Therapy in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

It’s fun to confuse my therapist. She was shocked by how confident and certain I sounded when I said, “I know I’m a catch. I know I’m capable. With motivation, point me at a task, I will accomplish it. That’s not a problem.”

But you still struggle a lot with rejection and feeling less than?

“Yup!”

We… need to investigate this.

“WELL… how about we look at the dozen hundred times when I got rejected? Or the eight or nine times someone approached me but they turned out to be truly awful for me in an abusive kind of way or in a “I’ve been committed three times, but I think I’m ready” kind of way. Or how about we just take a look at the marriage I put up with for the last ten years, there?”

Yes but you’re so confident about being a catch and being capable?

“Yes, and Jeffery Dahmer called himself a good cook. The point of mental health being observed by outsiders in a way that either confirms or denies the individual’s established personal reality is to determine whether their Capital T Truths are realistic or not.”

Oh, I like that Capital T Truths. The fundamental truths they embrace.

“Exactly. My Capital T Truth is: I am a catch. However, my reality for the past 20 years has established that my reality is not a shared reality. And if my reality is only reality to me we would tend to call that a delusion.”

Then she started talking about how our faith would suggest that when the world disagrees with what we know as truth, we should embrace our truths and realize that sometimes the world simply doesn’t understand goodness.

“That’s all well and good; but I’d like to stop facing constant rejection sometime preferably before I die.”

And this I think is something she isn’t getting.

I don’t want to be accepted by others in order to feel “whole.” I want to be accepted by others in order to feel “sane.” That’s why the loneliness is so toxically bad for me. That’s why rejection sends me on a whirlwind. That’s the healing that needs to get done, somehow. Because the logic in it is broken.
IF someone is a catch THEN they won’t be constantly rejected. THAT makes sense.
IF someone is NOT a catch THEN they will be constantly rejected. THAT isn’t true.
Because what we see over and over in this world is that substandard people are embraced, celebrated, beloved. Essen’s husband? He’s been married twice and has four kids and already has things set up pretty well for him down in Texas. Donald Trump? So devoid of personal character (even before the Presidency) as to be a walking punch line! He’s been married three times and has 5 children and a cult 70 million strong.

So… we know that absolutely awful people are accepted, embraced, celebrated.
I declare myself a catch and can prove it mathematically; and rejection is my bread and butter. So yeah. I’m sorry if that is something that affects something fundamental inside of me. Call it my sense of justice, call it my misery of “Nice Guys Finish Last” syndrome, call it whatever you want. But yes. I can confidently stand up and say “I am a catch. Any woman would be lucky to have me as her partner” and I can mean every word of that. While also taking rejection hard and struggling with being alone. Those concepts are not mutually exclusive.

The Root of Less Than