Grudging Progress

My mom had Polo'd me back almost immediately yesterday, but I need to temper my communications these days. It was great, she was just talking about our need, if not skill, at organizing, her tea emporium, and she found my bat necklace. Again. I'll ask her for it again, and I'm relatively patient, I just would hate to get so far and lose it all. Not a fan, but I literally cannot resist lyrical references. I did a great job keeping up with things at work, though I didn't quite manage to track down how I got the dad's contact info in the dependency case that's about to get dismissed. No jokes.

I had my session with Candace, and it was optimistic. And really useful in getting me to realize ish that should have been obvious. Not that I'm complaining, but Colleen and my mom have been almost P!nkish in their overt displays that no matter how much I'm on guard, there is no other shoe waiting to drop for me having a friendship with Colleen. Not that it has any impact on my anxiety. I talked about how much the Marco Polo format was helpful to me in communicating with my mom, talked about my trepidation over what to call Colleen. She asked what I wanted to call them, irrespective of their feelings. That felt very child psychologist asking what I'd want if I had 3 wishes, then being disappointed I'd ask for superpowers instead of custody. Don't ask Squeak questions you don't want the answer to. But I indulged and made it clear that 1) ignoring their feelings was as foreign as an Elder God's consciousness and 2) I have no idea. Even just for me, "Colleen" feels cold and "mom" feels presumptive. My bile rises every time I see one of those long-lost family episodes and they immediately declare them Family Status. It occurs to me that might be my overprotectiveness of my mom. I'm a little slow.

Regarding Jared, she made it clear that it wouldn't be hard to get him brought up on charges. More than that, this feeling that turning him in would be cheating at our competition of existence is absurd. Sure, don't pull tricks, but protecting Colleen is my responsibility, as protecting everyone I have the power to is. If Jared gets in the way of that, that's on him. It brought to mind Jared's gaslighting proportions, that no matter how hard he hit me or I hit him back, I'd hit him harder. Thinking back, I'm kind of disappointed I never poisoned him, but I suppose as awful as he was, I wouldn't want to cheat.

It has really been so helpful just to know someone as knowledgeable as Candace. Don't get me wrong, I love being a duck, odd or not, but there have been many things I've been delighted to hear are professionally true. Despite the stereotype, I thought I was an embarrassment to sex workers by needing rehab. And that trope about siblings bonding in the face of a divorce is nonsense. I might be near the top of the class here, but we all hate each other. We'll talk about Meeker next week, and it should be fascinating. And delightful that I don't have to worry about running out of ish to talk about.

I was tired AF in the evening. Another one of those days I kept feeling like I needed to stretch my spine. Merryweather both ran up my legs while I was journaling and all over me as I was laying down to sleep. Lady Miss Friday was laying across from me, and my abject terror at two people I love being mutually exclusive aside, it was wonderful. Merryweather did not get too close to Lady Miss Friday, and I could certainly get used to Lady Miss Friday's contentment as an addiction.