This evening I met with a potential therapist, someone I knew to be poly, kink, and queer friendly, from repuatation alone.  So, taking a chance on that.

From the second I stepped into the waiting room in her office, I knew we were going to be fine, even if we didn’t click – she had tea, books, and penguins.  But we did.

I went in with my intake paperwork – I had originally intended to send it to her, but had been a bit intimidated by all the pages and had put it off until today. Such a wealth of information.  A lot of it was questions about partners, medical stuff, and that sort.  The intake form even had five slots for partners/spouses, which I thought was pretty neat.

But the big important question: what brings you here?  Such a big question, so full of promise.  So I thought very hard about it.  This is what I came up with:

1. Balancing relationships and learning how to set boundaries, even if they are different for different partners and learning to be okay with that.

2. Figuring out my gender identity and expression, learn what that feels like to me, and what being comfortable in that skin feels like.

3. Putting together a plan to come out as poly and non-binary to my whole world, not just the limited folks who know now. It used to be more important to me to come out as non-binary, but with much thought and much time to reflect, especially on feelings around this holiday season – poly has become more important, more essential to my long term happiness.

We talked about these and their relative importance to me.  We also talked about brain science and the connection between the mind and the body, that looping connection.  We talked about Minx’s death and how it is still impacting me, still affecting my ability to successfully carry out romantic relationships, even though most of the pain is gone (well, the grief and the overwhelming sadness are gone – I am the broken china, repaired to be more beautiful than ever, shining with gold).  Apparently it is not common to be as consciously aware of this effect as I am.

We talked about my anxiety – decided that would be the first thing to tackle. So, that’s that.  I now have a new therapist. 🙂