This is a Really Real Mental Health Post.

I’m racing the clock again.

This time I’m supposed to be heading out the door to the gym with Bat Woman, which is the start of my long ass, exhausting, emotionally draining, Wednesday.

But I warned her I was running a few minutes late and she’ll wait for me.

Therapy yesterday was hard as I suspected.

But it was also easy.

The words flowed easily, but I kept trying to veer off topic onto other things and she had to keep bringing me back. As much as this is about me, it’s also about getting my needs met within my relationship which requires me speaking up about my needs.

And that is hard for me.

Speaking up about my needs could lead to conflict and I avoid conflict like the plague.

And I’m not sure how self worth and body image became yet another conversation about how much I need to speak up.

Another conversation about changing boundaries within a long term relationship.

Another conversation about things being wonderful and not quite right at the same time.

Another conversation about how it can be both and that is okay.

I’m really good at looking at the positive and stuffing my feelings, and my needs, and that works for a time.  Sometimes for a long time. And then things boil over and for days and days the feelings and the repressed needs seem to bubble up. This used to mean a pattern of a seemingly perfect life for weeks at a time followed by days or weeks of ugly fighting over and over again as I pointed out all of the things that were wrong.

And then I would go back to ignoring them and things would or wouldn’t change.

Yesterday Wonder Woman started crying because she felt like we’d had hard talks 3 days in a row. Like I’d gotten angry or frustrated or sad with her over something each day.

This is that pattern coming back again.  The benefit this time around is that there isn’t ugly fighting. I don’t scream and yell and nag and there isn’t passive aggressive bullshit while I work it out of my system.

But it’s still not fair to Wonder Woman.

And it’s not fair to me.

She gets blind sided, being told that things aren’t okay.  Being told that things I’d previously explicitly said were fine or even great, are very much not okay.

So, I still need to figure out what to do about not feeling wanted, and a lot of that is learning to love myself where I’m at, and also a big big part of it is just depression.

So, we didn’t focus on it a lot at therapy, and instead we focused on how much I need to speak up.

Therapy is always a love/hate relationship but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.