Where Were You? A Cry for Those Who Feel Forgotten.

In the months following my 'release' from inpatient treatment, I've joined a writing group. 
I joined on the premise that it seemed to be a very relaxed, sociable, light hearted group which, whilst keeping 'writing' at its core, didn't take it all too seriously.
As it happens, my impressions of it were correct. We meet on Tuesday evenings in a pub. A good situation (although, for those of us with Anorexia, the calories in alcohol are enough to send us running for the Diet Coke).
The group is made up of characters who are intriguing, inspiring and... talent wise, fairly intimidating! Although I can only recall one person who is remotely self important, most of the regulars (around fifteen or so) are published; some are even fairly prolific writers. 
Tonight there was a 'showcase' evening. where folk were invited to read something they'd written in the past.
It would have been too revealing, too personal, but a poem I wrote (and posted here years ago) has been in my mind, (called forth in a very roundabout sort of way) by a poem I read on someone else's blog. An honest poem about desperation and despair.

This poem was written in the aftermath of my own depression, and is not without its own, very potent, sense of anger. I apologise in advance if readers find it offensive. I post it here as a kind of offering to those who have suffered in silence, or have been unheard.
It's for those untouched by comfort, not necessarily because it wasn't there, but because the pain was in a hidden place.
It's a bitter cry, best cried alone, but until it's been cried, it can't fall away.

Where were you when I needed you?
When darkness cast death into me?
I bled black for years
Tears turned to stone and I screamed
each time I passed a tear through ducts
too small for stones.

Where were you when I had words,
to spill and spout and squander?
And my arms ached and ached
from holding the binding skeins apart.
And I retched unseen as they tangled
and strangled deep in my gut.

Where were you when I was fighting?
Punching holes into a silent wall,
Spitting truth bullets into denial’s flesh,
Kicking the dust and biting angry hands
that levered my bitten swelling lips apart,
and rammed words back down my throat.

Where were you when the salt burned like sulphur?
My beaten pillow, wet with censored pain
And twisting, I writhed with the knowing
Of things yet unknown.
And my cheeks smarted with their rage
Truth- shy handprints scorched my skin

Where were you when nothing was left
When slivers of cold metal comfort
Whispered sweet numbing into flesh
And I bled silent pools of hidden screams
On shiny, hard bathroom floors

Where were you when sweat and tears
Plastered matted hair to my face?
Smothering silent screams,
I twisted and turned and gasped,
As I aborted myself
and bled secret shame
onto my sheets

And it’s too late now
For your saving reach
My cold corpse
Can’t feel your comfort
And it’s too late now
To breathe life
Into the bloodless womb

“I want to understand”
Echoes in the hollow
And I am filled with sickness.
And grief swells like thunder

In my head
I spit on your floor
And walk away.
You can pay your respects
But don’t fuck with the dead.

No rest... for the Anorexic.

BMI 16.8
42 kg

This is hard.
I'm growing. More, I've GROWN. 
(Groan.    I do.)

It's getting easier to eat the food on the unit.
I'm not feeling the intensity of the agony I was. I rarely end a meal and feel like hanging myself from the shower rail (which, incidentally, is magnetic for just that reason).

Now it's OFF the unit that the problems occur.

I have weekend home leave fortnightly. 
It would be weekly if I didn't lose weight every time.
I TRY. I really do. But I panic and I walk around a lot and eat fairly 'light' meals and feel triumphant if I manage to keep my head so busy that my body 'forgets' that it has missed a snack.

Exercise remains a HUGE issue for me.

I NEED to get past this.

As I was on one of my walks the other day (I'm allowed three twenty minute walks nowadays) it occurred to me that I can restore my weight to a BMI of 20 - 25 and still be a slave to exercise, a slave to the thoughts which perpetually torment me the minute I have to sit down for a second longer than 'rest' is enforced for. 
I can restore my weight without ever challenging myself to eat pizza or drink wine or eat ice cream or pasta or ciabatta or gnocchi or avocado or any of those things that terrify me.

I could well walk out of this hospital, a picture of health; the epitome of 'normal'; cheeks glowing, hair shiny, eyes sparkling; vitamin B, C and D radiating from every pore... and still be utterly horrified at anything more than a sprinkling of carbs across my week, and COMPLETELY unable to even contemplate something like takeaway.

