I called a friend yesterday to finalize plans for our dinner-and -a- movie plan and to vent about the recent issues with my son. We were discussing what movie to see when, as it usually happens, the conversation turned to other things about our lives. We hit on something in my life that I don't talk about much; something that happened to me during my teen years and, while I may mention it in passing as something that I lived through, I never really talk about it.

For some reason I lay it all out yesterday. I didn't go into detail about the six-year episode or about how it happened, why it happened, or what stopped it, but I did talk about what it did to me and what it continues to do to me. In fact, a lot of things about me and the way I view things and relationships came to light and, in all honesty, it knocked me for a loop for the rest of the day.

I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on this, nor have I ever labeled it a defining experience in my life, but after allowing myself to really think about it yesterday I see that it screwed me up in a lot of ways that I hadn't even realized. Some of the puzzle pieces have fallen in to place and I'm disappointed that I let this situation create such a mess of my emotional self. For years I thought that I had dealt with it, come to terms with it, and the put it away, but I now see that it touches my life every day.

Now comes the hard part: What do I do with this now? Do I continue to battle against myself? Do I try to self-psychiatrist myself (is the old adage "Any lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client," hold true for psychology majors too?), or do I think about seeing someone professionally? I feel like I have a handle on the past as far as acceptance, but I honestly see the self-destructive path that I lay out for myself in years past, as well as things that I've done recently that are a direct result of what happened to me.

Thankfully I'm pretty well adjusted, and the surfacing of these emotions and behaviors are few and far between. In fact, I feel a bit freer after having this conversation because a few things I've been struggling with now make perfect sense to me. I want to fix some things and have for a while, and now I believe I have a starting point to gather my strength from.