To The Stranger Paying for my Therapist

Dearest Angel in my life,

I am so grateful to share with you the leaps and bounds I have experienced as of late. I must admit, the road was not perfect and there was a few weeks just prior to my breakthrough, that I felt that I was stuck in the mud. I felt depressed, and a serious lack of any hope that things would ever be different for me. I was not sad or wallowing in self-pity. I was no longer a victim, but I was sitting in darkness and very accepting of that fate.

Different from feeling sorry for myself, there was just apathy – a lack of caring about where I was in life, and an acceptance of my “fate”. I felt that this was progress in itself – that I was unattached to anything, including my own outcome. I felt that this was where I was supposed to stay. Uncaring, but unattached to any one thing. I did feel intuitively as though something was not quite right though. Every morning I was waking up dreading the day before me. As much as I was unattached, shouldn’t I at least NOT be dreading my own experience?

I didn’t look for answers. I just continued to show up for Susan’s sessions but there was a lack of luster and energy on my part. I listened and continued to just let go of everything.

Then we did an exercise where I was to outline what my ideal life was. When we got to the “housing” part of it, I realized that I really hated the place I was living in. This was a light bulb moment for me, because up until this time, I thought I was supposed to be grateful for a roof over my head. Yes, it’s an old, uncared for mobile home that I pay WAY too much for, but I work with so many people who have no housing at all, so I carried my gratitude deep in my heart and did not complain, even to myself.

When we were writing this down, I put double stars behind “affordable housing” because I realized that a lot of my issues with moving forward, including socializing, was because I held a deeply hidden shame over my living circumstances. It cost everything I had and was in shambles. After priding myself in letting go of everything, could I really be attached to something so seemingly vain?

This was the moment in time that I decided, consciously, that I deserved better than this. Life is about letting go….yes, that is a part of my own Buddhist philosophies, but letting…