My muumuu, first explanation

So, I never thought I'd blog - ever - in part because I'm a therapist, and an analytic one, and I keep information about myself close to the chest, especially when it comes to the internet. I don't want clients stumbling upon more than they want to know about me. (If you've ever seen that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry sees his therapist on the beach in I can't remember whether it was a speedo or a thong, you'll understand). I also tend to be an obsessive editor, terrified of committing to a final draft of anything, and so I never thought I'd be able to write more than, oh, once a decade in this medium, where there's such a permanence to off the cuff writing. Both of those sets of anxieties are probably reasons to take the plunge...cautiously. Hence the muumuu, a good way to cover up and still scream, I'm here.

As I was setting up this blog, I was trying to imagine what I'd write about, how I'd describe myself and contribute to a public I don't know. I was also trying to think about what would be helpful for me to focus on in this writing context. I'm an avid diarist. I've been filling pages of little blank books since I was 9 years old and first undertook a "self analysis" a la Freud in the daily planner my grandfather got me for Christmas. (I'm thinking an explanation of that's for another post). All those little books are free associative. In them, I say what's on my mind without regard for anyone else's need for context, and from within my own particular worldview, paying little to no mind to who I am in the world. If I had to nail things down, I guess I'd say that, in the world, I'm a 33-year-old lesbian about to hit my ten year anniversary (I was a child bride), who's finishing her PhD very slowly in Psychology and writing a dissertation about activism and psychoanalytic theory. In July, I became a guardian to my 17-year-old cousin, who brought with her a 19-year-old boyfriend..who wouldn't let her text or email anyone other than him and who stole our liquor. I kicked the boyfriend out a couple months ago, so now I'm "mom" to just one "kid." I craft (badly) as much as I can. I grew up in a family, with one side like Grey Gardens and the other like Bastard Out of Carolina, and I'm still not as over it as I'd like to be. My dad was a psychoanalyst and so was my grandmother, and I don't know how to think without psychoanalytic thoery. And all of this sounds very pat and melodramatic as I read it over. But, suffice it to say, I don't know how to describe myself succinctly. Perhaps that's part of spending so much time listening instead of talking or looking past manifest content all the time and creating skeins of meaning out of so many tiny morsels, so so much that my thinking's always divergent. I don't know. Whatever the case. it seemed like only a muumuu could be capacious enough to hold all the flotsam I sometimes feel like I try to contain.

And, last thing, Auntie Mame's my favorite person in the whole world, and she wore muumuus, because the world's a banquet, and most poor people are starving to death. So, in honor of her, and so many other women who made beauty out of (and managed to feast upon) big, complicated, sprawling messes, I hereby christen this blog my muumuu. I hope nobody I know and lots of people I don't read this someday.