows on the patient.
I know for a fact that I am capable of infinite agency and, while I may very well “kill my psychoanalyst,” I am also capable of breathing life and love into her, and through her into me, and us, in a limitless bounce of back-and-forth givingness. We, my psychoanalyst and I, kill each other and bring each other to life again and again. We are both patients and healers. We are both fully rounded people capable of great passion and emotions.
4. I forgive myself. I forgive everyone.
inside(r) psychoanalysis 