When I was 17 having stomach pain and acid reflux my doctor put me on omerprazole while also doing tests to figure out what was wrong with me. None of those tests really came up with any answers so the last appointment I had with him he wrote me a prescription for more since the problem came back after I ran out and told me that if I had to come back again we would look into other things since he didn't want to keep me on this long term. Fast forward to the problem coming back after stopping the medication and I go back to find out he isn't there anymore. So I explain to my new doctor that we had talked about how if I had to come back again we would be looking into new things and she just smiles patronizingly and writes me another prescription for significantly longer than he ever did at once. ( can't remember exactly how long).

I still have trust issues with doctors from that shit. Like ya lets put the 17 year old female who is otherwise healthy on a drug that we don't really know the long term effects of. I wouldn't have even known about that except my previous doctor told me that as a reason he didn't like keeping people on it for a long time. I had to rant about that after reading your experience and why yes I did figure out eventually that anxiety played a role in that. How did you guess?! Grumble, grumble.

As unqualified as I may be on this subject I really think it's okay to not feel okay about her being upset when you leave. You can really let yourself be sad or mad without needing to find some logic that makes it okay since you can be happy about other things. You can be happy that you contributed to raising a child who is emotionally healthy enough to cry and want hugs when her dad leaves for starters. We can spend a lot of time stuck "feeling" some way because instead of just letting ourselves actually feel it we try to logic our way out. Does LA have places you can pay to go break shit for stress release ? Sounds like that kind of city.

Also sick fucking table, if I'm ever in Seattle I'm stuffing my shirt and pushing all the toddlers out of the way so I can play with it.