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9:27 a.m. - Saturday, Oct. 12, 2002
Ms Leslie sits on her donut and writes
Oh man, I really needed that rest. I�ve been just lounging around for the past few days and it has really helped. The last couple of days I�ve felt like getting out and doing something. I even have done just the tiniest bit of exercise the last three mornings.

I �fired� my therapist when I got home. Have I said that already? As much as I like her, and I do, I learned shortly after my surgery that no one can or ever will care about me or care for me as well as I myself. I�ve spent a half-century waiting trapped in my crib, so to speak, waiting and wanting someone, namely my mama, to notice me and care for me. I learned long, long ago that crying for attention was not an option. That brought the kind of attention I did not want, so I learned to wait silently, listening to the sounds of talking, laughing, and life in general coming from the other side of the closed door.

That scenario was repeated for me again all these years later, as I lay helpless, cold and in pain in my hospital bed. I didn�t need to be helpless, really, for any time I ever pushed the call button, my Thai nurses would come on the run. It�s just that, like crying in my crib, I had this built-in aversion to using the call button. I didn�t feel as if I wanted to call attention to myself or create a fuss of any kind. In the meantime, my two family members who came halfway around the world to help me, lay in the next room with the connecting door closed, sleeping or watching TV and seldom coming to look in on me to see if I was doing alright. Occasionally, my mother would come into the room and without saying anything to me, would turn the air conditioning down to a dreadfully uncomfortable level. Then she would leave me laying on the bed with no covers and with bare feet, freezing and shivering just as I had done so many years ago when she would carry me out into the frigid northern Utah winter with nothing on my hands, head or face.

So I had a long time to lay there, wondering why my family had even come to Thailand with me. Wondering why, and at the same time understanding that whatever the reasons might be, none of them had anything to do with me, my comfort, or my best interest. Their reasons, quite understandably, had much more to do with them and whatever it was they hoped to gain from the trip. Slowly, it dawned on me that I have no right to expect love from anyone, and especially not simply on the basis that we are family. I realized that I am connected to these people by nothing more than a thin strand of mucous and nothing more. If I am to love them, I need to love them on the same basis and for the same reasons I would love anyone. So too, if they are to love me, they need to love me purely because of whatever makes me lovable.. not because my genetic configuration come close to matching theirs.

I also learned to stand up for myself. It confused them mightily. They thought I had become a bitch. I had only found a connection with myself and began to care for the person that�s me.

And so it is with my therapist. She�s been a great friend, but really, not so much on the basis of my personal value as on the basis of our contracted, professional relationship. She�s been a friend, confidant and very able advisor, but only so long as I�ve been willing and able to pay the fee. And our artificial friendship has, of course, been completely one-way. Paying her has relived me of the responsibility of hearing her problems, hoping for her success, or adding my support. I know almost nothing about her. That�s not how friendship works.

I told her I�d love to be her friend. I have a thousand things I�d like to share with her, but I�m no longer willing to pay to tell her. She has to hear it because she wants to, and for free� and she, if she wants to be my friend, has got to share herself with me. And if not, then what kind of relationship could we ever have. She wrote back to tell me how proud she was that I had found myself, and to say that naturally she supported my decision. I know that if I feel the need, I can call her and take up again right where I left off with no judgements or recrimination. She�s just very professional that way. Still, the thing she didn�t do is, she didn�t tell me she really cared for me beyond the professional relationship. She didn�t offer her friendship past the expiration of our contract. I think that�s very telling.

I�m not upset about that. I think it�s only right. She�s in business and honestly, she�d go nuts herself, as well as violate a slew of ethical standards if she got involved with all her clients. I didn�t expect her to do anything other than just what she did. It�s just that it kind of confirms my feeling about professional therapists in general. They can be so helpful, but I think it�s a mistake to trust them too far. It�s a mistake to believe them when they say they care about you in any way that�s more meaningful than 75.00 an hour.

In that one way, maybe I�ve regressed. I�m back to knowing that no one can be relied on all the way. Nobody cares about me like I care about myself. NO one will take care of me better than I can take care of myself. SO it�s high time�.. high high time I started doing just that. I�ve already started and, you know what? It feels pretty good.

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