#therapy post

1. jeeves has beautiful eyes with fluffy eyelashes. bertie is truly fascinated

2. jeeves doesn't consider bertie dumb or not worth to be with but won't ever say it aloud :)

3. bertie has little freckles all over the face and spine

4. bertie's love languages are gifts and words, jeeves' are acts of service and quality time

5. jeeves has a good taste in colognes and can detect a bad smell from a mile

6. they share taste in alcohol and tobaccy

7. even though there's no much height difference between them, jeeves seem to be more broad build (especially in shoulders). bertie is just slim

8. bertie is allergic to nuts and hates pomegranates (probably doesn't enjoy olives either <\3 )

9. bertie's favorite color is crocodile green/ cedar brown, jeeves' favorite color is probably royal blue/ lavender

10. one of jeeves' unobvious hobbies is that he really enjoys capturing moments and prefers to write things in a diary or use a typewriter :)

11. jeeves is a quite romantic person but won't show it. keep calm and don't let anyone see your emotional side

12. they are rats they are that bitches and they probably will judge you behind the closed door

13. jeeves really can't stand some of bertie's friends and wish they could disappear but he doesn't want to hurt his feelings

Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with moderate anxiety and depression and I began medication to help treat it. I’d dealt with this in the past but never had been prescribed meds for it. I used to pride myself on my ability to always be “even keeled” mentally but with the pandemic and other drastic changes to my life, it became too overwhelming for me. I’m grateful for the meds bc I now feel a lot better. I also recently began therapy but the results are still pending since it’s so new.

With the meds I’m taking, it has seriously drained my libido which has, in turn, affected my sex life. I have absolutely no desire to have sex whatsoever. As a recovering sex addict, it’s been one of the best changes of my life. However, my fiancée is on the opposite end of the spectrum. She wants it ALL THE TIME. We’ve had numerous conversations about this with her explaining to me how she feels it’s not fair for her to not be able to express herself sexually like she wants. I actually agree with her. It’s not fair and I don’t know how to remedy this. I’ve explained to her about my past addiction and my current issues with my libido to no avail. She also suffers with anxiety and depression but refused to get back on meds or even begin to do the work with therapy. Again, I feel like I’m doing the work and working on changing and she’s not.

She was very sheltered growing up and hasn’t had much life experience whereas I’ve had a very full life up to this point which includes of course sexual experiences. She doesn’t like masturbating (she says it doesn’t feel right) so the only way she has orgasms is if I give them to her. She doesn’t want to use toys. I like all of that stuff and have very extensive sexual interest. None of which she’s interested in.

Another thing is...she hasn’t grown or changed one bit since we’ve been together and I’ve grown/changed quite a bit. She has no hobbies. She doesn’t know what she likes. She doesn’t really have any friends. She’s self-described as “very low maintenance”. Getting her to try new things is like pulling teeth. I once offered to pay for her to get her hair and nails done and I was given excuse after excuse why she didn’t want to do it. When it comes to the women I’m attracted to, I like certain things. I like a woman who takes some care in her appearance. Not necessarily a face full of make up or anything like that. Just switching up hairstyles or dressing up every now and then. I’m pretty thorough with my style and would like to see her match my fly sometimes. She’s only done this once where she had her hair braided for about 12 hrs and then took them down. I spent $100+ for her to do this and was so excited and turned on with the change. She looked so good! However, I felt extremely let down when she took them out. She only wears jeggings and t-shirts and wears her hair in a ponytail or bun. I understand the need to be comfortable but I just expect to only see her like this for the rest of our lives. This, in turn, feeds into my lack of desire for sex. I’m bored with it. It doesn’t turn me on. I have nothing to motivate me to even be turned on enough to be horny for sex. She just expects me to just be horny from being around her and I’ve explained that that’s just not how it works for me. When we do have sex, I feel like I’m just doing it for her. I feel like a character from Westworld where I’m only using my body for her sake. I feel like a robot just going through the motions. I feel pressured and I hate it so much. Not to make light of it or anything, but I feel like I’m somewhat being r*ped when I’m being put in a predicament where I have to have sex just to please her when I don’t want to.

