full collection links 1- 10 . 11-20 . 21-30
A two week hiatus. A pause.
No therapist, time to ponder and reflect and think. Understand what I had experienced and how I felt about it. Process what I had learnt and try to understand the difference it has made.
I had completed the equivalent of 6 months of therapy in a few weeks and my head was whirling from all the different things we had covered. I need some space to feel.
I ran straight into the debacle covered in Journal #33 and I spent the first couple of days seething and talking to my friend. I then experienced a few unpleasant moments in chat rooms. All of this almost had me leaving, just heading off into the nearest sunset and never coming back.
It made me see something I hadn’t realised, I do that a lot. No, a real lot, like all the time. While in Rotterdam in the first couple of hours my therapist said something to me and in a nanosecond I had turned on my heel and left the room. I was halfway down the corridor before I stopped myself and asked what the fuck I thought I was doing. I went back, said sorry and sat down. Something was seriously wrong with me, thankfully I was already in the right place.
Over the next week or so as a little side project I kinda worked away at this. In the end I decided it didn’t seem to have a name, it was if anything a combination of behaviours and feelings that resulted in what I like to call mental self-harm. Kind of dissociation with a slug of inner rage. There is no cutting involved, but there is a desire to try and make myself feel something, anything or nothing.
At a young age I taught myself to just leave, no coat or money, maybe not even a clear idea of where I was headed but away from here where there was hurt and towards a place of safety. Might be a social worker or a friend or a place. Walk miles whatever the weather and however long it took.
Shut down every emotion, never cry, don’t feel a thing just get far away. Glancing back over the years I have done it many, many times. I have burnt in an instant, relationships, friendships, people, places, projects. I have stopped doing things I love, cost myself money, cancelled things that meant something to me. I never felt a thing. I still do it. It is like an instinct. It is what I do.
It is what I nearly did here. Fuck them. So I lose a bit of support. So some friends fall by the wayside, I will cope, I have so far, who cares? Nobody. Shut it down, feel nothing, move on. Pixels on a screen, of no importance to me.
Only it wasn’t and it isn’t. It’s important to me and it matters.
My therapist has been teaching me things, all about neural pathways, how I do certain things because it is all I know, all the things I wasn’t given as a child, all the stuff I managed without, and the fact that there is a new way to do things. So I tried that.
I talked to some trusted people, explained how I was feeling, how I was tempted to react, but could they help me find a new way, ask for help, tell people what I needed. That heady mix of understanding and wisdom, of being heard and validated, the rush of someone caring enough to help. To be loved and to feel loved.
I stayed. I changed how I used chat and stayed away from people who felt toxic. I put a hold on writing this journal and focused on me and my feelings.
I wrote a little version of my abuse story for a friend and realised that the narrative had changed. I had things to add, I didn’t want to say it that way anymore. There was more to say, there was a better understanding of what I had experienced. There were more abusers and more abuse and many ways that child had been abandoned, used and hurt. Things were not the same. There is a new way and I intend to learn how to use it.
I like therapy ~ it changes you
a blog less ordinary 