help yourself

I've been in New York for a year and a half and I have been rejected by over 20 therapists.

It's always something - schedule, insurance, possibly being deeply uninteresting to the mental health profession as I want nothing to do with drugs, have no visible psychoses, and would really just like someone to tell me how to get over my evil ex-boyfriend and crippling self-doubt, yawn. But my last attempt - wherein I finally got someone on the phone and was soothed by her dulcet, caring tone, so deeply lulled that I almost didn't notice when she said that oops, she was actually out of network and that would be $160 a session, please - sort of put me over the edge.

I miss my DC therapist. She was warm and critical and pointed and genuine and soft. She called me after the session in which I did nothing but gulp for air after an old professor of mine posited, her mouth full of salad, that the reason my ex walked out on me could probably just be summed up as, "Well, he obviously didn't love you anymore," and when I finally got up from the floor of my shower where I had been sobbing for the past hour and got my therapist's voice mail, I realized that a) I was extremely lucky to have found someone who gave a shit, and b) the fact that I had disturbed my therapist enough to make a house call meant I really had to pull it together.

I never imagined I'd be in therapy. It's not something my family did. Most of my friends are the healthy, rosy-cheeked outdoor types, who work out their issues by rock climbing. But I needed it, and I went, and it helped. And maybe that's enough for now, because being rejected by therapists is a uniquely destabilizing experience and to be honest, even if I could find another warm and critical and pointed and genuine and soft woman with a nice couch and a 5:30pm Tuesday opening within walking distance of my office who accepted my insurance, I couldn't truly afford the copay.

And so, in the continued aim of self-improvement, and of getting over it already (or learning how to live in it, or learning how to let it be part of me without defining me, or learning how not to equate my self-worth with the garbage that another person deemed me to be), my recent Amazon shopping cart:

The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life

The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times 

Those self-helpers really love a good colon, don't they?

I also picked up Slouching Towards Bethlehem, thanks to a good friend who proclaimed Didion her own therapist, and the new George Saunders, just cause.

Just wait till next month, kittens. You won't even recognize the sunshine.

(Addendum: It's actually really difficult to read those titles without reflexively gagging. It's actually really difficult to talk about this stuff. I can go forth with glibness but it's raw and frightening. If anyone has other recommendations/tips for self-care/surefire ways to feel better, I welcome them.)