I was accepted into all three Master's of MFT programs I applied for. I had to write some essays and do interviews, which made me feel like a kid playing dress up. But I didn't do too badly if I was accepted, I guess. Now comes the part where I make a decision. I was never good at that. One program goes into a doctoral path...maybe I'll do that. I'll be Dr. Megan Harris McFadden or something. Wouldn't that be bizarre?
I mentioned in my interviews and essays that though I have always found systems therapy interesting, it never spoke to me the way it does now, until the aftermath of losing my sister. That my sister was a product of her family, that my mom taught us to fall in love with abusers, and accept it. Because she learned herself to accept mistreatment, and my ancestors before her fell into that as well. Like a curse all the women before me have been unable to break. I think maybe I was able to escape this (to a point) because my mom did not enter a truly abusive relationship until I was 7, and I had my dad to show me a healthy balance in emotional connections. I was at least shown enough to recognize something was wrong when I was in it and try to make an effort to leave. Though we all have our patterns, and that is why systems therapy is important, because it shows you how to break those.
My sister had toxic relationship after toxic relationship. Never single for a long time. Once I read her tarot about a relationship back in 2014, it warned that she would be seriously hurt if she didn't stop her cycle of going from one bad person to another. She said I didn't know what love really was, that love was saving someone from themselves and taking all the pain they had to hand to you and loving them through it.
I told her that was martyrdom, not love. That love is not saving someone from their demons. She told me that was why I was single, at the time, of course.
Though I have my own cycle, I still haven't beaten the allegations of the Harris name when it comes to starting a new life every 10 years. My dad told me that years and years ago, when I was small. That his grandfather once sat him down and told him the family curse was becoming a new person every decade and never stopping, never settling for anything. While it made the family and my father successful, it also pulled them away from emotional connections. The therapy language I would use for that today is "avoidant attachment." I never got that part of it. Though I know in romantic love, I can be a little aloof without conscious effort. Maybe I get that from my dad. He taught me how to be happiest alone. That love was being with someone you want and who adds to your already full life, not that you need, because of loneliness.
Plus, when I've always done my best shit when I get lonely. I become the most productive version of myself.
A year before my dad passed, he got existential one night and said he thought he was too selfish for kids, but that I taught him to be a better person. That he was proud of me for being the best parts of him and my mom. Selfless but driven. A romantic but not hopeless. Maybe I have to break all the curses. The bad parts, at least. With the decade(s) I have left.
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We have another trip to AZ, since Shawn's work trip this year was there, we figured we would meet with our friends for the weekend. So that is exciting. I have a plane trip in the morning to meet my husband and our friends. I hate planes.
So, I had to make a playlist.
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