Man, I love therapy.

I especially love therapy when we start the session with Rich telling me how glam I look, and end it with an acknowledgment of how far I’ve come since I first walked through his door. I don’t often allow myself to stop and tell myself, “Hey, you’re kind of a rock star,” but I did today. And thanked him for his part in it, because he has been invaluable. I feel good about choices I’ve made, actions I’ve taken, key relationships in my life and how they work with and not against me. I can celebrate the fact that Joshua’s case manager is discharging him next week, because it means he and I are doing just right together. I feel calm and confident about uncertain aspects of my future that would have had me in a perpetual state of anxiety because they were outside of my control and all I was capable of was fearing loss or an inability to succeed. I have mental and physical energy to take on things that matter to Joshua and me and our well-being, because I am not taking responsibility for everyone and everything else. Even the way I related the events of the last couple of weeks (he was out of town last week) struck him as being a vast improvement over how I would have done so last year – and as soon as he said that, I knew it to be true: my posture was relaxed, my breathing was normal and steady, I didn’t struggle for words, I didn’t trail off because I’d lost my thought in the web of reminders of my failures that competed for, and frequently won, my attention.

It has taken a lot of baby steps, but I can barely see that codependent hot mess of a girl in my rear view. Only that she’s waving, not in a “sad to see you go” way, but a frantic “Why the hell are you looking back, get your glitter-lined eyes back on the road and put that peep-toe to the floor!” sort of way. She can be a little bossy that way; I think she gets that from me.