Fuck yeah building community and getting therapy
Saturday, Apr. 09, 2022 - 6:08 pm.

I'm a good middle-class worker and I wake up at 6:30 am on weekdays. I work out day in and day out first thing in the morning, though that may change as fall and winter creep in. This, plus actually working (haha), makes me wake up on Saturday morning feeling the burden of the week in my body. It's a good thing I can sleep in a bit.

(Ah, we didn't harvest hazelnuts last Saturday because it was raining. It rained all day. We still made the trip and managed to have a day of leisure and good food on the countryside. It was really nice).

Work has been somewhat demanding this week, but mostly rewarding. I had the first meeting with all my thesis students, all four of them, and it felt like a Lab. I call it a lab, though I have no institutional support for it, but it's possible that I'll get it over time.

The important bit here though is that... I felt a bit of a sense of community. The students also seemed happy to be part of this. They all talked briefly about their own research, and got questions, feedback and resources from one another. I felt really proud. Of them, and of me because I'm making this happen.

I also have a thesis student group from another university seeking my advice on the subject (I work mostly with sexual orientation and gender identity). And a friend of Andrew's contacted him telling him there was a kid, a child of a couple of friends, who wanted to study Psychology and could Andrew or I show him the ropes. The kid is a trans boy, hence the importance of talking to someone queer in academia. Andrew will be meeting with him this week <3

On another front, my jaw's been better this week too. Overall I've felt quite all right on all the fronts that are prone to making be in pain.

Also this week, we finally had a meeting with the adoption unit. If things had gone as planned, we'd have been told we were in the clear and ready to be looking for a match, for a kid who needs someone like us. That, of course, wasn't the case.

The two ladies (a social worker and a psychologist) were very kind to us, and very reassuring that this was just a pause to get prepared to respond to our child in the best possible way. Fair enough. It's been months since we were first told we couldn't continue with the adoption process for now. That was an unexpected blow, and perhaps it didn't help that (in hindsight) the psychogist didn't build the best rapport with us, constantly cancelling on us, among other things.

But we've had time to digest this now. We're each having an individual process (turns out we're great as a couple, but we knew that). I've thought about getting therapy for years, and Andrew and I agree it would do us some good. The adoption unit is ready to hand its recommendation to the therapists of our choosing so they'll know what to focus on. If we're lucky, we may be done with the process before we need to renew a lot of the adoption paperwork we've been doing for the past two years.

We're giving it 6 to 8 months. It sounds like a reasonable time for a therapeutic process, and it will give us some time to start looking for a house. Andrew still has had no word about his contract; it's on its way, supposedly, but the university takes it time to care for it. So maybe it wouldn't hurt knowing that we're not having a child in the next three months (it wouldn't be so fast, most likely, but the social worker once mentioned that time frame and it sounded amazing).

Anyway, am I excited about going to therapy? YOU BET. I see myself sitting down for my first session and bursting into tears for absolutely no reason. Until we do find the reason.

Lastly, a few days ago Helen made a mistake when she posted something on my comics IG account (she handles the posting, can you believe I have someone who does that for me? On their own volition?). I got disproportionally angry, though we fixed it right away. I kept my distance, I didn't talk to her for a day until I calmed down. She didn't take my silence so kindly, but I stood my ground on why I did that, and she understood.

I'm very proud of how I handled my anger, even if she wasn't thrilled with it at first. She got (emotionally) hurt in the process. She just threw out the window everything she knows about me when I get pissed off. I'm sorry she had a hard time, but it was mostly because she tried to fill in my absence with the worst-case scenarios, until she resented me and thought I was punishing her. I wasn't. I just wanted to be OK with the mistake enough to not make her feel bad for it. I needed to find peace of mind myself before I could bring it to others.

I feel I'm missing talking about my family here. And I just noticed we haven't talked much lately, especially with my siblings. I'm not good at talking to them just because, and clearly neither are they. It doesn't help that things in our home country have gotten way out of hand (much more than usual). It's hard to talk about it because some of my siblings are still there witnessing everything first-hand, and because my parents believe the government's propaganda and think everything's fine. I just feel despair over all this.

Let's finish on a happy note, courtesy of this kind bubble I live in. It's time for pizza and TV with Andrew and the cats. This, along with my comics, is my happy place. I'm grateful for it every single day.

Don't throw out your masks yet. Stay safe.

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