<h1>Perspective</h1>

Okay so I have exactly 21 minutes before I need to get my spawn up for government provided free lunches @ my kiddo's school. Today cheeseburgers are on the menu and the Jr. has been bitching for cheeseburgers for the past 3 days so I s'pose I better take advantage of this ample opportune.

Much has taken place in my life in these few short days of existence here @ the humble Turner abode. For reasons I am not aware of, images of my therapist come to mind. This week in therapy was my first chance to use a couch instead of a chair while yapping my brains out to my therapist. Motherine (the nickname I've secretly given my therapist) thought it would help me to feel more relaxed if I was on a couch, and even invited me to lay down if I felt so inclined. It's kinda funny though, cause when I first arrived to my appointment I had forgotten all about the whole 'couch' deal, so when she reminded me that she checked out a room with a couch all I could do is crack up for like 5 minutes straight when we first got in the room. I felt hella dumb, what with all the 'couch' humor I've seen in the Sunday morning comic strips I used to read when I was a wee baby. Luckily Motherine understood my plight and took no offense to it.

That's another thing. My therapist is a nun. A badass, scary looking nun. Like the kind you see in Exorcist 3 whomping around corners with giant hedgeclippers ready to chop "Holy" in half like butter? Well that's what images come to mind whenever I hear the word 'nun', I don't know about you folks. But yep, m'lady is a nun, dressed all in black (she's greek orthodox) and she's like 6 fucking feet tall and the epitome of human kindness. The best thing about her is that I can tell this woman anything. I mean, I know you SHOULD be able to tell your therapist anything, right? But this is ME were talking about here. And the fact that she's a nun doesn't make it any easier to relay detailed imagery of the dreams I have about her. She encourages me to tell her about these dreams (in a strictly platonic, "no, I don't want you to bend over and pray with your rosary beads" kind of way) which is not easy for me. Most of these dreams involved me pulling off her habit with my teeth and fondling her cinnamon flesh orbs with my lips. Another dream involved her finding me in the adult section of a video store, and me being commanded to get on my knees in the middle of the store doing more than just praying. So fucking surreal. But yet she listens to me, with a straight face and an open mind. She's just amazing like that.

Let's see. What else?

Oh. I've been doing a lot of crying and self doubt kind of thing. Erica Orloff wrote a post just recently about how when you write you give a piece of yourself away with the writing and was pondering the possibility of whether or not this same kind of giving takes place in instances other than art.

I believe it does. When you give it your all, no matter what it is, from wiping asses to doing dishes, to writing the perfect storyline to creating the Sistine Chapel. It's there. If you gave it your all, fuck yes. It's there.

I felt that way when I starting 'whoring' my book out. It was painstaking misery for me to open myself up in that way, and then to basically tell everyone, "Hey all, come and buy me too!" It fucking suck, suck, SUCKED.

Luckily I've had Snookms supporting me all the way. He's been a "go against the grain" kind of a guy from the get-go, so he had no problems lifting me back up when I had fallen down from so many things. Little things, like posts from writers I highly respect saying that "Any schmoe with an online connection can self-pub and call themselves a writer." This writer explained their stance on how they take their writing very seriously, and that if it sounded like they were elitist in this area, well then, yeah, they were elitist. It made my heart fold in two and did a ridiculous stupid dumb thing on my emotions, because in a nutshell, that's basically what I am. A fucking Schmoe. With an online connection. Who self pubbed. The only thing missing from this equation is that I wasn't technically calling myself a writer. But c'mon now....if you write a book and ask people to buy it, then that pretty much goes without saying.

So I had to come full circle with that, that......observation? Statement? Opinion? Fact? Whatever the fuck it was, I dealt with it. I let it hit me like a tidal wave and take me down to where the baptized drown. It felt fucking shameful. But there was clarity at the end of the tunnel. A spiritually filled kind of clarity that felt so fucking real and true that I lasted on that high all day.

And then came crashing down the next. I had been out of my herbal supplements for a few days now, and because of my fluctuating depression had not gone out and did my duty of restocking my Omega 3's and St. Johns Wort. But I felt as though maybe they weren't working because of all the mood swings I was dealing with. According to my therapist, I'm SUPPOSED to be on some sort of prescription meds, like Zoloft or Prozac along with other stuffs that will re-uptake my inhibitors and all that jazz, whatever that means. But I refuse to do that dance, hence the herbal supplements. Therapist said I should try SOMETHING what with all the trouble I was getting myself into. But yeah, so I went without meds for sometime and as much as I argued against it, the void of such mind/mood altering chemicals did a massive number on me. And Snookms footed the bill this time. Cleaned up the mess. He wasn't resentful, and he still loves me. I hate myself for that shit, and if I had go back in time powers, trust me, that would be one of those things I would've gone backed to and changed. But I don't so here yet is another thing to add on my list of shit to come full circle with and deal head on.

Through my breakdown of broken glass and temporary fallen empires Snookms talked to me. Helped me to see the truth instead of hide from it. To embrace it proudly and not let others standards of what they did to feel their own measure of success taint my own feeling of a job well done. And the beautiful thing about this all is that Snookms doesn't talk shit about what one considers 'opposing forces'. He gets you to look at it from their perspective, and make you think about why they might possibly be feeling the way they do, and instead have compassion and understanding for a new way of looking at things. He doesn't verbally attack them or assault them. He just looks at it from their perpective.

Although we don't agree on everything, it's issues like this that keep us together through the disagreements of why I think the kids SHOULD go with me to the premieres of new Harry Potter flicks and all the arguable hogwash that he presents telling me why they SHOULDN'T go see it. It's hard to respect and sensibly stand on someone else's ground when you know half that fucking ground belongs to you and all you wanna do is punch a motherfucker in the face for not seeing things your way. But again, when shining moments of clarity come forth like North Stars in the night to lead your way, all you can do is agree to disagree on the petty shit and hold hands through the long haul.

Well I've gone far past my 21 minute mark, so I must go forth and receive the grace that is a free cheeseburger.