Volcano

It is Friday night of my supposed "spring break." I didn't take time off from my practicum because I've been worried about getting enough client hours to graduate, but I think maybe that was a bad idea. I worked four long days this week, and in the few spaces that I did have to "relax," I was too tired, and when I did have the energy to call someone, my few Pasadena friends (all from my all-consuming program, of course) were either out of town, working, or busy with something and didn't have space for me. So I made it through the week, but don't feel any better. And finally tonight, I arrived at the point where my exhaustion gave way, and the floodgates broke, and I had my week-seven, PMSing, exhaustion-induced breakdown four weeks late. And it feels like shit. But on the plus-side, instead of just a vast, impenetrable wall of tiredness and desire to not think about anything, I am at least in a place where the breakdown is forcing me to identify what it is that is "wrong," or hard, or just to be able to put words to what is going on.

All week I had been feeling like I needed a good cry, but the trigger ended up being my last client of the week, 6pm Friday: an adolescent who is really, completely, all-consumingly angry. With me.

I have done all my homework. I KNOW that she is projecting onto me how she feels about her mother. I KNOW it's what we the "the business" like to call TRANSFERENCE. But it feels horrible. I feel like a bad therapist, like I should have known how to avoid it, like I pushed her too hard, like I should have figured out a way to be a safe adult instead of another authoritarian figure. I also have to acknowledge my own crap though, in this instance, and admit that I am really really really afraid of people being angry with me. It pushes all of my people-pleasing buttons. I totally got defensive and snapped at her in session. Then when she was gone I went into the intern room and cried (luckily, of course, there is nowhere better to be when you are having a crying moment than in an office full of therapists), because I felt like I had failed her as a therapist.

Anyhow, I know my little stress-shedding crying jag was only about 20% related to this, and 80% just related to being so. crazy. tired. right now. I slept 22 hours in the last two days and could probably sleep another 12 tonight. The strange thing is, I feel like I can actually handle the schedule better when I'm in the middle of a quarter and hardly have time to breathe, because there's enough adrenaline pumping, enough deadlines looming, and not enough time to think about how much I'm working. All of a sudden, this week, I have a few hours off and for the first time in a while I have the space to realize all I do is work and go to school. I had time off, and Goat is on his way to Boston for the weekend, and the few people I know are out of town... and I feel like all I have is this big giant... space... that reminds me that I work so much that I don't have a life. I hardly even play Ultimate anymore. I hardly bike, don't knit, don't hike, don't climb, don't run, don't go out for beers at the end of the day... the only people I know in Pasadena are in my program, which means we're all too busy and tired to actually just hang out with each other.

Which brings me to my last Thing That I'm Frustrated About, which is that somewhere in the trade-off of finding a job that I love (99% of the time, when my clients are not angry with me), it requires a lot of emotional energy, and I have not yet figured out how to guard against that, and I feel like I have lost the energy to be available to the friends I do have. To return phone calls and emails, to really listen and be present, to send birthday gifts on time (OK, so I never really sent them on time), to initiate fun activities, to be hospitable, to create spaces for community to happen. I have energy for school and Goat. Other than that, at the end of the day all I'm good for is a little anti-social boggle online, or if I'm doing well, a little online Scrabble date with Goat (I know, we're nerds. What's it to you?).

So, sigh, that's the volcano that needed to blow a little tonight and spew some lava (and snot). I know I'll feel better tomorrow. I just bought new cleats, and they have polka-dots on them, and I am going to play Ultimate in my new polka-dot cleats tomorrow.