Fascinating Trivia

When I attended a review meeting at the unit this week, I caught up with some of the lovely girls from my group.

One of them asked me what I was doing with my days and it got me thinking...

Because my weight has dropped a little, I am finding concentration very difficult. I am also spending vast amounts of time walking about, an anorexic 'behaviour' really.

Anyway, what follows is a list of some random information.

Currently reading: How The Light Gets In - A fantastic first novel by M.J Hyland who creates a complex and fascinating protagonist, a young exchange student whose troubled life leaves her desperate to both 'fit in' and 'escape' almost simultaneously.

A Purpose Driven Life (Rick Warren). My spiritual reading being almost zilch over the past year, I decided that the title of this popular book sounded like something the doctor might order. The two and a half chapters I've read so far, have confirmed this instinct.

Being True To Life (David Richo) - A random find on a rickety table outside a secondhand bookshop last weekend. The whole purpose of this book is to inspire the reader to write poetry. Flicking through, I was instantly captivated by the lines:

I'm too depressed

To write a poem

Yet here it is

Simple. Brilliant. Truth.

So far, I've only read the introduction.

Currently Listening To: The Avett Brothers - I And Love And You - Loving this album at the moment!

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues -Quirky, choral, undoubtedly indebted to Simon and Garfunkel for inspired melodies.

Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More - What an Album!

Anything country, as per usual really.

Currently Watching: T.V series, The Apprentice (even though I hate Alan Sugar and the absolute unbridled arrogance of the contestants!)

Film - Mystic River, which I turned off halfway through cos my attention span is short right now.

Currently coveting: The Canon 430D SLR camera, although I have also looked at the Canon SX30 IS. I am passionate about photography and would love to take it up as a proper hobby. However, I am reluctant to 'rush' into anything at the moment and these cameras are very expensive.

Currently Enjoying Eating: Tesco Goulash Hearty Soup This is one very good low calorie meal if you halve it and add the odd new potato and salad! (Not that I should be doing low cal in a big way but...)

Currently Creating: Felt Flowers (er... yeah... I'm not sure either but hey... I have some time to spare between the hours of 4 and 6 most mornings).

My Recovery Project Scrapbook is still looking sparse (but not quite as sparse as my recovery itself - ho ho ho, tounge in cheek, hurts a bit to laug, etc etc...). I'm trying to complete a page about scales and numbers.

And there you have it. An assortment of trivia.

Anyone want to share in a similar fashion? Feel free to reply in comments.

Therapy - The Return

Somehow, the monster had fallen asleep in the overlooked shadows of the cave.

And the cave, in it's way, had forgotten the echoes of it's clawing and shrieking; forgotten even the heavy thuds of the desperate turning as it tore deeper at the gashes of its matted flesh.

The cave fast forgot and its rock surface smoothed soft.

In the Friday floodlight, the cave prayed for dimmer light as the monster stirred.

"You're censoring a lot", said The Woman - (not a question, you'll notice).

I nod dumbly. Then I jest, "Just taking it easy".

Really though, I'm afraid to wake something up.

Need.

My worst enemy.

Need breeds need.

Therapy Breaks, Angels and Emails

Despite offering a full English breakfast, Christmas film, popcorn and a Christmas Quiz, we never get a huge amount of kids in on the last day of term. In fact, at particular times of the year our attendance often becomes a real issue.

Government inspectors would like to suggest that somehow the curriculum is at fault and we need to offer "more", although they never specify what it IS that there might be "more" of...). Bottom line is, many of ours are so disaffected that they can't (and didn't) even turn up for a free trip to Alton Towers. We do well to get those who we do.

The kids we DO get in are often either those who might be classed as our more 'phobic' kids, who are too anxious to attend a mainstream secondary school, and those kids for whom home life is just so chaotic that they prefer the safety and security offered by the unit.

(Our very disaffected ones tend to be off mugging people at the first possible opportunity).

I'm digressing.

Over the last 18 months, one of my girls has faced particularly horrendous traumas. As her form tutor, I have had regular sessions with her just to offer support, listening and as much care as is possible within obvious boundaries.

As the last day of term wore on, this student grew increasingly impatient.

