The Short Epic

I got another email from Charlie today, and have set up message rules to forward all emails from him back to his email address. Blocking, deleting and ignoring doesn't seem to be enough, he's persistant (which oddly I used to like) but if they come full circle unopened and with no response.....

Anyway, I have written a reply to him which I am not sending, I wrote it for my own benefit and have locked it away in here so I can refer back to it if I ever need to. I still find the whole process quite draining, but being able to put things into type and get them out of my whirling head is a good thing.

Therapy today was wierd, we spent a lot of it talking about Charlie and this thing I have for relationships at the moment. Katie said something I hadn't thought of today, part of the control things that I can't exhibit in my "normal" way while I'm living at home are manifesting themselves anyway in the way I am trying to sort all my relationships (of all kinds) into little boxes, define them and the nature of them and exert control over them by forcing them into a shape I can understand/comprehend. I'm paraphrasing, but I never thought of that, it stands to reason that if they can't come out the usual way, they will find other ways to express themselves.

I have started thinking of myself as seperate to my "ways" instead of them being an integral part of me, they are apart from me (or rather, I am apart from them) and they are things I do, rather than things I am. I have to make a note of this (although it seems disjointed) because I couldn't express it today and I want to take it with me next time.

We talked a lot about relationships that I have and I qualified some of things I said that she didn't understand, like different levels of love and the people on each of those levels, also the people that I loathe who will never know how I feel about them. We talked about the 'acquaintance' type people in the middle and then covered some of my relationship specifications, discussed them in some detail and I got very wordy. It's not enough to just say "I want to have this or that" I have to qualify and quantify before I'm happy with expressing my wants and needs. Katie asked a lot of questions about the things I said and we played a game where she asked me my opinion on something, or asked me to describe people in my life in just one sentance. No qualifiers or long-windedness, I had to sum it up in one sentance (one breath) and then she would elaborate her understanding.

It was quite interesting because I am no good at that, trying to describe what I think of as complex things in a short, clipped way. Felt very wrong, but I started getting good at it, leaving out masses but still being able to have her understand what I meant. After that she honed in on some of the people I'd described, and made me do it again, but this time just summing them up in one word. I got quite a lot of time to think of the "right" word which is good, but it still felt like doing that person a great injustice, bringing everything they are and everything they are to me down to just one word.

Lots to think about because next time we're going on to family relationships, mother, father, sister, grandparents and I am supposed to be doing the same thing with them, describing them in one sentance and then one word. That'll be difficult.

Well folks, I am officially 31 years old, but still show all the signs of remaining an ex-teenager until the day I die.

I had a great day, Dad got me up and took me to Borders, we each chose a bunch of expensive books (and some we'd been wanting for ages) and retired upstairs to Starbucks to peruse and discuss them over large buckets of coffee. It was a very good day, Dad is the only one who will do this with me and we whiled away a good 4 hours just talking and drinking, occasionally going to swap one pile of books for another. I found another book of the A.A.A.R Roberts take-off series, I have finished "The Soddit" and am looking for "The Bored of the Rings" but only managed to find "The Va Dinci Cod" which also looks really funny.
nutter4 or probetech can vouch for my giggles while reading "The Soddit" it's been a while since any book made me laugh outloud like that.

Anyway, I spent some of my birthday money on the following:
Easy Nature Guides - Easy Wildflower Guide
Lindsay Philpott - Pocket guide to Knots
Collins Gem Guide - Trees
Ray Mears - Essential Bushcraft
Collins Photoguide - Complete British Wildlife

I also ordered "Bushcraft" by Mors Kochanksi who was at the bcuk bushmoot last weekend and was quite impressive. I bought 3 bookmarks at Borders as well, I have 3 different books on the go atm (4 if you include the ones I bought today) and no bookmarks so I splashed out and bought 3 of the 99p ones. My favourite is a picture of a wide-eyed kitten and it says "I may not be perfect, but I'm always me!" which I really liked.

( It got Long-winded )

Well, that turned into a bit of a waffle session. I think I'd better go write a list of questions I want to ask the therapist tomorrow, maybe then I'll get tired.