Comfort

Licorice Comfits

My favourite teacher

asked little me

what a carpenter did.

Standing at her desk

Her warmth gathered me,

thoughtful and careful.

"Makes carpets".

Her laughter fizzed

bubbles of love and pride

She opened her special tin

a rainbow of hidden treasure.

For years I thought

they were called Licorice Comforts.

Difficulty and Disgust

Even a master of understatement would struggle to say that therapy had been anything less than "extremely difficult" this week.

Difficult.

Difficult to find words to write about it.
Difficult to find anything concrete to hang the words on.
Difficult to be in my body right now.
Difficult to feel anything other than utter disgust for myself.

On Friday night I sat in her room and tried my best to stay still as my insides curled and contorted and twisted at the touch of her words.

It's hard to remember what she said.
My despair was so great and she pounded on with her search for meaning... the whys. The effing whys.
My only why is often, 'why does it matter?'
Why does it matter why my parents transfer things onto me?
Why does it matter if Dad's doing this or that ?
Why does it matter if .........

At times, her questions and her wondering lead me to a place where I no longer exist. Where nothing matters and I doubt that anything I have ever felt is real.

On Friday, she told me I had been silently furious in the previous session.
I think she may have been right but I can't recall feeling anything at all.
She had 'threatened' to call my doctor.
I told her she wouldn't see me for dust if she ever did that.
And I mean it.

I was angry on Friday too.
She didn't understand how hard it is for a single person (who doesn't even know whether or not "the future" is a possibility) to buy a house and live with the pressure of being solely responsible for mortgage repayments.
To be fair, she did admit that she hadn't really thought about how hard it might be.

I felt she was disgusted by me.
I heard her mind screaming at me underneath her carefully restrained words.

"Pathetic.
Weak.
Pull yourself together.
Stop being so lame.
Don't be such a wuss.
For fucks sake, get over it.
You are wasting my time.
Grow up.
I want to slap you.
You disgust me.
You're revolting.
You pathetic little victim.
Stop your whining.
I can't deal with your ridiculous feelings.
You are irrational and absurd.
Stop being so complicated.
Don' be so negative.
I could wring your neck.
You need a good smack."

That's what I heard.

I asked her if she was disgusted.

No. She SAID.
Quite categorically.
No.
(But then she would wouldn't she)
Instead she reeled off some disgusting, pity laden bull about how I was wretched and suffering. She took advantage of my choked inability to argue to tell me that no matter how much I didn't want to know it, my parents had not "cloaked me" enough (go figure).
And I cried out of the sheer anger at her, the utter exhaustion and pointlessness of it all.

So what?

So what if this happened, or that didn't happen? So what?
It still leaves me where I am now.
I need to change that.
Not look at why or how or when.

My middle sister is in hospital again and my youngest sister doesn't want to be anywhere near me because she can't bear to see me losing weight.

I feel like I have somehow lost everyone.

My skin screams that it is almost unbearable.

I can't quite remember...

My therapist freaked me out today.
She thinks my mind has blocked out all my memories.
I thought that only happened in cases of extreme trauma or abuse.

I had an idyllic childhood. I just don't remember it.
The anxiety though... I remember the terror of that. And the nights sitting on the step. Waiting. Waiting for the evil to come and kill my family; waiting for the screaming; waiting for my sisters to suffocate in their sleep; waiting for the shadows to become men, ready to destroy any safety I had ever known.

I remember always waiting for something terrible to happen and I lived in a crash landing position.
Of course, eventually it did, and my position didn't protect me from being smashed into a million tiny pieces.