Unable to watch the film, she wandered from teacher to teacher, talking about anything and everything. I watched as I sat drawing "Christmassy" things with some of the young people.

I remembered how I had been struck by her reluctance to leave us for the summer... and also how badly her behaviour, her health and her attitude had deteriorated after that 6 week break.

Having a place of safety in the midst of utter turmoil is not just important, it's essential.

It's somewhere familiar, when so often, the world is overwhelming and frightening. It's somewhere predictable, where it's not necessary to walk on egg shells in case something or someone explodes. It's somewhere that nurtures rather than competes with or abuses.

And, perhaps most importantly for a small number, it is a place which will stay safe, stay familiar, stay concerned and stay THERE despite all the railing and kicking and yelling.

(The parallels are obvious...)

For some, coping when the place which holds them together suddenly isn't there for a fortnight (or much longer), is a painful and terrifying concept, which can result in a sense of hopelessness and self destruction.

Before she left, on impulse I ran to fetch the tiny doodle I had been doing.

It was of a small, silver angel.

Pressing it into her hand, I told her that the angel was going to stay with her over the Christmas holiday and that it would bring her back safe and sound.

"Does it matter if t

he angel comes back with me or not?"

(Instinctive reaction = Fear. Will I have to look after it?)

No, I told her. Even if it disappeared, it would still be watching over her and looking after her, but it was a secret. Not everyone had an angel. (And to be fair, a number of the kids would have used it as a roach for a spliff as soon as they got past the front door!!!)

You may well be asking where on earth all this is going... and you'd be right, because I haven't thought it out very well and as a result, it's a very convoluted way of saying something probably quite simple.

In a recent comment, JSS picked up that I had made some progress in being comforted by The Woman's concern before the therapy break.

It occurred to me as I typed the last post, that in some strange way, her insistence that she wrote down her email address (which I did point out was on the Internet) was an angel that she put in my palm. It wasn't about using it, it was about knowing that somehow, although my one place of safety was disappearing from my view, it was still there. It IS still there.

For a person caught in a trap, the knowledge that someone is coming back for them, may offer them enough courage to hang onto life for an extra minute.

For the teenage girl forced to live with someone who ruined her childhood, maybe the thought that an angel hears her cries, is enough to make her feel heard until we can.

And for me, maybe merely having the option of communicating, is enough to remind me that she would still hear me.

Let's hope so.

New Year

If I had less alcoholic tendencies, I'd have stood a better chance of enjoying the first day of 2011. Sadly though, in characteristic pathetic and humiliating style, I was unable to withstand the temptation of hitting the bottle too hard at a party last night.

My body is not a happy one.

I suppose it could be seen as a fitting way to end a year where my mind and my body have been in almost constant conflict. A year of internal chaos.

Perhaps the battle can be added to the fact that I'm 1) very hungover and 2) half bloody starved, as possible reasons for why I begin this year feeling too weak to even get up today.

Unspoken words lie like bricks inside me. To actually write them would be exhausting.

Therapy breaks often leave me in a sort of blogging limbo, although this one hasn't been too bad.

I was comforted that the woman didn't seem to want to leave me. She even made sure I had her email, although I think she knew I'd never use it.

Boundaries keep me safe, even if they also keep me in isolation.

I feel as though I should probably have all sorts of resolutions but in all honesty, I feel too tired and, rather embarrassingly, too hopeless.

It's been tough enough resisting the urge to entitle this post: Same Shit, Different Year.

(Does anyone else remember that trend where nearly every cynical, smart ass person they knew had a tshirt which declared 'Same shit, different day'? )

Please Sir... Can I Have Some More (Time)?

Four times a week I put myself through a pretty rigorous workout at the gym. Part of my routine is to run at least two miles (for 'run' read 'sprint') on the treadmill.
Being familiar with this torturous piece of equipment, I understand how it has evolved as a common metaphor to denote the state of travelling on a seemingly relentless path or journey, exerting effort yet not really getting anywhere.

MY reason for thinking about treadmills at this moment in time is not however, to illustrate the tedium of routine (although, when it comes to forcing myself to exercise to the point of near collapse, there IS that) but to reinforce my sense of having literally hit the ground running.

