I went back to therapy today after more than a year of calling it quits. I have a  therapist who knows so well how to reach into me and just tear my heart out, she is the same one we saw when I was trying to figure out how to tell my first wife I wanted a divorce.

Pills shift and change, alcohol ebbs and flows, but the constant is that things get worse. Despite meeting a beautiful woman and falling in love, despite her amazing ability to love and care for me, I am so drawn to a dark comforting spiral I always end up there, to the point of nullity. Starting at a spilled glass of water and just watching. Nothing matters, no feelings.

I went in hoping to find ways to cope with being more social, not dreading parties or cringing when her family visits our house. Anyone who has been there knows a good therapist will give you more than you bargained for…

She tells me power is important to me; isolation from others is my power, but I want them just on the other side of the wall; I want them to want to come in, but I want to only let them in occasionally, as I wish. The only way I know to feel this power in a crowd or group is to dominate and get what I want, or to withdraw into myself and wait for it to be over.

She tells me I am by all outside apearances a grown man, powerful and strong, a leader at work and at homr, financially well off, but inside the neglected boy who hid in his dark room room and straightened it up and cleaned it to make himself feel like he had some say, like he had some control over his life, is still very neglected.

I tell her…so what? The little boy is always there, and will never be taken care of properly; Its over. She says no..I can learn to heal his neglect forever.

I doubt it.