I wanna kiss my therapist on the veranda
And other valuable insights I'm gaining in IOP
For years, I’ve been looking for something else to be the thing that saves me:
an online romance
a respectable career
a peer support network for myself and other disabled veterans
church (although, technically…)
therapy
friends
a mental hospital
journaling
crying every day like a 4-year-old in Disneyland who’s just been told it’s time to go back to the hotel and take a nap
learning to be comfortable eating alone in a restaurant
practicing exposure therapy by volunteering at the Buddy Holly Hall
and now — apparently — wanting a weekend getaway with the group therapist in outpatient therapy (ooh la la)
She is gorgeous with a capital O-M-G!!!!!
And she has the biggest, most beautiful nose I’ve ever laid eyes on. (I don’t know what it is with me, and women with big noses… but Lord have mercy…)
She inspires me.
I know I’m not in love with her — and I don’t actually want to be.
But don’t try to tell me I can’t desire her! I’m not tryin’ to hear that, see. 😍
I absolutely adore her. I make it a point to always be on time for her groups. And I sit close enough that I can bask in her glory… without being so close that it would be creepy for me to look at her the way I do.
And I don’t care what that makes me look like, anymore.
(And shhh…. don’t say anything to Michael but that not caring may turn out to be the actual thing that is saving me… because I’m finally feeling what’s there for me to feel… and not feeling ashamed because of it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)
A small part of me wants to imagine that her love, pointed in my direction, could set me free.
On top of being drop-dead gorgeous, she’s also well-trained, highly educated, wicked smart, compassionate, socially aware, emotionally intelligent, a grandmother, (a single grandmother, nudge nudge, wink wink), and still as wild as a West Texas Rose.
She’s basically Lubbock’s version of Nora from the original ‘Pete’s Dragon.’
No wonder I’m infatuated.
But I know she’s not the thing that’ll save me. And honestly… I don’t want her to be.
I don’t mind dreaming about her, though… le sigh…
When I first moved to Lubbock, I needed something to save me.
I wasn’t aware, yet, that I have everything I already need, to save myself (with outside help, of course… but not with outside answers… and I spent years searching for outside answers).
The first time I volunteered at the Buddy Holly Hall, the experience was profound.
I’d just moved from Seattle, and had spent 14 years prior locking myself in my room and avoiding all contact with the outside world! So just showing up at the theater was huge. But then, I also interacted with other staff, and volunteers, and with the general public.
And I enjoyed it! Even though it also made me really, really scared.
I tried to make the Buddy Holly Hall The Thing That Will Save Me. I told myself that every time I volunteer, I become more comfortable being in crowds, and being around other people (which is absolutely true!)
And then I told myself, “Therefore, all I need to do to heal is to keep volunteering at the Buddy Holly Hall, as much and as often as possible!”
And that put a lot of pressure on something that’s supposed to be an easy, low-key way for me to get out of the apartment, get around other people, and hopefully enjoy an evening of live entertainment.
And I felt that pressure, every time I signed up to volunteer.
It was never enough that I wanted to go see a show… just because I wanna go see that show.
It had to break me out of my shell. Force me into uncomfortable situations, so that I could learn to make them comfortable. Teach me once and for all that, “I’m no longer in a danger zone, and it’s allowed for me to relax now, and have fun, gosh darnit!” And if I couldn’t have fun, I was going to die trying…
For real. That was how I started to view volunteering at the local performing arts center.
It wasn’t enough that I just wanted to do something fun. It had to be an event; an experience that would change my entire future! And if it couldn’t do that… it wasn’t worth going.
I missed a lot of really good shows after that became my motivation. I got so worked up before every show — worrying that I would either lose my mind, because of all the trauma I still haven’t let go… or worse, I would go enjoy the show, and I wouldn’t have any breakthrough moments at all.
And if I couldn’t break through… why was I even going?
I’d start catastrophizing a day or two before the show. And then, on the day of, I’d be so sick with worry, I’d cancel my sign-up just a few hours before the show started… and then I’d stay home and hate myself for “not being able to push through the panic,” and I’d tell myself it was all my fault.
It was all evidence that I really wasn’t growing, at all, because every time I canceled a show, I went through the exact same ordeal — and every time, my brain acted as if it was the first time I’ve ever panicked, like, “Gee, where did this come from? I wasn’t expecting anxiety to show up today.”
But I knew.
When I signed up for a show, I knew.
I could always see it coming… and I never wanted to acknowledge it was there.
Same thing happened with Sara Jones.
I really, really thought I loved her.
And I thought her love was going to pull me out of the darkness, and set me back on track to The Life I Really Should Be Living.
I thought if I loved her enough… I’d convince her to love me back.
I tried. So hard.
I still don’t think it’s fair, the way things ended with me and her.
But I’m able to acknowledge that the ending was true. I don’t like it — but at least I’m not trying to fight it, anymore.
I almost lost my life, in that battle.
I really expected her to pull me through.
When I started working for AWAI in 2024, I thought I was on The Precipice of the Career That Would Finally Validate Me.
I needed a win! And I had one — but I didn’t know when to acknowledge that I had succeeded… so I kept pushing myself all the way into a hard, devastating burnout.
