Psychology at work

Tonight the self-indulgent rant is not about pain or toddlers or pain in the bum toddlers (who I love and adore with all my heart), but about something I just figured out.  Today.

So my therapist once told me our brains remember and process and recall anniversaries of important and momentous events in our lives even if we have little conscious understanding of it.  We simply engage in behaviors that manifest the memory until we either figure it out and openly process and deal, or our brains give up on us and wait until the next one to make its point.

Lately, I've been mopey, listening to sappy music (again) and getting all choked up over silly things.  For instance, today I was watching an episode of "Friends" (my SIL is way into that show and has it on DVD) where Joey reads the book I'll Love you Forever as a gift to Ross and Rachel's one year old daughter on her birthday.  I cried.

And every time I've walked by what the picture above shows, I feel funny, weird.  I finally got it.  My brother's slippers were the same kind my husband (ex-husband) once wore. They got all ratty from wearing them everywhere, but they were a part of mornings and weekends and random, unimportant occasions.

You see, it has been a year since he and I separated.  It's been a year since some of the hardest weeks of my life - trying to move our possessions, including all the stuff he'd left behind in a complete psychotic mess, trying to get by when my limited means of financial support went with him, when I had to borrow money from my grandma and search through boxes to find dimes to buy ramen noodles to feed myself.  Or how I couldn't pay for electricity and finally called my mom crying because I just couldn't make it one more day without power, having to light tea light candles all over my apartment at night just so I could use the toilet without falling in!  And missing him and hating him so, so very much.  But my dogs were there the whole time and they loved me and I loved them and that made it okay to feel everything.

So yeah.  That's been about a year ago and I guess somewhere my brain started processing that "clustercuss" (to quote a recent Wes Anderson film).

So I'll accept the need for sappy pap that's kind of embarrassing.  Like the song I've linked below.  It's one of those annoying compilation vids from YouTube.  But here it is, Maroon 5's "Woman".