As with most people, returning to work after a long summer holiday is a shock to the system.
I hit the ground running last week, and I haven't stopped to even catch my breath since.
It really has been like landing on a treadmill which is already moving at ten miles per hour... Which is a horribly convoluted way of explaining why I haven't been here or on anyone else's blog.
I have burned the candle at both ends only to find that the candle hasn't been long enough.

Talk about mixing metaphors.

So.
A brief update.

With the return of work comes the return of my routine. It has been something of relief, although to describe it as such seems to infer the presence of a somewhat masochistic streak.

My weight, which (to my distress) had gone up (mainly to please my family) has now gone down again. This is largely due to the fact that my folks have been away on a holiday.
They return tomorrow and so, I write with a certain amount of dread at the return of 'the watchers'.

Following a two week break, I had my first therapy session on Monday.
I had no feeling about it as I drove to the little house in the woods. I have barely missed her. Perhaps because I couldn't afford to.

The session seemed to last for at least forever and at one point, I wondered if she had forgotten the time and gone into another session.
Apparently not.
Whilst she has been on holiday I have been utterly self contained and yet, whilst detailing my weekend (part of which was spent being a carer to my - very heavily medicated - sister) I had to stop talking as I was unexpectedly overwhelmed by horrible, strangled tears caught in my throat.
Embarrassed I assured her I was fine and that I hadn't been at all upset about it.
She wondered whether I had been ok because I hadn't allowed myself to experience it until I was back in therapy.
(I wondered whether there was an argument for the fact that I don't feel bad until I have therapy and therefore, the whole thing is actually making me worse).
Hmm.
Something to ponder anyway.

Aside from that, I found myself looking at The Woman's familiar, tan colour shoes (which I'm sure I've never really liked before) and feeling a sudden mixture of relief, familiarity and comfort.
Odd, I know. (I did wonder if I'd gone totally, barking mad)
Guess it shows how much time I must spend looking at her feet! <--- (As I write this observation, I am reminded of a line from one of Byron's poems - possibly 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' - which refers to people walking with their eyes cast down, thinking "thoughts which dare not glow".
Another 'hmmm' moment, perhaps.)

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.

A Fortress Deep And Mighty

Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries

After A Therapy Break

Puzzled, slightly distressed and completely confused by the way I felt as I sat in my therapist's room on a Monday after a two week break, I desperately searched the web for explanations as to why I felt so angry and yet so empty; why I was overwhelmed by the pointlessness of the journey I have apparently, embarked upon.

Note: I say "apparently" because much of the time, I feel as though I am either going round in ever widening circles, further and further away from myself or her, or I am crouched close to the ground with my arms over my head trying to protect myself from whatever it is that I think I probably went into therapy to find.


Monday's session was a proper Ikea session.



For anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of being acquainted with the Swedish Store, allow me to explain that before you start out, you browse your dog eared edition of last season's Ikea catalogue, which has been sitting in your bathroom for a while now, and draw indecisive circles around various images and measurements, asterisking various Wooden Finishes at the bottom of the page.

On arrival, you circle the building, attempting to park in the closest non disabled space in the car park, you have a list of specific items that you are looking for. You are not intending to be in there for a long time, and have no intention of getting trapped in The Marketplace looking at funky striped tumblers and plastic gadgets which open your beer when you can't be bothered to use your fingernail.

The overwhelming yellowness is positively dazzling as you step inside the open plan monstrosity, and as you pick up your mailbag style carrier, you cannot help but feel the brightness of possibility and the hope of a better future (which, obviously, lies in that new set of drawers (6 drawer Tall Boy, pine).

On paths bearing some resemblance to the yellow brick road, determined to go straight to the section you need, you follow the polished laminate aisles through a dense forest of plastic, something like metal but not quite (is there a name for that?) and MDF.

After twenty minutes, having been distracted first by the cheap rugs and then by novelty lighting, you become aware that somewhere in you chest, there is a ball of weariness, impatience and exasperation at the fact you seem to have arrived back at the entrance twice and still haven't found what you are looking for.

You continue to search, with increasing desperation, and eventually, following what feels like the death of all the good things you had ever carried within you, you see something that may be vaguely close to what you wanted when you left your house (but may well not be).

