it’s so crazy how so many of the myths that we know are actually so similar to how their peoples created the gods in the first place.

take the myth of erechtheus. he’s an ancient king of athens, and the star of one of euripides’ tragedies aptly called erectheus because euripides sure knew how to name stuff. the story’s one of the athenian founding myths, look it up when you can (really shows women’s role in athenian society, and could it be connected to the mysterious panathenaia festival??? more likely than you think), even though unfortunately only a fragment of the play remains. but! it does say that he was killed by poseidon and will forever been known as ‘sacred poseidon’ after the guy who killed him.

and i just think that demonstrates so well to depict how people used myths to mirror the real world, especially relating to the conflation of deities. it’s suspected that erechtheus was deity himself before the uniform ‘greek’ pantheon we now recognize steamrolled in, and it’s fascinating how the people used the myth of his death to merge their two deities. erechtheus takes on the name of the one who ‘killed’ him, quite literally showing how the previous deity takes on the name of the now dominant’s religion new deity. but he is stilled referred to erechtheus among athenian citizens during, like how the citizens know of his true nature and keep up ties to their old religion.

(religious syncretism is often seen with settler countries imposing their religions on the people they colonized. for an art history final exam, i found some really interesting connections between the andean earth goddess pachamamma and the virgin mary in art, and i argued that it was used to justify the extraction of solver at the mines of potosí. really interesting stuff!!)

anyway, erechtheus got his own temple called the erechtheion at the acropolis of athens, but it’s also linked to poseidon (obviously) and athena (also obviously). anyway, it’s got some cool caryatids (those female column statues) that you should check out because women pretty. they’re probably supposed to be some of erechtheus’ daughters.

surprise therapy session today. normally i get notifications the friday before, and i didn’t get one last friday, and since my therapist ghosted me last time before i just assumed we were done. i got the text just after i woke up, and i was super upset about it. it gave me only a few hours to work up the energy to go and i didn’t think i could do it. then todd called me while i was at work and told me we had a session today in his voicemail and after a few hours i decided i could work up the courage and energy to go. but the surprise really ruined my day for several hours.

the actual session was interesting. i went in in a really pit mood and at first we just rehashed the same crap he makes me talk about every time, which is always annoying “what does it feel like when you’re not motivated? why are you anxious” blah blah blah. i told him ive had a crappy couple weeks and haven’t been seeing my friends much and we had an awkward discussion about that and i told him i know i should be missing them but im really not because im not in a socialization mood. it’s just really weird talking about these things with another human being instead of having discussions in my head about them, and it’s difficult to explain my thoughts because i make up so much terminology in my head. anyways see last week’s drunk analysis on why i do and don’t miss my friends for more. i was on the verge of tears for a significant portion of our time (don’t know why, we were just talking about the same stuff as always. it’s posisble i felt less dissociated from it than usual.). then i got in a weird manic mood and started laughing and finger gunning him all the time. like after he told me what i was imrpoving on. he asked about it and i just said everything was hilariously sad or sadly hilarious and we had a dumb discussion about that. he said my accomplishments or whatever weren’t sad. then later he asked if it was uncomfortable laughter and i had this epiphany like holy crap yes, that’s it, holy shit why didn’t i think of that. so that was exciting.

he asked if id ever tried mediation and i said i had but it doesn’t work because i can’t focus and it also stresses me out about my breathing. so he gave me this grounding exercise where i focus on my sense, find 3 things i see hear smell feel. im gonna try doing that

my movements were all over the place today. lot of fidgeting, also lots of wild head tilts and finder guns and crazy arm movements.

we are going to meet up later this week because im leaving for CR next week so this’ll kinda be my wrap-up session. i think im continuing in the school year? no clue.

anyways i was super pissed the fuck off at him two weeks ago for ghosting me and i still kind of am.