I hate therapy. If you look through the few posts I've made here, you'll discover why. Mostly, it's the therapists. Just because you want to be one, that does not mean you should be. The 'degree' has nothing to do with ability. That said, I do have a good one. She doesn't take my insurance, so I have to pay her out of pocket. My pockets are more then ten grand in the red these days, so when I go, I try to get my money's worth.

It hurts to pay her a buck and a quarter for the hour, but she is awesomely spectacular. It hurts to process what she has to say, which is entirely the point. Thank you for the misery, Marcia. You make my brain boil, but the heat is an inferno away from what I walked in with.

It's been a year and a half since I've seen her. The last visit was a family session, where my wife stormed out in anger, leaving me and my two daughters sitting there stunned. I'm the one who's f*cked up, why is she bolting from the meeting? She had... has... some culpability.

Responsibility is a foreign language to her. So be it. We are done. I am alone.

Digression pours through my veins like blood through a turnip. On to Forgiveness:

Marcia told me, in not so many words, that it was time to forgive myself. I've held myself responsible for all of the horrors of the past. I've blamed my mother for her denial, my baby sister for her ignorance, but most of all, I blame myself for failing to cure the childhood ills. I was 8, and i took my responsibility seriously. The next ten years were horrific, and the rest, an agonizing reminder of my failure as a human being.

At my therapy session this week, Marcia offered that it was time to forgive myself. And, as I type these words, I bury my face in my hands and weep. I cry because I cannot fathom forgiveness. Not for me. Not for my mother. And certainly not for my big sister. She is dead. She is gone. She is beyond forgiveness.

And it was all my fault.

So I ask you, my friends, is forgiveness an act, or an emotion?

Search as I may, sober and drunk, I cannot find forgiveness in my soul. Nor for her. Not for my mother (queen of denial). Not for myself.

And the long week between therapy sessions continues...

Lost in the horror of history,

b.