Which leads me to this. This morning, one of the first things she said to me when I got up is requesting that I ask my doctor to change my prescription to another med that supposedly doesn’t have the side effect of altering my libido so we can have more sex. I immediately felt so bothered, offended, and quite frankly, disgusted by this which triggered my anxiety and depression. I feel like how dare she ask me to change yet another thing just for her pleasure. I’ve changed the way I smoke 420 (she hates it but tolerates it bc it was something I did before being with her). 420 is important to me bc it helps with my anxiety. I’ve started wearing more colors in my wardrobe (I mainly wore a lot of black and other neutral/earth tone colors) because she asked. I would grow my hair out at times bc she likes when it’s longer and curly. I just feel like asking me to change my meds so she can have more sex is crossing the line.

My mom the second he left the driveway:

So…this is a quick google search of the pin I have because I’m lazy and don’t want to upload it.  It’s a Disney-parks exclusive rainbow “lucky emblem” and I love this thing.  Despite the high quality of the pin, mine’s pretty beat up.  I used to wear it on a hat but now it’s on the strap of my bag.  The ugly bag I take everywhere with all my emergency needs.  It’s an oversized purse, let’s not pretend.  It’s my only gay regalia.  I’d add more but I never thought about it.  I kind of want to track down the Mickey hands in the heart shape rainbow but I think that’s rarer.

Not even the point.

So…I didn’t pick this up at the park.  It’s actually been a long long time since I’ve been to Disneyland.  It used to be such a casual thing to drop into the park when I was younger, even if my parents never took me.  And now that I’m older, the scene’s changed and I’m…me.  A mess.  I’d love to go.  But it’d have to be in such ideal, unplanned conditions and I no longer live close enough to predict “okay, I think I can handle it today” so it’ll probably remain a wish and shame.  I feel actual shame I can’t/won’t go to the park.  So maybe that should be a goal to set but set it really far into the future so it’s not weighing on me.  Worth…discussing…I guess…  *notes to bring this up at therapy*

I’ve always had a “more bang for your buck” type mentality.  I like my cross overs.  So gay + Disney?  Nice.  But I’d have never picked this out.  A friend got it for me and he honestly said it was more of a joke.  I don’t think he realized I was a Disney fan.  I mean, yeah, I know Kingdom Hearts fans that aren’t that into Disney, or are casually into it because what American isn’t, but also like, I remember the absolute rejection of the game as a whole because “what sort of Mickey Mouse game is this?” like it couldn’t be good, let alone meaningful because it’s Disney.  Like, ya’ll watch the same movies I did?

I guess I could go into that but…

Mickey Mouse has this same negativity of being less than.  I think they mean sanitized, but it turns into “not important”.  And I guess there’s some irony to my friend that I’d be a corporate gay.  A Mickey Mouse gay.  Whatever.

I like it, because I watched Disney and I like men.

I have so much of me that’s “gay Disney fan” I could expand upon.  God…heavy.  And I thought this would be easy.

So it’s not immaturity but a fondness of stories and life.  They can relish in tropes and feel-goods, and fakeness, but why not?  Why does my life have to be real all the time?  I see a lot of posts now embracing women and fairy tales where it’s about making themselves the center of the stories and fighting for virtues and I think that can be universal but I guess I just wanted some folklore.  Probably the appeal of comics, too.  Batman and Bambi are my pantheon.  Sorry folks.

I didn’t have a lot of culture that was “for me” when I was younger so I went and found it.  And I think, well, my parents bought me Disney tapes and Fox threw Batman at my feet, so…there’s my stories.  I’m not understanding where I had to “see myself” to love something.

There this Mickey, Donald, Goofy short where they go cross country.  I don’t know what it’s called.  But it’s all the problems that happen.  And I LOVE IT.  Never happened to me.  Still just one of my favorites.

So I’m no Aladdin or Jasmine.  No Elsa or Hans.  But…I still see myself in Disney because they were made for me.  A latino gay man with agoraphobia and from a working-class family.  Do I think Disney would be better if I could see someone more like me?  Hell yeah.  Sanitize my life and make me a princess.  But handle it with all the other cultures you steal–respect.  I’d rather be Timon than LeFou.

After some time, I was finally able to find a social worker who would be able to see me. A lot of the ones I had talked to before had conflicting schedules with mine, or were simply too busy to accept new clients. But I went to see a nice man who can help me, so here’s the rundown of it if y’all are interested.

