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1:49 a.m. - 2015-09-02
Sol y playa
Currently reading "Sol, Playa y Asesinato" -- "Sun, Beach and Murder." This is nothing I would read in English but I am really enjoying it on Spanish. I look up a lot of words but for the most part I am surprised at how easy it is. I think once you've learned a couple of foreign languages your brain is able to assimilate new grammatical constructions instinctively, without needing to study and "understand" them first. Ideally I would be working on speaking, writing and aural comprehension as well, but I figure that when I do, all of that will go quicker if I can at least read it.

My shrink thinks that learning is probably one of the things that brings "meaning" to my life, the way God or family or success do for other people. I suppose maybe she is right, although I had never thought of that before. I dropped out of college when I was 19 and didn't go back till I was 31, which doesn't suggest a great motivation to learn. But I dropped out of college because I was anorexic and was placed on medical leave, not because I wanted to.

I like that lady a lot, which bothers me. I don't like the fact that I would feel a loss of she decided to stop seeing me. I've seen a lot of them and I generally think they are a waste of time and money. She is different; she doesn't tell me that my eating disorder is going to kill me, or make me sign contracts, or tell me that it's my mental illness that is talking if I disagree with her. She has never forced me to talk about anything I don't want to talk about. She doesn't make me feel like a sick person.

She has told me a couple of times that she likes me and she enjoys seeing me -- which must be true because she's a very well-paid 65-year-old senior professor at a state university and she only sees a couple of patients on the side.

She's the only one I've ever seen who hasn't viewed my desire to do humanitarian work as pathological. Most people don't think i should feel guilty for not helping people half a world away. I think she accepts that this is part of who I am. And she seems to think it makes me a good person, not a crazy person.

This, and the fact that from what I know of her, she is fairly alone in life (no kids, no significant other) have probably inspired me to be a better patient than I have ever been in the past. I don't want to let her down, so I am willing to be optimistic and at least try to be healthy. I want her to feel like she helps. This is surprising to me because I have never cared about my therapist's feelings or job satisfaction before.

She's a big part of the reason I am taking this semester off from school to concentrate on languages. Usually, the fact that this is what I WANT to do would automatically mean I wasn't allowed to do it. (No wonder I fantasize about suicide so much.)

I am very psyched that I can spend my money on tutors and my time on languages for at least a couple of months. I'm planning on concentrating on buffing up my French fluency (haven't spoken to anyone but my kids in SOO long), and Spanish, Russian and Arabic. French should be fun and easy; I don't really need to learn it -- just f'ing speak it. The others should be actual work, but fun.


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