Sifting through boxes

I have therapy once a week. I never realized what people meant by giving yourself grace on therapy days. After my first session, I realized why. I’ve heard it described as a wave of emotions and feelings. It’s pretty accurate. I’ll start of the week pretty well. Wednesday night comes along and I feel burdened. Sometimes it doesn’t hit until Thursday morning but I don’t understand why, then I realize, Oh, today is therapy day. Sometimes the feeling stays until Friday morning or even the afternoon. So the thought hits me, oh yeah, I had therapy yesterday.

My therapist’s office is in Downtown Los Angeles. I love downtown. I live in downtown. I worked in downtown for years. It holds happy memories. It has places that I love visiting. I have a pretty good routine for therapy.  I get dropped off a few blocks away to walk the jitters out of my system. Plus I enjoy walking, it helps me relax. For 50 minutes, I talk.

Sometimes I talk nonstop. Sometimes like this past Thursday, I share, then I sit quietly. I’m asked a question and it prompts a wave of memories. Sometimes I start talking and suddenly a memory buried deep in the closet of my mind takes over and makes it way out of my heart and I hear myself talk about the story. I put emotions to what I was actually feeling. A lot of the times I reach over to my right for a tissue, the box placed perfectly. It’s on a table next to the couch. The side closest to the door. A lot of what I talk about I’ve never shared with anyone else. This is the first time these memories are attached feelings. The feelings range from sadness, hurt, loss, and grief. Sometimes the memories are happy. Sometimes the memories are a glimpse of what relationships could have been like but actually aren’t.

After I talk, I walk. I walk to Whole Foods, I walk to City Target. I walk around Target. I walk more for the fact that I can’t go home yet and be alone with my thoughts.

Therapy is painful. I would describe it as sifting through boxes. I’m sifting through boxes trying to find the ground but all I find are more boxes. At times I’m wondering where did these boxes come from and why are there so many? Most of the time, I’m sifting through boxes as I stand on a box not realizing the box I’m standing on can only hold me for so long.