…playing on-line today. It’s the first time I’ve felt this freedom to left-click through the ‘net since I started working. Which is going very well, thank you so much. I’ve settled in, down or whatever to the job. I’m tired when I leave at the end of a day, but happy that I’m coming back to the next day. What more can a girl ask for?
So what happened, you who-have-been-with-me-through-Sartrean-depressions-and-wild-mood-swings may be wondering.
It’s nigh impossible to do therapy on oneself (no matter what the self-help books say), but certain clues stood out that in time led me to some conclusions. For example, no matter what the specifics of my discontent were, the overriding feeling was of not being seen. Sure, people were aware of me. I was being addressed, included, invited. But I didn’t feel seen. So I parsed what that actually meant to me. I watched myself trying to be seen. And that led me to my computer, to my blog, to my connections with the outside world.
Seeing me is seeing a person who is interested in much much more than life at her feet. My dad used to say that he didn’t see the point of travel because there was as much life in one square inch of earth as he needed to keep him fascinated. I don’t feel that way. I want to know what’s happening over there…and what you’re saying…and why he’s doing that…and how come they think that way. It’s vitally important to me, and seeing me is at least understanding and appreciating that. When I left LA, I left most of the people who felt the same way. And I certainly haven’t found them at work (when I ran to my coworkers with the news about Ken Lay, I got blank stares), so I have to widen my field.
And that led me to another realization. Seeing me means seeing that I am, basically, a writer. I may have a degree in psych and the job title Clinician, but I was, am, and will always be A Writer. I lost sight of that for a while. And the realization came to me in increments.
The first: after the disaster with the Pottery Barn sofa, a journalist from Smart Money interviewed me for an article she was writing about PB and other such stores. At the end of our conversation, she asked me how I wanted to be identified. She knew I had been a writer and that I was now a therapist. Therapist writer, writer therapist — either/or. I couldn’t give up the writer label, yet how could I claim it when it has been so long since my work has been in print. ”You pick” I told her–and I still don’t know what she chose.
Then: I sent my blog entry about my new job to all of my friends and relatives. And those of you who have been reading (yes, you four over there in the corner) know with what lack of joy, nay resentment and hostility my blog was greeted. I’m still deconstructing that response and, trust me, I will be writing about it, but bottom line, as the big boys say, what I remembered was that I had named my blog ByJane because it is my byline. This blog is my publication. It is where I am published–and therefore all the rights and privileges of the title Writer are still mine to claim.
So, seeing me is seeing not only a writer, but a blogger. That’s who I am. It’s how I define myself. And just as I want to shove my Double Ds in the faces of all the boys who called me flat-chested in high school, so I want to shove ByJane.com in the faces of all those friends and relatives who minimized or mocked it.
But I am also a therapist. So I do realize that the single person who most had to hear that in order for me to be seen was: me.
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