narrator silentbob Here we find out narrator calling the free benefits line inquiring about in_network providers. When he says "relationship issues" the person on the voice tells our narrator that if his partner wants to see the provider without him, he or she should call them to get an authorization. Our narrator does not correct her and lets the narrative of the troubled romance brew instead of romance trouble. When she asks if there's anything else he needs he does not tell her that he lives inside his own head and is afraid to let his ugliest show, that he falls in love covertly with people he does not know, faces through screens instead of pixels in person, persons afflicted by a structure of systems unreliable. That when he burns he burns for the manic_pixie_dreamgirl in his head instead of the free agent who bleeds true, who bleeds blue, he bleeds too. He does not mention the weeks of playing it cool, the letdown and the cooldown, the agony and the disappointment, the vulnerable narrative, the double standard of agency. He fails to mention the-- You have received a message from: CignaBehavioralAdvocate 140119 ... silentbob The password reminder cannot be the same as your password. New passwords must be at least six letters and contain at least one number. 140119 ... silentbob Today found our narrator sitting across from an LCPC crafting the story of manic_pixie_dreamgirl s and the ways they are and are not just monsters in his head. He spoke in circles, mostly, and she asked him how he felt about it. He said he wanted to sit across from a human and fall in love with that human and not check out when things were not exactly as he imagined they would be. She told him that perhaps he checks out because he is afraid of commitment and he gave the narrative of the girls who confronted him about pulling back or closing off. How they wanted him to EXPRESS how he FEELS and how he told them he was not afraid of telling them anything and he couldn't possibly imagine what they were looking for, and wonders now if it was a means to make them feel crazy, the narrative, and tried to tell the LCPC that they were not crazy, they could just tell he did not love them. She asked if he wanted to see her again and he said yeah. She said they could work on some affirmations, and his confidence issues. When she asked him what he was looking for he told her he cold think of things he wasn't looking for. Then he said humor, a sunny disposition, someone who is gregarious, and is enthusiastic about the world vs cynical or sarcastic about the world. How it is more attractive to find someone who loves something than someone who wants to tear it down. He said he didn't want Julia to rescue him, that he wanted to rescue her. She told him that everyone gets disappointed when someone does not meet their unreasonable expectations, that that is normal, but has he ever considered that the narrative he's telling himself in his head is actually worse than reality? That maybe the real humans he meets in real life may actually be BETTER than he was expecting? He said he had not considered that, but that he really liked it. 140123 ... silentbob We find our narrator in public and private spaces telling anyone he can about his FEELINGS and all of the FEELS. Like Suite Judy Blue Eyes, it's gotten to the point where he's no fun anymore. He rests his head against the wall of a karaoke bar, a man devastates the audience with Slide by Goo Goo Dolls and our narrator is wondering why she won't text him. He shows his ugliest side to Cyndi who clamps her fingers around his fingers to pump heartbeats into him and they work only briefly, like CPR that does not work. It's after midnight. And that's when the wolves come out in his mind. She won't text him. That is what he tells himself. He discusses agency and attempts to convey that he's only sad about the universe not making things come to him and she says "I'm sorry" in a really half-hearted way that no longer feels sympathetic. Earlier that day they went to an occult bookstore so Amy could find rocks, and so he could find books about the devil. While checking out, the clerk told her there was a class happening to help folks find their spirit guide. Amy signed them up and they went into the backroom. The room was mostly filled with hippies of all stripes, including the instructor who used her powers to commune with the spirits that she referred to as "spirit" and advised us to close their eyes and breathe while she grounded herself. She told them to imagine a brilliant orb of light above your head and that brilliant orb of light was your chi. And to ground yourself on a tree stump and look for your spirit guide. For no reason at all, appropos of nothing, our narrator saw a wolf. It was peaceful and sitting, the kind you might want to scratch the ears of. Maybe even just a wolfdog. He believed this must be his spirit guide. She started going around the room and asked people what they came here to resolve. But before she did that she pointed at our narrator and said "you recently went through a separation" which was not not true but was not why he was here. He knew he needed to direct the narrative back to his actual path. "Yes, I recently ended a relationship, and now I'm focusing on other people to pursue and it's been a little torrential." Sadly, her next advice was information he'd already discovered the year before without the use of the spirit guide: that the need to partner off was a construct and that he needed to focus on loving himself. It was not wrong, but was what he was already practicing, until he met Julia. Now the wanting comes in waves. She asked what one thing he wanted to work on was, and he said confidence. And she said to stop caring about what other people think. Just love yourself and that will give you confidence. To take the nervous energy and to bring it into something positive. It gave him a lot to overthink about. 