Monday 19 July 2010

Today in Therapy...

... there was the woman and about four different me's...
Most prominent was the side that wants me to get smaller and smaller until I am nothing but a canvas of skin stretched tight over a bone frame. In direct oppostion was another part which, feeling the weary ache of that frame, just can't face the intense ferocity of the strict regime the other demands.

I am going on holiday in ten days. In that time, I will miss over 16 hours of intense cardio exercise. Weight gain is inevitable.

I'm split into different parts and although I could say more, right now I feel too sad and confused.

8 comments:

  1. WS, thanks so much or reaching out to me when I was low on my journey. It means so much to me.
    Wish I could reach over the pond, holding your hand and being there for you.
    Hope you can relax in your holdiays a bit and I keep thinking of you. Love ya

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  2. vacations are real tests of how well we can let go and enjoy ourselves. I'm wishing you a wonderful time!

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  3. Thanks guys.
    The holiday is going to be quite an undertaking for me, given that I don't 'do' going away.

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  4. Elan is so right that vactions are a real test. We're on holidays now and I have to fight in myself to enjoy and not constantly wish I was home. At home I feel some control...here I don't. Even though everything is great..the place etc. is fun...something inside me wants to go home. And WS...I pray the time you spend away will be the best....and you will lose yourself in fun. Be gentle with you ok....

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  5. HI LOVE-

    I too feel the safest at home - the world is a scary place outside these safe walls given my disability. phew. I am also safe with Skipp, my guy. Any where he is I am safe. Do you have a 'safe-someone' in your life?

    Love to you my brave friend
    Gail
    peace and hope and still healing.......

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  6. Thinking of you and sending love across the pond

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  7. Dear Wanderingsoul - first, I hope you find a way to enjoy your holiday, even if that means being the "outside" you - it can be good. I came across your blog recently, and have now started from the beginning. It causes me a lot of anxiety, because I think I see myself here, and I feel compelled to read further and further, because I might find myself. And I am afraid to keep reading, for the same reason. I wish I knew how to contact you; I guess this is the way. I have not read all of your posts yet, so don't know if you have talked about your sister recently, the anorexic one. My circumstances are not the same as yours, of course, but are somehow similar. My sister is not anorexic, but is perhaps a little autistic, with increasing difficulty dealing with life as she got older. She is drawn to underdogs, and they have taken advantage of her. Somewhere along the way, she developed dissociative identity disorder, and it has been pretty extreme. In and out of hospitals, although fortunately she has come a long way from that, now even able to work part time. My whole life she has been "special," and I struggled to reconcile my exterior defense of her from mean kids at school with my internal resentment of how difficult she was to deal with. She turns 40 this fall, the oldest of four sisters. I will be there for her birthday, but it is not like how I hear other sisters talk about their relationships with each other (I am pretty different from my other sisters as well). I guess for that reason your description of your sister, and your relationship (or the end of it) with her, has affected me.

    I guess I mostly wanted to say I am intrigued by your blog; I envy your ease of expression, and ability to shift between reflection and succinctness. I'm having my own journey through therapy, unlike I ever thought it would be. I never thought I would be afraid to talk to someone, least of all a therapist. So when I read about your experiences and feelings, it helps me think maybe this absorption and confusion are a standard part of the process. Like you, there's no reason, stereotypically, for me to feel such chaos, confusion, and fear. No reason to be letting myself sacrifice current time in my life, and perhaps limit future potential, to wallow in this experience.

    But you too are a seemingly with it, successful young woman, and still express so much of what I feel. So I keep reading, and think if you can do this, maybe I can too. That's both heartening and scary; what if you have a negative influence on me? Still, I keep reading :)

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  8. Thanks folks,
    I know i've been very quiet. Blogging has taken a bit of a backseat while my mind has been so busy with finishing work for the academic year and then preparing for my holiday.

    Zahra - I read your message yesterday and was a litte blown away by your own words. You explain very eloquently and yes... I can see, MORE than 'see'... I KNOW exactly how it is that you feel you ca understand so much.
    Living with mental illness is chaotic and unpredictable and the singlemost difficult experience I've ever had.
    It is incomparable really... and that goes for pretty much any mental illness...

    I can't understand why you or anyone would take such an interest in my writing / experiences... As I have said may times, when I first came here, I had no idea that a blog could accrue 'followers', and goodness knows I battle with a sense of disgust at myself for my introspective wonderings...
    However Zahra, your words, although a litte startling, also made me feel something other than self disgust... I guess I never thought that anyone reading here would find anything for themsleves... It sounds as though a partof you has and I'm glad. I so much hope that reading here will be of some small comfort to you... Perhaps just knowing that you haven't been alone all these years...

    If reading DOES trigger or influence you negatively, please look away... I would be gutted to know that I had led someone towards further suffering.

    Thank you for such a beautiful message and for sharing so much here.

    x

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