I HAVE to challenge myself with these foods or I will never overcome the fears I have.

And yet.

I feel helpless when it comes to even sitting in the hairdressers for a couple of hours. 
Today it nearly made me cry that I had to sit down for so long.

If I could kill this illness, I'd want to torture it first.
Torture it like it tortures me and all the girls here.

Blue Monday

Incredible. 
It's nothing short of incredible.
And I, the biggest cynic regarding all things 'Pseudo Science', am pushed towards AWE by the fact that, until I overheard a conversation in a local supermarket, I had no idea it was 'Blue Monday', or that such a phenomena existed.


It's practically against my religion to expand on such things, such is the level of distrust (and possibly even... disgust) of anything vaguely pseudo scientific. In this case however, I'll make an exception.


I woke early on Monday morning to find Anorexia squatting at my bedside bed, waiting patiently for a clamour of stupefying chants to fully penetrate every square centimetre of my being. 


Flatly refusing to succumb to the temptations offered, I ran through my normal routine and ate my porridge and apple, pleasantly distracted by Chris Evans and a large general knowledge crossword.


By midday however, the Anorexia had stepped up it's game and I, like a swatted-at wasp, zipped from cupboard to fridge to freezer to cupboard to fridge to freezer, unable to make a decision about food, furious at myself for being hungry and confused by the sums and figures coursing through my head.
And so I have nothing.
Or bits of food.
Or nothing.
Or bits.
And I don't know anymore.


I end up kneeling against my bed, hands pressed against my eyes, thinking of nothing at all.
Because that's the only way I can find comfort in a pain that is almost physical.
Ripped apart. Visceral pain.


Later, in a paler shade of darkness,  I forced myself to drive down to the supermarket, where I stumbled round in a malnourished daze.


"They say it's the worst day of the year today", the man said to the woman as he patted her back sympathetically.


Hopeful for something, ANYTHING, to explain the day, I googled it.
To find this.

The date for ‘the most depressing day of the year’ was first identified by Cliff Arnall, formerly of Cardiff University, marking the symbolic time in January when people suffer from a series of combined depressive effects.

His date was devised using the following mathematical formula:

The model was broken down using six immediately identifiable factors; weather (W), debt (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failing our new year’s resolutions (Q), low motivational levels (M) and the feeling of a need to take action (Na).

The formula calculates that Monday 16th January 2012 is the worst day of the year, when the Christmas glow has faded away, New Year’s resolutions have been broken, cold Winter weather has set in and credit card bills will be landing on doormats across the land – whilst the January pay-cheque is still some way away.

The formula started a chain of events which led to the designation of ‘Blue Monday’ – the third monday of January.

Believe it or not... But it was certainly my worst day in a very long time.

Paint For Peace

I CHOOSE LIFE

Life Outside...

I want to be honest.

Although nothing in me will tolerate the conditions of returning to the unit, I am, quite frankly, finding it very hard to manage the process of re-feeding.

It's tough going from the moment I wake up.

Impossible not to compromise on the calories I'm supposed to be having.

My weight is down to 5 stone, BMI 13 point something... maybe less.

I'm going to do a meal plan for tomorrow so I don't wake up and torture myself in the middle of the night with it all.

Words...

... don't come easily.

One of the (very many) unpleasant side effects of anorexia and the re-feeding process is constipation.

I know.

Not something that makes an attractive reading experience.

Nevertheless, a rather uncomfortable reality for me right now.

(One I deserve, no doubt)

I mention this because, as I try to sit down (which requires an untold degree of discipline given that standing up burns more calories) and write something, ANYTHING, about how things are looking for me (or... inside me) at the moment, the medical definition of the word 'impacted', paints pictures in my head.

The ever reliable Websters Dictionary defines the term as:

1 a : blocked by material (as feces) that is firmly packed or wedgedin position impacted colon>
b : wedged or lodged in a bodily passage impacted mass of feces>impacted fetus in the birth canal>
2 : characterized by broken ends of bone driven together impacted fracture>
3 of a tooth : wedged between the jawbone and another toothimpacted wisdom tooth>

... And all three of these seem to perfectly describe my current mental, emotional and spiritual state.