I convinced myself that everybody in the AWAI Facebook groups loved me — which, honestly, they probably did — and I convinced myself that everybody in the AWAI Facebook groups needed me to help them win — which, honestly, they probably didn’t.
But I told myself that, because of my job title, I had become Responsible For Everyone Else’s Success, or Failure, and I wasn’t about to let anybody fail. Not on my watch.
I know, now, that nobody’s success or failure is ever dependent on “Michael Glenn being their online cheerleader.” But nobody could’ve told that to 2024 Michael Glenn, in any way that he would’ve believed.
I needed an impossible mission to solve, to keep me focused on problem-solving, without yet realizing that all I was actually doing, was making my own problems worse.
(That sentence sounded a lot different in my head… but I’m leaving it, because it’s an accurate portrayal of where I was in 2024.)
I thought the mental hospital in 2025 was The Only Safe Environment in Which I Could Come Face to Face With My True Identity.
At the time, it was. I’ve never in my life been as physically and emotionally safe as I was, inside the mental hospital. I was there for six weeks, because I needed to get in touch with my own thoughts and feelings, and I knew if I tried to do that work on the outside, I would attempt to end my life.
It wasn’t a question of, “Could things go south?” It was a deep, internal, knowing, that, “If I leave here before I’m ready, things will go south.”
And I did leave before I was ready — and things did go south.
I was back in the mental hospital within 36 hours or so of being released. They’d forced me out, and I went home and spiraled, and tried to end my life.
Thank God they let me back in.
I thought if I could learn to journal, and to cry, and to just “Make Space to Sit With My Emotions,” (uggghhhh… somebody gag me with a spoon…)
I thought simply allowing my emotions, would somehow set me free.
It didn’t. It just made me need 59 days of residential treatment.
During which, I cried so hard in the shower — on two separate occasions! — I dissociated and never noticed that the water from the shower was flooding my bedroom, on the other side of the bathroom door!
It was good to cry all that out, though! Don’t get me wrong.
It just wasn’t The Thing To Save Me.
(Learning to make space for my emotions, and feel them long enough to understand what they’re trying to tell me… that has been life-changing. But that’s not what I was doing for all the years that I didn’t know it wasn’t what I thought it was.)
Showing up at church, taking the Sacrament, going to Elder’s Quorum, bearing my testimony on Fast Sunday…
“Going to Church” isn’t even going to save me.
Although, Salvation does lie within…
But the way I was doing it, before…
Look, since I came back to church in my early 30s… it’s definitely played a huge role in my journey. And I’m not going to stop attending church. I’m not going to stop believing in God.
But I am redefining what God, and church, and faith, and worship, mean to Michael Glenn. Because the way I was doing it before, left something lacking.
And the way I view my relationship to God, and church, and worship, today…
It’s my guiding star.
I don’t believe I could be Michael Glenn, and not believe in God anymore.
But not even God can save me, if I’m not willing to take an active role in my own salvation.
And I think that’s the part I’ve been missing, in all these attempts to Make The Thing I Need In Order To Feel Good About Myself, Anything Other Than Sitting Down and Get To Know My Actual Self.
And that’s why everything up to this point has failed.
And why — as much as I want a weekend getaway with the gorgeous therapist in the front row with the big, bold, beautiful nose (I really do brake for big noses…) — and if I forget all society’s rules and regulations, and all the boundaries that need to be in place to protect the sanctity of the therapist-patient relationship (and besides, she’s the group therapist, not my own individual therapist… hello…)
I want my therapist’s love, desire, attraction, attention, and approval… to tell me that maybe I am worth something, after all.
I mean… what good would it do me to lie, at this point?
I’m not trying to make anything happen.
(I’m not not trying, either…) 😜
But for real.
What hurts me more, in this chapter of my journey?
Wanting something I know is impossible for me to have?
Or not admitting to myself that it’s okay to want it — even when I know it’ll never happen?
Because from the Buddy Holly Hall, to Sara Jones, to journaling, to Waiting For God to Part The Heavens and Personally Deliver Me From My Trauma…
The part that’s consistently done the most harm is me not letting myself admit that I’m using this vehicle to try and accomplish things this vehicle is not designed, or intended, to ever achieve.
And somehow, every one of these insights folds into two simple rules for living:
Notice what’s there to be noticed (aka, “What am I observing?”)
Choose from the readily available choices (aka, “With what’s available to me in this moment… how would I like to respond?”)
And just like that, I’m learning:
I started this newsletter to observe humanity.
I’m discovering I’m one of them.
And all it took to drive the message home, was acknowledging that I have an innocent, harmless, understandable crush, on an amazing, talented, compassionate, gorgeous woman with a fabulous honker… who just happens to be permanently off-limits to me because of her role as a therapist.
And I’m okay with that.
Because, really, I’m not trying to make anything happen.
I’m just finally learning to appreciate what’s there, what’s real, what is (and is not) possible…
And what I’m willing to do, and acknowledge, based on the reality of what I’m actually looking at.
And halfway through 90 hours of intensive outpatient therapy?
That’s probably an incredible lesson for me to have learned.
Now, back to that veranda…