This post is a stream of consciousness blog made in an effort to capture and understand my experience of my last therapy session in which i dissociated and really struggled to pull it together. It is written in first person directed to my therapist. What I want you to know going in, and before you think my therapist is abusing me, is that this experience is a fusion of body memories from my childhood and the present self as I struggled and failed to find and return my body to this present self state. It took me a few days, a very supportive husband and lots of patience and extra checking in from my therapist, and a lot, lot, lot of effort to actively seek and engage with the present despite all my cells begging me to stay inward facing... but yes, I am ok now. the struggle is real.
Coming Apart at the Session
I know you don't think I'm trying. but i am
I know you think I have control I'm relinquishing. but if i do... i can't find it.
i was in pain. my trying, was coming to see you. i'm getting worse. not better.
you were exasperated with me and a little frantic. first you got frustrated. then you got nervous too. and i was terrified.
i could feel you thinking
"I don't have time for this today." or something.
but it felt bigger than that. i felt you slipping. losing control. it doesn't (almost) doesn't matter if you were or not. i felt you losing control.
anything could have happened, as far as i was concerned. anything felt possible.
at first it was just me rattling apart at your questions. rattling apart before your questions. until your questions that i couldn't handle.
then i was apart and
it began to hurt.
the air became thicker.
the thickness of the air becoming fog in my brain hiding one question from another thought until i forgot the questions for the thought. or perseverate on the least you did or didn't say or mean long after you stopped tracking it so my words made no sense because they were responding to half of a three questions ago two part question.
i am in my thoughts. to confused to unscramble our confusion. this body is so so much larger than it is supposed to be. this is a woman's body and yet i am inhabiting an child's body sensations. i try first to make the body fit the mind, then the mind to fit the body. then the room to straighten. but the shame of a too big body and the shame of a too small brain overwhelm as all of the muscles in my too small body tighten and tighten winding in upon themselves down and down and down the winding staircase. in and in and in impenetrable. impregnable as they are, ironically impregnat-able.
it is so bright. too bright. the kind of bright that exposes all the naked parts my body curls to cover them. curling can never really hide the openings. but it is all i have. it is as pretend to be covered as i can. my body shudders. i am a trembling naked mass. can you see my body shaking. in fact is my body shaking? my hands cover my eyes trying to block the brightness. trying not block the being of being seen. trying to be unsee-able.
then, finally mercifully the syrup of darkness begins to descend. the longed for relief settles blessedly over me for but a second. then i am grasping for it. but it rises against my will. like an orgasm you almost reached receding just as your body submitted to it. a yawn cut short just as you begin to feel it shudder through your body. i grasp for it. desperately calling the blackness back. begging the relief to call off it's ascent back in to the brightness of day and the pain of my body my core left trembling with exhaustion a vibrating puddinged excuse for muscles and organs. no no please no come back blackness
then i am jumping at the name coming from your voice.
it's my name. i recognize it as the shake subsides.
then again i am jumping at the sound of your voice.
then again i hear my name even as my body is between the beginning and the end of a terrified spasm.
then again. and again.
then you make a bang ricochet through my muscles. you are telling me to leave. that you need to leave. then you are looming over me.