I feel the agony of the growing mass, bulging and folding against the walls of my mind. I feel the acrid sting of sobs, pushing painfully against the base of my throat and the heavy, heavy blur of words that won't attach to each other, trapped as they are, in the indistinct, impacted shit.

My communication channels been impacted for weeks now.

Lies, Damned Lies....

... and Anorexia.

If Anorexia is a faceless figure in an old black and white horror, then deceit is the dark cloak wrapped around the shadowed form.

As a fourteen year old, I watched as this graveyard figure misted around the sister I adored, breathing lies and cunning into the mouth of her soul.

When she spoke, it was with a new voice; a voice of distrust, defence and guile.

I hated the dainty steps of deception that I heard moving so quietly along the upstairs landing; from bedroom to bathroom; from sink to window, from hand to mouth to toothbrush. I hated watching the cloak pass over her - through her, each time stealing away a piece of the sibling I loved more than myself.

Lately though, I too have taken breath from the figure. I understand now, that same desperation, which shakes the pounding heart, and will go to such lengths to protect and disguise the disgusting truths of an anorexic existence.

Fingers pushing against the wall of my throat, I heave and retch, praying to keep silent.

My dad knocks on the door and asks to be let in.

I am washing the last of it down the basin, frantic, talking all the time.

I let him in.

"What were you doing just then, with your door locked?"

I search in corners furthest from the truth.

It must be feasible. It must be shameful.

"Oh..."

I can't bear the look in his eyes.

"I was... weighing myself".

I manage to whisper,

"sorry".

He wraps me in his arms to comfort my despair.

"Oh love... " Words of comfort pump shame around my body. "It'll all be okay... Just as long as you're not secretly drinking or making yourself sick"

A couple of days ago, a similar scenario. This time, I'm sure he knows.

Eyes watering, throat burning, nose running.

I was washing my hands.

Honest.

***

Not only does Anorexia make liars out of its prey; it is, IN ITSELF, a lie.

It's a throat grabbing, heart stopping, life sucking LIE.

And although one part of me knows that this lie is fundamental to the discovery, diagnosis and medical definition of this disorder, another part cannot possibly disbelieve the truth of what I see and feel.

It doesn't matter that that 'truth' is a distortion.

It doesn't matter that it may be a deception.

What matters is that no matter what the scales say, the truth is, it's never small enough.

Sucked in.

Free Up Your Mind. Then Let Me Know How You Did It.

It's (not very much) like having the jaw of a steel toothed trap clamped on my bare foot.

It's nightfall in the jungle and I'm faced with the decision to either stay still in the hope that help will come; or to wrench my foot out of the trap (thereby risk bleeding to death) and try to find my own way to help.

Either way I'll probably lose my foot.

Is it more painful to suffer the slings and arrows of my wretched attempts to express some of the incomprehensible stuff I am feeling right now, or is it better to just carry it in silence.

Either way it feels like hell.

I've been lost since the session on Monday.

Faced with her, somewhat glib sounding, recommendation that I "change", I eventually found that I couldn't even be bothered to speak.

What I had been TRYING to do in response to the 'change' suggestion, was to establish HOW exactly, i should go about doing such a thing when, I feel little more than total despair.

"It's not despair", she states. "People in despair don't have the energy to argue"

"Right", I say, simultaneously wondering if I am 'all people' and also thinking (wryly)that she clearly doesn't know that she is talking to someone who can do two and a half hour long cardio workout at the end of a working day, on 4 small tomatoes and some lettuce.

Don't tell me about energy and despair.

So. What do I do, I ask.

How can I change.

"It's not something that you DO"

(and I roll my inner eyes because this is beginning to sound like I'm asking a rather pretentious self styled mytic to tell me what I should do to find a pot of gold)

"It's about freeing up your mind"

Oh GREAT. I AM talking to one of the above. Excuse me? Did you see where my therapist went..?

So.

Freeing up my mind.

That's what I need to do.

Free it from the rigid reign of control.

Who would have thought it were that easy?

Being a teacher, you fast learn the need to be a little creative with your questioning in order to appeal to the understanding of such a range of pupils.

In the hope of getting a more practical, directive type of response I ask,

"If I were you and you were me, what's the first thing you'd do after the session?"

