4:20 pm - Thurs 7.02.2009
My Heart Of Hearts

Had a very busy day yesterday...

It started with my two Weight Watchers meetings in Santa Monica (At 10:30 and 12:15).

They recently started rolling out a new computer system - So some centers have the new system, while others still have the current one.

Santa Monica has the new system ("Champ 3"), and yesterday was the first time I was having to work it without expert supervision.

I'd thought I knew what I was doing, but turns out I'd been lulled into a false sense of security by Shirley's presence (Shirley being the aforementioned "expert supervision").

It wasn't a disaster - I mean, no lives were lost, or anything like that - but...well, let's just say I've had better times since starting to work at Weight Watchers.

In the afternoon, I had my therapy session with Javier, the first of what will now be weekly sessions.

I told him about being sick (The swelling in my left sinus cavity has gone down, but the infection still seems to be having its way with me), about feeling stressed over money and losing my health insurance, about the fact that nothing's happening with acting (And how every effort on my part to do something about it costs money), about wishing I just had a solid "platform" to operate from (Hard to do what you need to do, or fight your negative/depressive tendencies, when you're sick and exhausted).

In other words, a pretty typical litany of my shit.

And I told him about reconnecting with Omar Pupo. (This is Omar L., the eldest son, and not Omar A., the father).

This is a fairly recent thing, that happened after I received my case file from WV - Apparently, that didn't completely slake the thirst I had for revisiting my past, so I found him on FB.

Wasn't sure it was him initially - for on thing, unlike his Dad (Who was from Cuba), Omar the Younger was born in the US, but writes like English is his second language.

Don't know why, but I found that, all by itself, somehow disconcerting.

But even more disconcerting was when he referred to us as having been "lovers".

(The Pupo were a "dysfunctional family" before they coined the phrase - In addition to the sexual abuse from Mr Pupo early in my time there, there was a lot of "sex play" between various siblings, Omar L. and I included; no doubt, part normal childhood experimentation, and a large dose of "This is what we've learned from dear old Dad...".)

I emailed him back, gently suggesting that we were, perhaps, not so much "lovers" as "victims", but he wasn't really having it - His clearly wounded response was to basically say, "Well, that's what I thought was going on...".

I also found it weird - less weird than him calling us "lovers", but still weird - that there was a lot he didn't seem to remember.

But then I realized I was the one who wasn't remembering - He's five or six years older than me, so he was out of the house for years before I made my eventual exit.

Anyway, initially I was "creeped out" enough by the contact that I thought about just cutting it off, but I'm glad I didn't - He started emailing little "mini-bios" of what's become of the rest of his family, which I've found very interesting (I've been waiting for awhile now for his promised email about what's up with his parents - He hints at some tragedy that befell them, or one of them anyway, and again, I"m very curious about what happened).

Javier thought this was a worthwhile thing - to reconnect with this part of my past - and he provided some clinical context to Omar L's clear "disconnect" that made me feel less "creeped out" and more sympathetic towards him.

We ended things talking about the case file.

I've felt some "internal resistance" to the idea that I might have to spend the next couple years "processing" the case file with Javier - or someone like him - but I told him that after last week's session, I found myself thinking about Good Will Hunting, and the "It's not your fault..." emotional climax of the picture.

They had to truncate things quite a bit for a two-hour movie, but that said, there was something very true bout that scene - I think a lot of the pain people with difficult childhoods carry with them all their lives is that, in their heart-of-hearts, they know what happened to them happened because they were "bad".

I'm sure there are other lessons to be drawn from the case file, but right now, the biggest one, in my mind, is that "It wasn't my fault".

I wasn't "bad", I didn't do anything "wrong", I wasn't "defective" or in some way "unlovable" - I just got dealt a bad hand.

And I can say that, I can think I understand it, but I'm guessing it'll take quite some time before I really know that in my heart-of-hearts.

And on that note, it's almost time for me to hop on my bike and head to Weight Watchers...

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