Dress for Heidi’s wedding, Pizza w/ Nathaniel, Art Zoom call

This is gonna be significantly less groundbreaking than yesterday. I did my meds at 8:00am this morning with one of my croissant sandwiches with 12g fat. Then, at 9:45am I met with Dr. Rohe. which I was 5 minutes late to, but he was 10 minutes late too, so we joked that we were on the same schedule. We edited one of my important thoughts from Creative Process yesterday, changing it to: “I will continue to meet new people as I pursue my passions and use my skills, which are of Spanish, design and photography.” He also said I should print out my list to talk myself out of depression and hang them in places I’ll see them all the time. He also suggested that he move into being a therapist who focuses more on the occupational side of things. We agreed the next time we meet should be shortly before my 26th birthday, in February. Then, the instant I finished with him, I logged on to my session with Whitney.

I started looking at my photo from the 7th and then the 8th, which were clearly my two important ones. I also got around to reading the list of statements I wrote on the 7th to talk myself out of depression, which Dr. Rohe also asked me to print out. We decided to rephrase one of my conclusions as: “I will continue to meet people as I pursue my passions of Spanish, design and photography.” In a weird way, that line satisfies my goal of finding a big, long term goal in life. There isn’t really a limit to how much you can work on Spanish, and there might be some way I could connect with Suheily there too, especially since she mentioned taking some of us to Puerto Rico some time. During the session, I also kinda decided that if I’m gonna work, I really really want it to be in something where I can use Spanish. Like frankly, if I could get a job doing what I do as a volunteer at Open Door/Methodist right now, I would take it.

I also kind of reached my answer for how to deal with my cancer, since that was a big question I had. I knew that I’d avoided dealing with it by drowning my trauma in working 90 hours a week, so I suppose the solution there is to not work nearly that much. I also kinda decided a goal of mine can be working as a translator/with Spanish in some capacity and staying on disability for now. After I took that note, I wrote: “Feel like I kind of just solved everything.” It just feels like things are circling around in a way that I’m arriving at some answers. Also, today so far has been a success in not just relating a million details of my day without reflection.

Speaking of, let’s get into some details. After my two therapy sessions, the next item on my calendar was going dress shopping for Heidi’s coming wedding, on the 18th. Kind of crazy that one of my two best friends from 7th grade is getting married. It’s cool though. I went dress shopping at the store MyLinh suggested, that I’d never heard of before. It was called Dry Goods, and I ended up getting the very first one I tried on, which I took a picture of in the changing room before I bought it. It was more than I’d usually spend on a dress, but matches the color scheme perfectly, and I like it a lot. Mom even said I could maybe wear it to something else too. I’m not sure what, but maybe. After getting the dress, I was a bit hungry, so while I was googling food, I decided to stop at a pizza place in the mall. Good decision, because the guy who served me, named Nathaniel, said he actually founded the company because he couldn’t find a good pizza. I’ve got a pic of him taking my mac&cheese piece of pizza outta the oven. I told him I’d never tried that kinda pizza before either.

At home, I answered some of the questions they gave us to prepare to be on the panel in the Our Odyssey art group for people with rare diseases. I was afraid the session wouldn’t be worth missing a night at Open Door to attend, but it was! For their question on accessibility, I said that just recording my day every day is honestly a huge helping strategy, because I first started doing it to help with my memory. Also said this: “My project started with me taking photos of garbage, because that’s what I thought my life was worth, and now, I’m looking for better photos that reflect what’s going on in my life. It’s changed from pics of trash to taking a photo of the best part of my day.” Also mentioned that I’d like to move into taking slightly more symbolic photos, like I was doing initially, such as the one where I said the pic where you can barely see the train us is a symbol for how I feel like life is happening and I’m not involved in it.

Today I’m grateful to have a life that I can easily build on, even though it wasn’t at at all perfect before. Now that the TBI has given me time to think and reflect on everything, I’m grateful for being given this chance to think and consider my life more deeply. Meds at 6:30pm with a piece of 15g cake I’d picked up at Open Door that I didn’t quite finish, and also a bowl of 0g fat rice with soy sauce.