(Please note, in order to "change")

Her helpful response?

"Scream".

Throughout the latter part of the session, that's just what I thought I might do (albeit involuntarily)if I could manage to crawl to my car, but when I did, everything felt a bit unreal and big.

I drove most of the way home, pulled up in a layby, and played a word scramble game on my phone. That's what I do if things get too much.

Chilled to the bone and blank in the pending darkness, I played game after game, absorbed in the obsessive need to beat my point score each time.

I didn't move untiil two hours later.

I'm dreading Friday.

I don't want to go back but I don't want her to think I'm being childish.

Pride probably isn't a great reason to go to therapy.

I've been desperate again today.

Alone in the house again tonight, I ate a small amount and then expelled as much as my gag reflex would allow.

In the last few hours though, I've gone and stuffed it up by eating sweets.

I can't change until I manage to change the desire to be thinner.

HOW do you change a desire THAT strong?

Answers on a postcard...

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".

Disappearing Acts

Sharp, scagged fingernails of feeling trace swirling spirals through the inner fog. I feel the nails drag and pierce as they move across old, unseen wounds and I stare, in search of clarity, or discovery. But even as I look, the lines begin to blur and bulge, just like the clean cut of an aeroplane's path across the blue.
And it blurs and spreads into unfeeling mist.

I so often have the sensation of not being able to see something as soon as I look at it directly.
I remember in the early 1990s when 3 dimensional optical illusion posters were all the rage. Teenagers' bedroom walls would be covered with large bits of glossy paper covered in very repetitive, computer generated, patterns made up of tiny strokes of colour.
The pattern (called a Stereogram) was cleverly designed so that it contained an image which could only be seen when focused on in a particular way. Sort of modern man's answer to impressionism. Van Gogh meets Mac.

I used to find that in order to see the hidden images, I had to train my eyes to be looking beyond the poster; I almost had to DEfocus on the image.
The minute I mastered the 'defocusing' technique (actually known as 'parallel viewing'), the hidden delights of the poster were revealed. However, the minute I tried to sustain the image and look at it more clearly, it would disintegrate into a million, seemingly random, coloured particles again.

That's me in therapy.

I so often have the sense that, in order to glimpse something through the fog of dissociation and disintegration, I have to be glancing at it from an unusual angle. A sidelong look from the very outer edge of a very defocused eye.
The minute I try to keep what I've glimpsed, it slides into the mist of unfeeling and 'unremembering'.

That happened a few times in therapy today.

What also happened is very hard to write about.
I suppose because it requires a greater degree of honesty, explanation (and therefore energy) and recall than I feel able to muster.
Even as I type, it's somehow on the very tip of my memory but I can't quite catch it.

Whatever. As I left the little house in the woods, I hit my steering wheel enough to bruise the heel of my palm.
I wanted to shout.
In the room I had wanted to put my fingers in my ears. I spent the entire session with my hands on front of my face.
I didn't want to be seen.

We now have a two week therapy break.
That too has slipped into the unfeeling fog.

What hasn't is the fact that I have put on weight and I have eaten bits of chocolate almost all day long.
It would be nigh on impossible for me to explain the horror I feel at submitting to the cravings when I haven't done my exercise and I weigh more than I have for quite a while.

The levels of desperation and despair are way beyond anything words could contain.

I have replied to comments on my last post if you feel like having a look.

It's About Time...

... that I quit being a chicken and actually wrote something that someone might read (as opposed to small, scrawled phrases in old notebooks; and tense, over-inked lines etching some sort of representation of the way a part of me might be feeling).

So. An update, then.

The holiday.
I won't say too much. Best not to.
I flew back 5 days early.
Panic I guess.

I've had to sit very tight.
I'm desperate at having put on 5 pounds.
It feels as though I am have gone into an extreme place of desperation.

The cave within which I dwell is a dark and lonely place to be.
Unless you have had an eating disorder, I don't think you could ever understand the waves of complete hysteria lapping at my hunched body.
I am terrified.

I realise this post is profoundly lacking in anything positive but in all honesty, right now, I am desperate enough to take drastic measures.

