archetypes & anguish

Archetypes start appearing in therapy for me, likely due to my partial immersion in reading and writing through an English degree. The narcissist, the crying woman, the immigrant, the joker—these archetypes, ancient and ever-present in our subconscious, haunt my sessions.

Binary thinking, which seeps from the leaky faucet of my family’s culture, brews a tempest within me—a seething storm of thoughts and emotions, desperate for release through the art of writing. Instead of succumbing to the allure of sleep-filled afternoons, I grasp my pen and seek solace in the fluidity of ink on paper.

My mother, with her elegant yet indecipherable cursive, often found refuge in writing—a trait I both admired and envied. I wish I could have emulated her elegance, although I was far more adept at maneuvering my ’89 Cadillac Deville down hidden backroads, finding comfort in the hum of the engine over the humdrum of classrooms and the banality of city life.

They say depression is anger turned inward, and I feel like I swallowed a bean burrito of rage that sits in chunks in my stomach, ready to unfold and spill all over my meaning and purpose. I seethe with resentment towards clients and friends who blatantly disregard my time, vanishing without a trace, only to mirror their own forgetfulness with misplaced anger when I don’t honor a session they neglected. I rage at my family, who seem to revel in a parade of dysfunctional behaviors, and I despise myself for responding to their chaos with my own brand of destructive actions.

I navigate this labyrinth of discontent, confronting the criminals in my life, both literal and metaphorical, by delving into drug-fueled dark corners of suspicion, uncovering the sordid pasts of those around me in search of reflections of my own flaws. An article about a shifty storefront in Sheridan serves as a stark reminder of the constant shadows of deceit. Once a silent observer of this underworld, I become acutely aware of its existence through my ex-boyfriend’s involvement.

It started simply: I clicked into the dark theme of incognito mode and begam analyzing his LinkedIn, Reddit—anywhere I can investigate the people and entities he claims to have founded or led. Simple searches reveal that none of these men at his newly found “Starseed Village” have any formal education. The only commonality is their involvement in cryptocurrency. My paranoia isn’t entirely unfounded; what I uncover is a hard reality.

I could write about that man for a long time and I have. When another man once asks me what’s MY problem, what’s so wrong with me that two men would pull a gun in my face and why I chase them away, I try to explain over my discomfort with how he perceives that I create these things in my life, that I am just trying to save my brother. Family members are not exempt from my skip tracing distrust, and I find out things I don’t want to know here either. Another long story short, I find crimes committed by a family member, including some charge that actually lists intercourse as the offense.

Life becomes very hard when your family members are criminals, all of your exes have been shady AF, and then what becomes true is that you cannot exist in this system and be exempt from it. These people represent my shadows, my unfinished work, my own anger at myself for times I’ve crossed boundaries.  I don’t feel angry anymore, at least right now, and maybe I’ll even eat a burrito.