My triumphant return

So now that you've heard about the catalyst to send me back to into therapy, let's discuss what actually happened once I got there. After the mother-daughter blowout of Summer 2009, I decided it was time to go back. As I've said, I've been in and out of various types of therapy in childhood and in my teenage years. School counselors, a child psychologist (Dr. A, he was so helpful and if anyone ever asks me if I know a child psychologist, I always recommend him), a psychiatrist (who was too kooky for words) and a few others along the way. What fun! I had taken a break after Dr. T the psychiatrist (you could say I was a bit traumatized after her). So, I went through the rest of my teens and early twenties without a therapist and making lots of bad decisions, softened by the good decisions that afforded me taking college classes part-time, and living in apartments with boyfriends and roommates until age twenty, where I finally started to put my life back together. But back to Summer 2009. I did what any stubborn twenty four year old would do - Googled. Now, I probably should have called my PCP and asked for a recommendation or a referral, but hell, he already thinks I'm nuts, so I decided to go at my selection process alone. I was a little desperate, and didn't want to have to go and "interview" a bunch of people first. I landed on a therapist I'll call Hawking. The main reason Hawking doesn't have an oh-so-professional-looking salutation is because he was the one I saw who didn't have have some sort of PhD/doctorate degree. Well, that's not exactly true... my second one, Dr. Z didn't, but I just started calling her that and it stuck. Hawking was nice, seemed professional and empathetic, -- exactly what I needed at that moment. However, Hawking absolutely LOVED to talk about himself and his illustrious career. I mean, really man? I'm paying YOU $80.00 a pop here to talk for one hour about my upside down life, I don't really want to listen to you talk poetically about your amazing psychology career! But, I'm a people pleaser as Dr. E would later point out, and I would listen to Hawking go on and on and ON about himself. All without insurance what getting ridiculous. I only saw him a handful of times, and I cried through most of it. I was so upset and when Hawking would stop talking about himself and listen to me, he never really offered up any amazing insights or recommendations. I decided I had much better uses for $80.00 every week and ceased seeing him. He called twice after I canceled our last appointment, but I was grown up about it and didn't answer or return the call. 

Flash forward to May 2010. I stopped seeing Hawking by late summer 2009, and was motoring along just fine. I was talking (flirting) with a guy that I worked with, but he was married, so it amounted to just flirting. Until one day when he came over to see me in my cubicle (ah, corporate!). He was several years older and very successful, so much so where he intimidated me a little bit. Doesn't that happen to you? Someone who is so intellectual and witty, all of your decorum goes right out the window and you become a blushing, blabbering schoolgirl? I did. But he obviously found me interesting and endearing, as we had engaged in a mild email and hallway flirtation for a year and a half, ever since I started being the HR support for his department. Sometimes I would notice there was no ring, but photos of children in his office, so was he married? I was much too polite to ask, given my "sly" attempts at being flirtatious. Wasn't I just a model of an HR specialist?! Sadly, I received news in October 2009 that my entire recruiting department was going to be outsourced. I remember the day so clearly - I had come into work early around 7:00am to greet a candidate whose interviews started before "normal business hours". I had an appointment outside of the office at 8:00am, so I left and was planning to be back around 9:30am. Upon my return at 9:30am, I entered in the back door like I usually did, and walked over to my cubicle, the second one along the back wall next to the storage cubicle. I hardly noticed my next door cube mate, Ria, talking in shaky, hushed tones to our manager, G. Along the side all near Ria, there was a wall of offices, G.'s boss had the office nearest to the back door where I entered, then G., then Lydia, then Cara, and the spare office. I had barely sat down and started going through the 70 plus emails I had received in the 90 freaking minutes I had been gone when G.'s boss, (who we're going to call Doughnut) came over, looking VERY distraught, and asked me to come into her office. My first thought? "Oh, damn, what the hell did I do now? She was SO HAPPY about my software application launch in April, and I got rave reviews from HR VP's! She better not let me go, she better now let me-". My crazy thought train was interrupted by her voice snapping me back to reality. One look at her puffy face and eyes that had laid off and fired so many people before me, I just knew it. There had been talks of outsourcing, but no one that it would happen in the beginning of the fourth quarter. Ok. This is going to have to be a two part entry. More soon!