Saturday 9 October 2010

Crashing In (On Me)


Words fly round my head at an alarming speed and yet hardly any of them connect.
The words play childish games, taunting me with their dance then darting away when I try to pin them down.
My thoughts often do that too.

Like a child watching a horror film, Monday saw me sitting in the little house in the woods, hands pressed hard against my eyes in the vain attempt to stem the flow of sobbed tears.
Why?
It's an effort to remember and as I type, I'm trying to get hold of a solid memory...
(5 minute pause)
I can't remember anything other than the sense of absolute despair that had been building silently in me. I had tried to keep it under control; tried to keep it away from The Woman; tried to ignore the feeling that I had been feeling as though I had run out of things to talk about in therapy; as thought there was nothing left for me; as though things would never get better than living with the dull ache of nothingness which sometimes curls me to crisp.


The weekend before had been complicated.
I felt left.

"We'll get you through this", The Woman's words were spoken soothingly but they sawed through the numb layer of post-emotional outburst and, without warning, prompted the unspoken question: 'Through to what? Through to the more 'stable' state of dull pain?'

I didn't make work on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, I gave in to the desperate cravings for alcohol. I drank and ate junk. In a frenzied panic I stuck my fingers a far down my throat as I could.
Twelve times.
I'm emetophobic.

Yesterday evening, The Woman shocked me by talking about codes of ethics and professional responsibility.
She wants me to see a psychiatrist.

From seeming not to want to acknowledge my 'illness' (re, eating) to being suddenly deadly serious. Emphasis on DEADly. It's a hell of a leap that she seems to have taken.

'Great', I think. 'NOW she gets concerned'.
Apparently, she DOES take me very seriously.
VERY.

I thought she didn't believe me.
I thought she's been wanting to dump me.

Apparently not.

She says she won't ever dump me. I'll have to be the one to end it.
I don't believe her.
Give it time.

I'm split. Again. Split right through. Not in a balanced way though.

The split is between my knowing that I am ill and my knowing that I am making it all up. It's all in my head. None of this is real.
I'm too big. My body is playing weird tricks on me. I should be smaller. It's re-distributing the weight... Spreading it around so as to make me look larger than I should.

I want to apologise for this inelegant post.
I want to apologise for nearly everything.

The Woman promised that she couldn't contact my doctor unless she thought I was suicidal.
I thought, "thank God I haven't told you more about the way I'm feeling".

4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. (Sorry, wrote you a brief reply, then felt like I shouldn't have interrupted you. You know, to let your post stand in silence for a little while, or something, in recognition of how wrenching the experiences, and the experience of writing about them, must have been. Then thought a deleted post might be even less respectful, hence this explanation... Thinking of you.)

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  3. Hi-

    oh my - I agree with Faith. Hard to know what to write, if I should write. Your post is all consuming - every emotion, every feeling, every nuance is there. I am holding you close - oh so close. Annie is peeking up at you - big blue eyes, rosy cheeks, long dark braids, bangs a tad too short :-) do you see her?

    Loving you
    Gail/Annie

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  4. I don't know what to say besides I'm here, across the ocean, thinking of you, and hoping and praying that somehow, some way everything will work out for the best. Be well, my friend.

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