After Friday's session, being the mature adult that I am, I drank myself stupid. And what better way of dealing with the desperation I was feeling?
(OK. You may not hear the irony that question is heavily weighted with... You'll just have to take my word for it. It is).
Although it feels as though almost every cell in my body has been screaming, the cries have been largely unintelligible. Trying to translate has been like walking down the street past people's conversations, catching snippets, exclamations, disjointed and unrelated.
I seem to be in very separate parts.
One part has been in agony.
Some nights have seen me curled, clutching my bear against my stomach, pressing into the pain in a fruitless attempt to make it subside.
Applying pressure to the wound, is what springs to mind as I type.
The writhing and the breathless, empty pain, reminiscent of the twisting nights where my sister's illness was so new and the loss was so raw and immediate.
That same deep and desperate ache.
The ungroaned, churning and building in the middle of me.
So, one part agony... Another, disgust and hatred.
It started the following afternoon when, despite the alcohol - induced drum, beating in my head, I stood under the shower, my inside no more than a shell. Sans feeling.
Suddenly and unaccountably, a photograph appeared in my head.
Dad and three little girls wearing white spotted, cotton sundresses.
One little girl is standing slightly in front of the others three figures. She has her arms folded across her, clutching her arms as though cold; and her face is a picture of frowning discontent.
Perhaps I was cold. Perhaps sulking.
But in less than a second, I was flooded with a disgust and self hatred so strong it might have split me in half, my body the tower of Babel and my horror as powerful as God's own rage.
It's my fault. I was the sister from hell. If I hadn't existed, she would have been ok. It must have been cold there in my shadow, playing in my head.
And that little girl, THAT little girl, she needs to be starved to death.
And she is.And that little girl, THAT little girl, she needs to be starved to death.
I'm at my lowest weight in a long time today. It feels good to be in control of her.
A third part experiences rage.
Monday's session, which I can't much recall, stoked a fire of anger at myself.
How dare I have this... How dare I?
Everyday I work with children who have suffered the most unimaginable trauma.
Torture, rape, abuse, terrible loss.
I go and see the woman, I tell her and she listens.
She talks about me. My pain. Things that may or may not have happened and I am so, so, so angry.
Like me, this woman hears the most awful things. Atrocities. People who have suffered beyond what I would consider to be bearable.
And here I am. And here she is listening.
I can't get past the fact she must be disgusted by me.
I am invalid. INvalid. There are no explanations or excuses that justify my pain.
My propensity for weakness is astounding.
On Monday my anger and my fear is too much, and I vow not to go back to her and I am absolutely certain that I won't, because I can't justify it.
I consider an email which will ensure I am too ashamed to ever return, just in case my will were to weaken.
And now, come Wednesday, I am not sure how I will cope with not having a place to take this pain. Because I can hate it, deny it, minimise it, rage and resent it all I like. But it's still there and
it still makes me fold in half.
And I hate myself with all the raw passion of an angst ridden teenager, and all the weary loneliness of a man at the end of an unfulfilled life.
Today has mostly been a series of blanks inside.
My Very Sad Case came into my room first thing. She wanted to talk about a shock she had had.
I listened and spoke carefully. I wanted her to feel the care.
I taught my lessons, I ate some lettuce and tomatoes, I wrote my plans and I came home and curled up and slept.
Writing this post, I am again struck by the wave of disgust at myself.
There is no end to it.
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