You can't hear me but if you could, you'd hear my insides gasping and retching and groaning with the horror of having to eat and not exercise.
My stomach is swollen, bloated, distended.
I haven't had my period, AGAIN.
I am in constant pain on my right hand side (my liver I suspect) - so much so that it gets hard to stand up straight.
Despite the fact that it's not particularly warm, I wake up every night absolutely drenched in sweat. Night sweats? I'm thinking this MUST be to do with my oestrogen levels? My hormones? Does my body think that amenorrhea means the menopause?

Nobody knows.

On The Other Side.

"...But there's another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.
Sometimes the wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens
later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation...
...I have infinite faith in the craft of surgery, but no surgeon can heal the kind of wound that divides two brothers (siblings)"

Abraham Verghese

Cutting For Stone

As I am having huge problems finding words at the moment I have resorted to using those of others.

This resonated as I read it the other day.

There's not a lot out there which acknowledges the impact of damage between siblings.

I remember in the early days of my sister's anorexia, when the wound of her violent and total rejection was still so, so raw and my flesh unaccustomed to the pain, searching high and low for books about anorexic siblings.

All I found was a reasonable amount of literature on 'Helping Your Child Eat' or 'Coping With An Anorexic Child'. That kind of thing.

A good few years ago, I figured that one day I might have found the healing and the balance I needed to help me write a book about anorexia with siblings in mind. I thought that somehow, I would be able to look on the years of loss with the glow of gentle understanding borne of the twisting grief of watching the slow suicide of a sister I loved with everything I had.

It would be called, "On the Other Side" in reference to a range of recurring nightmares I had for the first ten of the seventeen years of her illness. The dreams were all variations on the same theme... I was always stuck on the other side of the shatterproof, soundproofed window as she was mugged, the other side of the pond as she was buried in the mudslide, the other side of the turquoise lagoon as she drowned.

And the feelings are indescribable and yet, so many of us are familiar with the extraordinary pain of watching those who we love the most, kill themselves slowly and painfully, whether that be through eating disorders, drug addiction, alcohol dependency or just very, very poor life choices.

Not to minimise the angst of those who are compelled towards death by the strength of their addictions, but I honestly believe, and I'll speak only for myself in an attempt to avoid sweeping generalisations... I honestly believe that it is more painful to watch someone you love in agony than it is to be in agony yourself.

The Other Side exists for all of us at some point in our lives, but rarely to the degree that it does when it is the absurd chaos and torment of severe mental health problems and addiction that tear a family apart.

No surgeon can heal the wound that divides two sisters. If I could find one who did, I'd sell everything I ever had.

Writing About Therapy.

Aside from the obvious prerequisite that one can actually recall something about a therapy session, I've discovered that writing about therapy makes at least two demands on a person.
The first is that the victim (did I just say 'victim'? Obviously, I meant 'client') is able to find words for what he or she is experiencing or has, in the past, experienced, and the second is that he or she has the guts to engage with some of the things that are being looked at.
Suffice to say, I've not really had much of either lately. More to the point, as a previous post explained, dissociation has made the act of recalling sessions somewhat impossible.

Today I was grateful not to be continuing in the same vein as last Monday's session, which, predictably (some might even say, conveniently) , my little chicken mind can't remember at this very moment in time.
We did however, end up talking about school days and white knuckle bus journeys and terror and little girls who cried in the mirror because they held so much hatred for the image that stared back at them.

We've been talking lately about the parts and, she has also thrown in the term, 'splits'.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of 'splits' (gleaned from a friend and a little bit of surf power) is that they are very similar to parts except that they are formed at a younger age and have to do with the inability to recognise that good and bad can exist alongside each other. So for instance, in my case, I may glorify someone, unable to see the 'bad' that they may have done because a part of me that contains memories of anyhing negative about the person is split off.
I might be SO wrong here. In all honesty, the woman may have explained but I can't remember, let alone get my head around the concept so...

Sometimes I wonder whether therapy is actually unhealthy...

I remember the days when a "split" was a spliced banana draped in velvet chocolate with sprinkles that were bad for my eczema; when "parts" were things like arms and legs and ears, and "dissociation" meant 'to quit hanging about with'... or... actually, a word that wouldn't even have been in my vocabulary.