When you get home with your TV (I did say it may well not be related) you pull it out of its box and having lugged it and pushed it and pulled it and edged it into the small space you have designated, you take the annoying little black twisty thing off the lead and plug it in.

Or you would plug it in.
If the plug would reach the bloody socket.
But it doesn't because it's bloody well from Ikea.

At which point, you may do a variety of things (the most sensible of which would be to move closer to the socket).

In my own, rather pathetic case, I leave the room, continue to function as though I haven't even heard of Ikea and then, at some point later that night, I lie in bed unable to stop crying.


So.
Metaphors aside, this week I desperately searched the internet for a reason as to why I felt like never going back to therapy after the break.

What follows is an extract from a Google book that I found, which I suppose I am posting here
primarily because at some point or other, some other Ikea victim may come looking for some reassurance that they are not alone in their experience of therapy after a break...
The extract is taken from a book by Maria Luca called, "The Therapeutic Frame In The Clinical Context: Integrative Perspectives.

I'm not entirely sure whether it's ok to quote here or not... But I'll take the risk and hope for the best.


It explains a little... or enough... to have made me feel just slightly reassured that at least breaks are a little bit important.

I'm not mad for feeling strange after one.

"Why does the practitioner want it to be acknowledged that the breaks might
become upsetting for the patient?It is because growing feelings of dependence upon the therapist arc in danger of being exposed around the holidays so that the
therapist will be most at risk of losing patients at break times. It is surprising how patients who deny the importance of the break might miss the last appointment before a holiday or the first session back after it. This makes them the`leaver' and not the `left', and lessens the impact of painful feelings of being abandoned by the therapist during the vacation. It is my experience that after a vacation my patients seem to be all over the place, and I often feel like Little Bo Peep who has lost her
sheep! An average entry in my diary at this time
would be:

It's the middle of the first working week after my summer holiday. I've had two 'no-shows', with no telephone calls of explanation, a couple of moved appointments and two calls to check that it is indeed this week that we return. Three people have returned saying that they feel they have managed the break so well that they no longer feel the need to continue the therapy."

Now. I'm not saying any of this relates to me... I'm sure as hell that I don't feel 'dependent' or anything like it...

But I have come back feeling as though it's pointless and I don't need it.

I've said more than enough but, if you made it to the end, I wanted to say a huge thank you to those who have written to reassure me.

Hearing your own experiences and your wisdom really helped m this week.

Thank you.

Therapy Break Over

In the instant that I reached for the unreachable branch, my arms shuddered and muscles tore down the blades.
Knives seared through my neck and my shoulders and I let go and fell to the black sea.
The unbending branch, stark against the whitened cliff edge, continued to point spindle fingers West, as if reaching for the orange sun favouring the far horizon.

Generally people seem to be upset when therapy breaks appear and I can understand that.
I can understand the feeling of isolation. The dread at having to face things alone. The thought that, even if you do talk, you won't be heard for the duration of the break.
I understand all those things though I haven't really felt them over the past fortnight.
Neither have I experienced the profound sense of relief that a minority of people express at the idea of having a break.
In fact, I didn't really think about it too much.
Not very much.

I suppose it is in keeping with most things in my life.
I feel the aftermath more than the event.
As I sat outside her house this afternoon, I didn't want to go in.

Fifty minutes.
What do you say after two weeks? There's nothing at all there.
It felt... pointless.
Empty, but ironically because it felt so full of nothingness.
Inexplicably angry.


I wanted to kick out as I left.

"Yes... an OK holiday"
"No, I didn't feel much about my sister".
"Yes I spent a lot of time at the gym".
"No people at work didn't make any more comments about my weight today".
"Yes New Year's Eve was positive"

I lost my voice today. More, there just didn't seem any point in using it.

All wires and no plug.

She was positive about a part of the holiday I'd managed well.
It felt as though she only wanted to hear good things.
I only gave her good things.

It's a waste of time.
I can't even be honest with myself here, let alone with her there.
I feel like giving up.
I am unreasonably angry that she couldn't see what I couldn't show.
I'm too scared to even begin to think what it is that i couldn't show.

In that room, there was nothing in me today that could be expressed with words.

Is this normal after a therapy break?