SANTA'S A ROBOT!
I visited my therapist yesterday. It was a less-focused visit than the last time. I wanted to talk about school and getting back to school, but since I didn't do anything that we talked about last time it was kind of a dead-end for now. Instead we ended up talking about being shy and lonely. I hate admitting that I'm lonely. I hate admitting how angry it makes me feel. I hate the little things I do when I'm lonely that are subtle but can be read as desperate if people are observant.
We talked about how a relationship can enhance life, and make work, and school better, and help alleviate fears I have about dropping what I've got and jumping into something new and unknown. Lee says that relationships DO help all that - me, I'm not convinced. I don't want to ever be in a place again where I'm looking to the existence of an"other" to make current life better. Yet I can't help imagining that it would. We talked about my desire for self-sufficiency going up against my desire for companionship.
Which got me talking about Doctor Who and how much I really really identify with Donna. And it was silly as I ended up crying - because her story makes me sad and because I identify with her - and trying to explain the Doctor and his Flying Phonebooth while sobbing really makes the whole thing sound ridiculous. YOU try to explain a TARDIS through tears and be taken seriously!
The thing about it is this: Donna was a huge reservoir of potential, and yet no one could see it, not even herself. She went blithely along, going to the pub with friends, reading celebrity mags, and drifting from temp job to temp job. She was not stupid, as Lance so cruelly said, but she was shallow. Which is not to say she was weak - no no! Anyone who knows Donna also knows she's strong and strong-willed, and self-sufficient and extremly capable. She was very suddenly put in the awkward position of being very far away from her wedding, and she pushed and pulled, and yelled and bullied her way right back - or very close. And when it came down to an immediate choice between waiting for a weirdy alien slip of nuthin' to help her move forward that last little bit, and striking out on her own, she trusted herself. Admirable.
Yet there are sometimes situations you fall into where, as hard as you try and as much as you want, you yourself are stuck. This was Donna, stuck, in a cab with a robot Santa which was driving her away from her goal and to her potential doom. She didn't stop fighting, she didn't stop looking for a way out, but at this point she was really at a loss. And then that weirdy Doctor comes flying down the motor way in his phonebooth, pacing the cab and asking for her trust and to do something frightening. And Donna is skeptical, and yells and resists, as well one should when one is asked to leap from a moving vehicle into a moving TARDIS. She resists because she's still independent, but she's out of options now, and finally puts an ENORMOUS amount of trust into a veritable stranger, and makes a flying leap.
At the end of this meeting Donna, still trying to make the best decisions for herself, declined to accompany the Doctor. A year later she was seeking him out, mainly because he'd opened her eyes a little bit and she was no longer satisfied to be that shallow person anymore. Her potential was beginning to show, and she was using her own cleverness and style to accomplish more. She quickly joined the Doctor this time, after strictly defining her boundaries. :)
And as she traveled across the universe she grew and matured, and she became better. And she changed everyone she touched as well, from the Ood Planet, to Agatha Christie, to the bimbo Miss Evanglista, and even the Doctor himself. And when it looked like all hope was lost, she became the strongest, most important woman in the universe and single-handedly, and with her temping skills, defeated the threat to reality itself, rendered the most frightening villains innocuous, and towed the Earth back to where it belonged. All the while saying, "I'm nothing, I'm just a temp from Chiswick!"
Yet she was the most important woman of all. No one else could have done it.
And I feel like that. I feel like I am clever and good, and caring and reek of potential, and yet I'm trapped in a speeding cab with a robot Santa and no way out. And as much as I want to resolve this myself, I have to admit it would be beyond wonderful to look out the back window and see a flying blue telephone box bearing down, with someone wonderful inside, ready to encourage me to jump and ready to catch me when I do. But there isn't one.
Or if there is, I have to be the Doctor inside as well as Donna in the speeding taxi. I watch or visualize that scene and think about how nice it would be to have someone swoop in and rescue me, but the cold facts are that if it's going to happen, I have to be the rescuer as well. And frankly, it gets a little exhausting playing both roles.