I cried so much my eyes felt dry. I told him things I haven’t told anyone, not even my mom. He listened the whole way through. He was able to explain some things to me: that I have a lot of borrowed shame, that I have an insatiable need to make others happy at the cost of my own happiness, and that I have a bad habit of “catastrophysing” things. That means that I tend to blame myself for things that aren’t my fault, and blow them completely out of proportion. Say, if I had any reason to believe someone is mad at me, I will convince myself that I’ve done something wrong and close myself off from them, which just makes things more difficult. And it most likely isn’t even my fault in the first place! So it’s one of the things we’re gonna work on.

Another thing he confirmed to me was that I was emotionally abused by a certain family member. For years I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t abused, that I was just being too sensitive. But he made it clear to me what was happening, and I can’t tell you how happy I was to finally have affirmation for something I had suspected for so long. It felt like a huge weight was lifted off me.

So, onto my “homework” until I see him again, which is on September 4th. I need to challenge my “Hot Thoughts”. A hot thought is a thought that leads to feeling, which leads to action. One thing we talked about was how I’m bad at math, which leads to feeling shame, which leads to putting myself down because I’m not good at something. He told me to take that thought and turn it around. Instead of thinking “I’m bad at math”, I can think “math is not my strong suit, but that isn’t a measure of my intelligence, and I’m good at other things”. Which leads to feeling good about myself, which leads to thinking about the things I’m good at.

He also told me to try to talk to myself as if I were “Six-year-old Laura” when I’m upset. If I were talking to myself when I was that young, I would try to comfort myself, not cut myself down more. I think that’s really gonna help in the long run.

Being happy because of the happiness or success of others isn’t valued as highly as being happy for oneself.

But like, sure I’m content getting through the day to day, but seeing my loved ones succeeding? Being healthy? Getting joy from watching others thrive? That’s the shit.

We had this analogy when we were doing couples counselling a couple years ago, that when he was in survival mode, my partner’s mental health was in the basement. It’s where he goes to isolate and so others don’t have to ‘deal with his moods’ except that he was constantly forgetting that we live in the same house. And he was accidentally leaving traps for me to fall into the basement with him. And when I would find myself down there, I would be looking for him, looking for a light, looking for the stairs.. but he had made the space so cluttered it was impassable.

When my partner was on the cliff of alcoholism and trying to dig himself out of C-PTSD, OSI, and moral burn out, he had created a LABRINTH of that basement. And as much as I tried to remain on the top floor, I still lived with him and checked on him in the basement but I would get lost down there. How could I possibly be happy when my favourite person in the world is so miserable?

It always feels like a cop out now when people ask how I’m doing and I say that I’m great and go on to explain how well my partner is doing. But damn, I’m fucking proud of him. He’s nearly 6 months sober. He’s so much healthier and happier now, how could I NOT be happy??

So a few months ago my therapist challenged me to use my creative side more. I had been complaining about how I’ve got a bit of “trope fatigue” and that some of the books I’ve been reading could have been so much more enjoyable if they did x/y/z differently. So she said “why don’t you start writing for yourself?”

I’ve told her about how journaling has been really helpful in the past (literally had a *pretty little journal to write my messy little thoughts*). We’ve talked about how my wild imagination can be really great, when it’s not fuelling my rampant anxiety but now she’s suggested that when my anxiety is starting to get ahead of me, I should go back to writing a story.

I’ve never actually tried writing anything. But I used to have this thing I did as a kid: I would make *soundtracks* for stories. Sometimes they were my own form of fanfiction, sometimes it was literally matching a song to the vibe in a chapter of a book I was reading. I did it a lot when I was a kid (before the age of smartphones and iPods) and burned CDs for soundtracks, and I started doing it again a few years ago with SJM’s Silver Flames and House of Earth and Blood. It’s weirdly cathartic and makes the experience more immersive.

So over the past few months I’ve actually started brainstorming and building character profiles, general storylines, and writing out specific plot points.. it probably won’t turn into anything more than some pages with random thoughts, but it is absolutely more enjoyable than I thought it would be.

I’m definitely not rushing myself with this one. But every once in a while when I have that spark of inspiration, I’m going to write it down. It’s been fun building characters’ personalities and digging a little deeper than I usually do.