Moving from rage and hate to sadness and disgust might be progress.
March 9, 2025
Today I’ve noticed that my thoughts about Aaron Gleaves have changed a little bit. I still have anger, but it’s suddenly way less pronounced. Maybe it’ll all come back tomorrow, I don’t know, but for today, what I think and feel whenever I think of my termination, is what a sad waste of a great opportunity it was. It could’ve been a hopeful and motivational experience. I’ll probably never really understand why he chose to do the opposite and go in a negative and hurtful direction with me. It’s just sad the way he forced us to crash instead of letting us coast to a peaceful stop.
Today, instead of feeling a lot of anger, I mostly feel sad. I also feel disgust. It was a very awful way of handling the situation and left such a bad vibe. It was really quite yuck. Of the options he had to choose from, that’s what he chose? It shows he has a big lack of awareness and foresight and compassion. And when I think of people who lack those qualities, I feel repulsed. What kind of professional does a termination like that? Yuck, ick, poor judgment, and very bad taste.
Moving from Disgust to a Calm Sadness Might Also be Progress.
March 11, 2025
Today I only thought of my bad termination experience a few times. Most of those times I felt like a neutral observer. I was angry at one point this evening when I thought about it, but it was kind of a vague anger about being mistreated badly, and it didn’t grow into hatred; it melted into sadness about having a sad ending to something that I valued at the time.
I’ve started thinking more about what I accomplished while I was in therapy. My accomplishments are mine to keep, no matter who treats me rudely or tries to silence me.
I still believe that I’m not right for therapy. I don’t think I ever was since I don’t like putting effort into fake or staged relationships. What I am right for though is progress and self-improvement, and I don’t need to pay someone to develop a staged relationship with me in order to progress and improve.
Part of me wants to go back for sessions with my last counselor, Tim Irving. I think I’m just feeling the lack of emotional support I currently have in my life. I definitely don’t want to go back to him and get caught up in something that isn’t real. I don’t need to go to him and end up confused and sad again. Not that Tim would do anything. I genuinely like and respect him. Pretty sure I’d mess things up with him somehow, and I don’t want to do that.
More Gratitude in the Face of Sadness is Progress Too.
March 12, 2025
I feel like I’m ready to start writing out what I accomplished in therapy. I don’t like how I can’t fully separate those positive things from the guy who ended up being very hurtful to me. I’m uncomfortable giving Aaron Gleaves credit for helping me because I lost some respect for him after his behavior. But credit where credit is due. From a positive perspective, he’s probably the only relationship I’ve had that ended badly but was helpful to me while I was in it. My other badly ending relationships really didn’t bring much good into my life because the guys were just emotionally immature and unavailable for anything real. So Aaron is the very best of the broken guys. Not sure how else to phrase it.