Goodbye Therapy, Hello Blog!

20 Fingers, 20 Toes has become a little bit of an obsession for moi. And also sort of a part-time writing job that I don’t get paid for. Before I started this up during the scourge of February 2008, I was feeling disconnected and depressed. I was. Some of it was related to the dark months of the year, not being able to get outside because of the cold, the lack of sunlight. Some of it was just the monotony of staying at home with my kiddies and doing the same shit over and over again every day; not having peers around to bounce ideas off of, feeling a little bit friendless.

But I gotta say that being able to immediately publish thoughts and ideas and images and what-not onto my own, personal daily/every other day gazette-type thingy really has made some kind of psychological difference in my life. Am I a total geek, or just an isolated new-ish mother who is looking to once again become a part of the world? Probably both.

I was considering going into therapy again pre blog, which I had tried for a few months before I became pregnant the first time. My hope back then was to see if I could unload excess brain baggage onto a therapist, avoiding unloading it onto any children in my care. It seemed like the responsible thing to do. Plus I was grinding my teeth like crazy and wanted to perhaps get at the root (no pun intended!) of the stress I was experiencing before I ground down all of my teeth to aching nubs. I went for about five months, once every two or three weeks.

I liked aspects of it, like in the midst of feeling lost or frustrated, having someone who could calmly be unattached about finding out why I was sad, possible links to my past, possible solutions for future freak-outs. There’s nothing wrong with a completely objective, educated and sensitive point of view. After a while, though, I started to run out of things to talk about and the therapist and I both agreed that I was done for the moment.

Bla bla bla. Me me me. Maybe all new parents should go into therapy. Maybe new parenthood IS therapy. Who knows. Maybe my blog is a kind of therapy. A small pixel of presence in a living, electronic world of love.