Okay. I know I would still have been terrified that the mind thing is early onset Alzheimer's, and I know that I would still have been in pain... I know it's not a simple as all that... But still...

Still.

Beyond Friday.

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.
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.

Saying the Unsayable

Although it seems absurd for someone of my age to behave in such a way, whenever my anxiety becomes unbearable, I crouch against the radiator in my room, and play game after game of Bejeweled or Word Scramble on my itouch.

It's a way of not thinking.

I have been crouched there for the last two hours.

My therapy session is responsible for tonight's retreat into a world of random letters on nine squared grids.

"Tell me about your week", the woman asked, when I explained that I had struggled with a huge loss of control with my eating since Wednesday.

So I do.

I tell her about the ferocity of my four day workouts, I tell her about the pressures of GCSE coursework, I tell her about the curriculum inset I have been on. I tell her about the anxiety I have felt.

She asks if I feel the impact of the kids' anxiety. (The children I work with / teach).

And so I begin to tell her about a particular kid, one in my group, who is in the middle of a case where her secret history of sexual abuse has come to light.

I tell her about this poor girl, who I want to wrap up and hold safe until it's all over. I tell her about how much I want to protect her, how frustrated I am with child mental health services lack of input, how I want to shred the red tape that is binding professional services from helping her for the next few weeks.

I tell her about how much she reminds me of me at that age... Her anxiety... the phobias she has...

I recall the fear that wraps itself around her at night...

And the woman utters the omnipotent, 'yes' and adds that she was just thinking that.

Why? I ask her.

She doesn't know the girl. How can she know that we're similar?

The woman's response is a blank (in my memory) except for the fact that she compared us in terms of dissociation.

So she knows. She knows about the extent of the dissociation. How does she know that it's that bad?

(Note the twisted irony in the fact that my mind has gone blank somewhere around this)

We talked more about the girl, until the woman said that what was important, in terms of our work, was that I tried to remember the fact that I had noticed similarities between this girl and myself.

More blanks

until

we discussed something my mum had said the other night when talking about my

sister's seventeen year long illness.

Mum: I've often wondered why... Why, when she has grown up in this family... With all this love... How....?

Me: Maybe love isn't always enough.

Mum: Of course love is enough... being loved...

The woman says it's an interesting and that she takes it that my parents only recognise 'abuse' as something very violent or sexual...

She says something about emotional abuse and I say,

"My sister wasn't emotionally abused"

" I was thinking of you actually"

That's hurt my stomach. Can I tell her that? Can I tell her that what she just said hurts in my tummy? No. I can't. That sounds pathetic. It is silly and it doesn't make sense.

And I'm dazed and a little way off and I am beginning to pick up the cynic's shield because somewhere it's aching but somewhere else it's feeling like a deliberate game, playing with my emotions, kicking the ball at me when I wasn't looking...

"Huh? What is emotional abuse anyway?"

There's no such thing. It's another bloody therapy buzz word. They get paid to turn us all into victims.

"Emotional abuse is being repeatedly hit... a little girl being thrashed in the middle of the night when she's anxious... blank blank blank

Blasted by an ice blow torch. Instantly frozen.

What? What's she saying? No more. Don't say anymore. please stop. Did I just say that bit aloud? Don't cry. Don't cry. You're ok. You're ok. Don't cry.

........"that wasn't to help you... that was out of anger... It was out of control..."

Stay calm... It's ok... What do I do with this? What am I meant to do with this?

I hear a small, strangled groan that might be a sob

Shit. Did that come from me? Did she hear? Please don't let her have heard

I want to cough to cover the sound up.

No, a cough'll just make it worse. Maybe she didn't hear.

Sudden tears on my face

No. No no no no no. Don't cry. Come on. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. why am I crying? What am I crying for? It isn't anything. I don't even feel anything. Why are you crying you silly girl?

"....... and we're a couple of minutes over and I realise this is a bad place to have to break... just take a few minutes...."

What do I DO with this?

She's saying something about saying the unsayable

"There are some tissues......."

She knows I'm crying.

Of course she knows I'm crying... I'm trying to wipe my face... What the hell am I crying for?

She's asking what my weekend is like....

I'm telling her I don't know. That it's ok. That I'm ok. That I'm sorry.

And it's a blank how I get out of the room.