140202 ... silentbob Wherein our narrator sits across from the LCPC again to report how productive he's been due to the heartbreak. Recounts what happened with the manic_pixie_dreamgirl with abi the okcupid person and the radio_silence from both of them. It is an unreliable narrative because he says he hates himself, loves himself, thinks he's really great, wants a partner, does not want a partner, believes in dying_alone and has embraced it, but cannot seem to shake romantic_prospects and constantly seeking out a stepping stone. She challenges him to consider what it is to be alone and to try to stop using romantic_prospects as a distraction from loving himself. To remind himself that he is lovable, says a person who has met him twice. He tells the story of the texting and the not texting back and she suggests maybe calling or in_person would be better, but that seems insane, and the tangent of the modern age and how people text now as a default, how everything is texting, how even emotional work and arguments are over texting and how exhausting that is. She points out it doesn't seem that successful and he should maybe consider something else. She wants him to explore the empty husk sadness he feels with the visions_of_julia and what that sadness means and he is faced to admit the self_loathing but how he reminds himself he's been loved in the past and is capable of being loved by a partner or more than one partner. The narration is a process that will probably be long and may not even improve the narrative 140214 ... silentbob Wherein we find our narrator sitting across from LCPC to discuss Julia and Sharon. How he was stricken with the_sads when he saw her, how he abandoned Sharon when he realized. And how now his heart is an autoclave. Why did it not work out with Sharon? because she was not Julia. Because there were things about her that he would have forgiven in Julia, but because she was not Julia, he could not forgive them. And that made him sad. The LCPC asked him what that sadness was and he told her it was familiar, and not just the sadness but the allowing himself to be preoccupied by it. "It's stimulating" he said and he compared it to a drug. That he had been clean for a while but relapsed and was now always looking for a new fix. Somehow they got to talking about the motivation behind x or y and he said something about "avoiding looking like a giant weirdo" or "the fear being confirmed in the look on their faces that I was right that I am a giant weirdo." And she asked him to define his terms and he said "creepy" but what does that mean? She defined creepy as being threatening to women which it didn't seem like he was, based on the narrative he'd given so far. He explained that the fear of being creepy was enough to ensure he would never act creepy. But she said that he might try to take that worry, that fear, and turn it into something positive. Like riding the nervous energy into a sort of awkward confidence or witty charm. To embrace it in himself and to love it in himself. He tried to explain the blurry line between already loving that ball of awkward and treating it like an albatross, that sometimes, though he loves it, it works against him. And how he knows it doesn't matter what other people think, and usually he is fine with it, but when someone he admires and adores thinks it, it hurts him deeply. Or the fear of them thinking it. But he said he thought he had the capacity_to_love as long as he found the right person, and she challenged him to make sure his head does not talk him out of what his heart wants. the_heart_wants_what_it_wants . They closed with a challenge written on a post it. Whenever you think of falling down the shame cycle / self-deprecation loop / negative thought spiral, to instead focus on a thing he liked about himself, to remind himself what is good, to be nice to himself. She said it seems like he doesn't have much empathy for himself. He wrote it down and folded it up and put it in his pocket. Then they talked shit about insurance companies. He also recommended her communion by bell_hooks. When he got home he copied and pasted blathes he'd written about Julia into an email to the LCPC, along with links to youtube videos of songs that made him think of her. But he did not go to her Facebook page. 140320 ... silentbob Our narrator emailed the LCPC out of the blue to discuss pelts. When he saw pelts and wanted to fight_or_flight it concerned him and raised his red_flags so he thought he would make an appointment to talk to the LCPC again to discuss the desire to leave. After the appointment was made but before the appointment took place, pelts informed our narrator she does not get a forever_feeling though she thinks he is sexy/fun/kind/smart/on the same page to her w/r/t sexual politics. And he took it in stride and assured her not to worr and took her out for Italian and took her back to his place and engaged in mutual groping. So when he got to the LCPC our narrator had to explain the conflicting storylines of the wanting to leave and wanting not to want to leave, and how it is moot now anyway because pelts ended things. And the LCPC identified this as some sort of fight_or_flight response to committment or sharing oneself with another. He conveyed a story of wanting to feel things, to feel secure, and to stay. Logically he wants to stay. Internally his instinct is to escape, afraid he finds staying clingy and claustrophobic. That he is typical. Bad_feminist. They explored that. "It sounds like you want something serious" she said and "It's scary to open up to someone." but he explained that he logically wants to open up to someone. And to find someone good enough. And pelts was good enough so what_gives that at the first sign of opening up or investment or deeper closer feeling, he wants to run? What gives indeed. He supposed aloud that perhaps when he gets the fight instinct he needs to just stay. And do the emotional work of staying anyway. And he reiterated that was here because he intended to do the work, and it was only because pelts ended things that he felt relieved that now he doesn't have to. But that he will need to now find someone else to make it work with, after a series of brief, unsuccessful casual encounters. He's not even that sad about things ending with pelts, he tells her. At least not today. Maybe later. Who knows, he wonders aloud. Does he want to come back and keep working? Maybe. 141002 what's it to you? who go blather from