I related Donna's story to Lee, and cried, and felt stupid at the same time. He ought to have laughed at me, crying over a fiction, but he just looked at me and said, "This really touches your core, this is important to you." I guess it is. I can't help feeling for and like Donna. But after talking to Lee about it, I realized I was expecting myself to be flipping levers and saving the worlds already, when I'm really still trying to get out of the first cab. I need to relax and take some time to grow still.
We talked about how a relationship can enhance life, and make work, and school better, and help alleviate fears I have about dropping what I've got and jumping into something new and unknown. Lee says that relationships DO help all that - me, I'm not convinced. I don't want to ever be in a place again where I'm looking to the existence of an"other" to make current life better. Yet I can't help imagining that it would. We talked about my desire for self-sufficiency going up against my desire for companionship.
Which got me talking about Doctor Who and how much I really really identify with Donna. And it was silly as I ended up crying - because her story makes me sad and because I identify with her - and trying to explain the Doctor and his Flying Phonebooth while sobbing really makes the whole thing sound ridiculous. YOU try to explain a TARDIS through tears and be taken seriously!
Click to viewThe thing about it is this: Donna was a huge reservoir of potential, and yet no one could see it, not even herself. She went blithely along, going to the pub with friends, reading celebrity mags, and drifting from temp job to temp job. She was not stupid, as Lance so cruelly said, but she was shallow. Which is not to say she was weak - no no! Anyone who knows Donna also knows she's strong and strong-willed, and self-sufficient and extremly capable. She was very suddenly put in the awkward position of being very far away from her wedding, and she pushed and pulled, and yelled and bullied her way right back - or very close. And when it came down to an immediate choice between waiting for a weirdy alien slip of nuthin' to help her move forward that last little bit, and striking out on her own, she trusted herself. Admirable.
Yet there are sometimes situations you fall into where, as hard as you try and as much as you want, you yourself are stuck. This was Donna, stuck, in a cab with a robot Santa which was driving her away from her goal and to her potential doom. She didn't stop fighting, she didn't stop looking for a way out, but at this point she was really at a loss. And then that weirdy Doctor comes flying down the motor way in his phonebooth, pacing the cab and asking for her trust and to do something frightening. And Donna is skeptical, and yells and resists, as well one should when one is asked to leap from a moving vehicle into a moving TARDIS. She resists because she's still independent, but she's out of options now, and finally puts an ENORMOUS amount of trust into a veritable stranger, and makes a flying leap.
At the end of this meeting Donna, still trying to make the best decisions for herself, declined to accompany the Doctor. A year later she was seeking him out, mainly because he'd opened her eyes a little bit and she was no longer satisfied to be that shallow person anymore. Her potential was beginning to show, and she was using her own cleverness and style to accomplish more. She quickly joined the Doctor this time, after strictly defining her boundaries. :)
And as she traveled across the universe she grew and matured, and she became better. And she changed everyone she touched as well, from the Ood Planet, to Agatha Christie, to the bimbo Miss Evanglista, and even the Doctor himself. And when it looked like all hope was lost, she became the strongest, most important woman in the universe and single-handedly, and with her temping skills, defeated the threat to reality itself, rendered the most frightening villains innocuous, and towed the Earth back to where it belonged. All the while saying, "I'm nothing, I'm just a temp from Chiswick!"
Yet she was the most important woman of all. No one else could have done it.
And I feel like that. I feel like I am clever and good, and caring and reek of potential, and yet I'm trapped in a speeding cab with a robot Santa and no way out. And as much as I want to resolve this myself, I have to admit it would be beyond wonderful to look out the back window and see a flying blue telephone box bearing down, with someone wonderful inside, ready to encourage me to jump and ready to catch me when I do. But there isn't one.
Or if there is, I have to be the Doctor inside as well as Donna in the speeding taxi. I watch or visualize that scene and think about how nice it would be to have someone swoop in and rescue me, but the cold facts are that if it's going to happen, I have to be the rescuer as well. And frankly, it gets a little exhausting playing both roles.
I related Donna's story to Lee, and cried, and felt stupid at the same time. He ought to have laughed at me, crying over a fiction, but he just looked at me and said, "This really touches your core, this is important to you." I guess it is. I can't help feeling for and like Donna. But after talking to Lee about it, I realized I was expecting myself to be flipping levers and saving the worlds already, when I'm really still trying to get out of the first cab. I need to relax and take some time to grow still.