She feels safe leaving me where I am. She feels that I am doing okay and that we can stop our sessions.

I have her contact information and can reach out to her any time.

It is done. It is over.

Am I fixed?

I can surely say that I definitely feel a lot better than when I went in. No more of that pressure or that feeling that I am in a rut or need to change. Definitely don’t want to go back there again.

That impending sense of knowing that I need to change, but just not knowing exactly what it is that needs changing is definitely not there anymore.

I do feel fine. I do feel better. No more irrational pressures that I or society or family is putting on me. I brush them aside.

Therapy.

It was good for me. I learned a lot about myself that I never put together or was too close to see.

I believe for the most part, it all started with me putting pressure on myself to be with someone, start a family, and make family happy.

Why? Because it was time, maybe? Because I’m that age that I should seriously be thinking about it.

And, I’m not going to lie, it’s on my mind, but I know that the time will come when the time will come. As I told my shrink when she asked would I be okay if I do end up being alone and not finding anyone, I honestly do believe that I will be okay with it.

So, why do I need to put that pressure on myself? Like I told my Chicago cohorts way back when Dan and I was there doing upgrades that I enjoy my life right now. I enjoy the freedom that I have. I have a good life, so if I do want to be someone, she better be fucking awesome.

It’s true. I love this independent life. I don’t ever feel lonely nor do I really need that kind of companionship.

So, if I do find someone, she better understands me and she better be an awesome person.

Being with Milipitas earlier this year just reinforced what I already knew, that me being in relationships don’t work. Grant it, that she was young and she wasn’t a good relationship to base anything off of, I just know that that wasn’t the kind of relationship that I wanted, nor with her.

So, I’m going to go on living my life, how I feel that I should live it and take whatever comes my way. It’s always been my philosophy in life, and I guess I had a crisis of conscience and didn’t listen to what my gut was saying.

But, my shrink and most everyone else is right in saying that I need to be open to the idea of it, which I think I am, for the most part. Still scary though.

* * *

Control.

I’m a control freak. I need control of the situation, or at least control of my life.

I didn’t realize it until we talked about it.

I think my type of control is more along the lines of I like control on my life and don’t like it when people tell me to do or try to control me.

I walk fast. I hate walking with slow people, so I just walk ahead of them and leave them behind. I’m not going to let them control my walking speed.

Vacations with groups, i.e. family, I hate it when no one can come up with something to do or eat ’cause I’m trying to be polite and consider everything. So, after the frustration of no one coming together or everyone just being slow or not coming to any compromise, I just get frustrated and just do my own thing and leave everyone. I need it.

There are times when I just need to take a step back and realize that other people are involved or that we are doing these things because of someone else and I just need to just take a step back and be okay with it.

It’s a live and let live type of thing and I guess that’s one part of my life that I still need to work on and to grow.

That’s why I enjoy traveling alone. It’s just the freedom of being to do whatever with no agenda and no compromise. Taking your time, doing whatever it is that you want to do. I love that freedom.

How other people drive? I have no control over that, so I just need to let it go, even if it doesn’t make any fucking sense or if we are going slow. Frustrating.

Time. People just taking their sweet ass time to get ready knowing that we have to be someplace at a specific time and they have no concept of time. Frustrating. I just need to let it go, which I don’t think it’ll happen.

Live and let live. Live and let live.

* * *

Independence.

INDEPENDENT.

I think the biggest revelation that I had while in therapy was why I’m so gung ho on wanting to be so independent and being so independent and fearing that I’ll lose it if I ever get into a relationship.

It was huge for me, it was a break through. Now I know about it, maybe I can be willing to let some of it go, on my terms of course, being the control freak that I am.

It all boils down to my father. I think a lot of issues that I have boils down to my father.

I just want to make him proud and I didn’t know if I did.

I’m sure that he was proud of me. I have to believe that. I have to believe that I was starting to be the kind of person that he wanted me to be and as I grew up to become the man that I am today, that it is exactly the type of man that would make him proud.

My dad is proud of me as my mom is proud of me, not being in a relationship or having a family aside.

Independence.

I need it. I hold onto it for dear life and it is all because of my father. Breakthrough.

My parents both raised my brother and me to be independent. One of the biggest things that they beat into us is to be able to do everything ourselves. You can’t rely on other people, only yourselves.

