Words Outside My Vocabulary - Need #2

Maslow is kind of the King of Needs and so it seems only right that he should get a mention.

In the interests of keeping this post fairly brief, I'm going to assume that anyone reading is already familiar with his concept of a hierarchy of needs possessed by each human being, and if not, then there are a million websites given to explaining this diagram.

As a teacher, we have this framework drilled into us fairly early on in our training.
(And yes, I know, it seems unbelievable that I am capable of being both the illogical mess you hear in this place, and the reliable, "together", professional, who somehow manages to gain the respect of pretty tough *problem* teenagers).

Anyway, I have always considered it to be a fairly accurate representation of our needs, but that's not my issue.

The real reason that I refer to Maslow here is that when I was writing my last post, I realised that I was generalising to a considerable extent when I wrote that I am repulsed by the notion of 'having needs'.

In fact, I don't mind admitting to some of the physiological needs on the bottom 'rung'.

Even the second arena doesn't pose too much of a threat to me.

It's the Love / Belonging part that presents problems.

I don't want to NEED any of the things in that part. In fact, "I don't want" is far too passive a way of putting it.

Ideally I would destroy anything in me that pertains to the NEED of those things.

I don't mind having them. I certainly don't mind giving them. But NEEDING them?

That I can't take.



And...

... intimacy?


Another word outside my vocabulary.

There seem to be quite a few, given that English is supposed to be my specialism.

Therapy

If you like to read careful, well thought out, balanced thoughts, penned by the dim glow of understanding and hindsight which therapy allegedly affords us, please look away now.
In fact, look away anyway.

My therapy session...

I don't even think I can find words.
I haven't been able to think about any words she said.

She spoke about "mentalising".
(Don't ask me, never heard of it)

Apparently, according to her with the giant therapeutic crystal ball, my parents were unable to do this with my / our feelings.

So nobody heard them and nobody bore them.

Woe is me, I cry in mock distress.

What does she want me to do?
Throw a pity party for myself? The much loved, much encouraged, much adored eldest child who, by comparison to most of the population on earth, barely knows what it IS to suffer?
Does she want me to be upset because my parents, in their love and their desperation to bring us u to be moral and responsible members of society, deemed it okay to smack us sometimes?
Does she want me, in my comfortable Western world lifestyle, to weep and wail because things didn't work out quite the way they would have done in an ideal world?

I disgust myself and today, she disgusted me too.

I walked in today and she just pointed a gun at me and fired repeatedly until I told her that I couldn't take it anymore and I wanted to leave.

She stopped firing but somewhere, something had curled u during the shoot, hands over ears, feet drawn in tightly.
I don't even know what I felt, or if I felt at all.

I'm a mass of contradictions, she says.
I nod.
I'm caught in absolute extremes, she says.
I nod.
My parts are totally opposite extremes, she says.
Haven't you already said that? I nod.

It's because nobody could hear the feelings.
I stop nodding.
Nobody could bear them or make them manageable.

I don't believe this.

Okay, look at the evidence.
So I do.
And yes, it seems to be there, but I CAN'T reconcile it. Not with what I know about how loved we are.
I can't.

I'm not even touching the throbbing pain I have in my chest.
It sickens me as it pulses.
I breathe through my nose as nausea beats in waves, my mouth shut tightly.

Today her kindness made me want to snap myself into small, sharp pieces.
I hate her for it.
I don't want it. It will make me ill.
She will take it away and I will be left, a small, curled skeleton in the back of an hollow shell.