So, at a young age, my parents made us do things ourselves, like filling out paperwork and forms at doctors’ offices and such. Sure it had a lot to do with them not knowing as much English and such, but it was second nature to us to do things ourselves.

They’ll send us out to walk to the grocery store by ourselves when we needed to do buy something or to buy things for our grandparents. We always wandered and did things on our own without much supervision.

That’s our childhood.

And as a child with a father whose always gone working, you want to make them proud and to make him proud, you become the person that teach you to be, and that is an independent person.

So, when I first moved down here, there were issues with me not finding a job and a place to stay after the first summer. It was the biggest worry that my father had, but when things settled and I found a steady job and a place to stay, our relationship changed.

We talked. We just talked about things, a relationship that I’ve always wanted with him.

I made him proud. I was fully independent and that made him proud. It was the last thing that I was able to do and be for my father. It was the last thing that my father actually approved of.

The next thing to work out or he’ll slyly bring up was the relationship things. He’ll slip in little comments about having a girlfriend and what not. And he passed away before I was able to find someone. I’ll never be able to get his approval on that side.

And maybe, just maybe, that is why being in a relationship is so hard for me. I value my independence so much because it was the last thing that I was able to give to my father before he passed away.

Even if I get a girlfriend now, I’ll never get his approval or know if he would like her, so why even put in the effort.

I know this now. It was a breakthrough to me at that time, a huge epiphany. It blew my fucking mind.

Now, now that I know, maybe I stop self-sabotaging myself, if that is what I was doing. Just maybe.

But again, independence, it’s what I value.

I find it sexy. Because of that trait, it’ll bump your attractiveness up and up as that girl from Dead Horse Point has proven.

She was an all right cute blonde when I first saw her, but after we talked and she said she went off on that road trip on her own, plus she’s outdoorsy, she because just a cute girl to a fucking hot girl in seconds.

Independent. It speaks to my soul.

Like my shrink says, I just need to find someone that is very similar to myself and apparently there are girls that are like out there.

* * *

Father issues.

The root of all of my troubles.

I had so much guilt built up, years and years, that I killed my father.

It’s irrational, I know, and I knew it to be, but I believed it.

I had to. There needed to be a bad guy for the story. There had to be someone to blame, so I blamed myself. I was a martyr and narcissistic in putting all of that on myself, but I needed it.

If he didn’t want to buy a house down here so I can live in it until he retires and moves down, he wouldn’t have worked that second job. Because of me, because he worried about me, he did that and I had to be blamed.

So, I lived with that guilt ever since. There was no other possibility.

Not even the rational one of him just dying because life is shit. Shit happens. People die.

It can never be that his heart gave out because we have a family history of heart disease. No, it can’t be that, it was me. I killed him.

I have to let that go. Those are horrible irrational thoughts and reasoning.

I know that now. I see that now.

I have to believe in the truth, and that is shit happens.

That is life. It’s always been my motto.

I need to stop placing blame on myself and just let it go. We can’t control it. We can’t control life or things that are beyond our control.

I had no control in that situation, but I do have control on the guilt I feel.

I didn’t kill my father, life did.

All I can do is to remember him and love him and miss him.

I don’t know, maybe I do feel that I’ll forget him if I don’t have this guilt on me, so hold onto it like I hold onto my independence.

But, you don’t forget things that you don’t want to forget. He’ll always be with me, in my thoughts and my heart and my memories.

I have to let it go.

I have to believe the rationality of the situation.

He had a heart attack because that is what happens when you have a family history of it and you don’t know about it.

Life. Shit happens.

That’s the crux to my issues.

My father is where most of my issues stem from. Maybe, maybe changing my truths to this will help me grow to be a better person.

Just maybe.

I love you dad. I miss you dad. I hope you are proud of me.

I love you.

* * *

It’s been a little over a year of seeing my shrink and I want to thank her for helping me figure my shit out.

I certainly feel a lot better about myself and my choices that I’ve made and how I live.

No longer in that mid-life-crisis that was plaguing my thoughts and soul.

I feel freer, lighter, and better in mind, body, and spirit.

Thank you.

Hopefully I can bring this new found clarity into the next year and make it something spectacular.

* * *

It’s just a few days away before holiday break starts and that’s when I’ll get into my yearly diatribes of bah humbug.

Looking back, this year has definitely been a surprise for me and I’m sure I’ll have a lot to write about, and I’m sure many things will be about what I wrote today.

Looking forward to it.