you are losing your patience for me. your voice is shriller. like screaming. like hysteric like screaming like losing control and fear and screaming
then you leave and i breath because maybe you will be gone long enough to call the blackness back. or run away. but then you are back and you pressing something rubbery at me. rubbery like a pretend body part trying to push it into my hand
pulling my hands from my wrap from my head pressing them on the fake body part
then you are pouring water on me water from your hand on my skin. pouring water on my head so much water and still things (you?) are loud so loud and i know i am trembling i can see it i think. i think you are holding my arm and i know it is shaking. from the terror and now the cold from the water from the fear from the noise and the light and the darkness who pretends not to know me. your hands are on me. you are pulling the arm away from my body. i am losing so i let it go. i open my eyes to the light to my shame i am spent. please let me go. please let me go. you are going to let me out. out one door. out two doors i just need to dodge around you. you open the door but stop me. your arm across the exit. you want me standing in in the doorway. but i cannot so i dodge for the chair instead and collapse in to what little protection it offers. i can hug the back of it if i need to. i curl toward the back of it. i am still trembling everywhere. maybe only everywhere inside now. i do not know.i am fully wrecked but some robot part of me is doing what you say. i am two. two exhausted. two wet. two afraid. two mute. one knows how to use my phone and how to do a little bit what you want me to. one experiences. one hovers. one is fighting. one has surrendered. two are losing. two walk down the path two the car. two try to climb in and hide. two can not. two collapse against the wall. one feels pathetic, disgusting, and worthless. one is still trying. one texts handsome but is disappointed when he responds that he has no car instead of "i am on my way." one knows no one, especially not he, can help me. one knows you can or will not help me either. one knows i'm supposed to help myself. two are losing hope.
you are not the only one who has poured water on me you know. they did too. they might have water boarded me since i doubt they actually tried to drown me. they definitely poured water on me. a whole bucket once. i was outside. my father was telling me to do something. maybe come with him because i was a lazy good for nothing slut. maybe help him with something because i was a good for nothing lazy slut... and i was refusing. because i was a good for nothing lazy slut. i had headphones on with music. he ripped them off my head. maybe he pulled my hair. but i was bigger then the other time. 16 at least. so he poured a 5 gallon bucket of water on my head. i threw my disc-man that my grandfather neighbor had bought me across the yard sure he had destroyed it. my mother was also there at the time. i remember. she thought there was nothing wrong with the water since i was being disobedient and it didn't "hurt" me. that is all i remember. not what came before. not what came after. just the water and the yelling and the blackness i had been trying to conjure up then too. i had been using the music to block him out. i was probably already working or i don't know why i would have been out in the yard already. i don't know what he wanted or why i was refusing.
i need you to be perfect. and long suffering. and omniscient. at least when it comes to me. all the things they say only god is and can be. of course that's bullshit. instead of pretending god is something we can only conceive of, never fully experience they should figure out or at least aspire to teach us to be with imperfection in and around us. all that reality is. imperfection. that's neither here nor there though.
what is here and now is me.
and you.
i'm looking for your cracks and pressing at them.
because you have them. and i know it. and i know
as surely as I know it's not true, that if i break you (in my eyes anyway).
if i can get you to fail me, it will be as the others did.
i believe that you are angry and frustrated and dissapointed in me. i haven't gotten over my last failure. i believe you don't think i'm trying. but i am.
i can see how it's not you. how its me trying to break our relationship.
but i am trying. coming back is the other half of trying to make you give up on me. please stop saying i don't want to get better. i do. i do. i do.
it's
it's just
it's just
that creep when i called him years ago
he kept talking about his friend the neurosurgeon neurosurgeon neurosurgeon
and of course i don't know
but i feel like he was giving me that piece of the puzzle too.
about his friend the neurosurgeon.
my father was a genius to
how else could i be as smart as i am
unless i'm not actually as smart as i think i am but that at least has been externally confirmed and believed by a lot of other smart people over the years...
that's what you say isn't it.
i shouldn't be even as ok as i am
probably because i got something, enough of something and am smart, right.
they broke me with a neurosurgeon.
that's what i think
now.
when my brain is screaming itself to death up there.
"they broke me with a neurosurgeon"
what are your chances when a neurosurgeon breaks your brain.
i don't have an illness. this ptsd, depression, ptsd, anxiety, ptsd isn't an illness like it might be for some people who have just one piece or another of it.
i dont have a disease so much as an injury. or like syphilis. if i have a disease it's one they meant for me to have.
i'm not supposed to think i'm special. i'm not supposed to actually believe i'm the special snowflake. but i do.
i'm convinced somewhere in my bones that whatever happened to me was special.
i mean maybe there were others. certainly there were. but. i mean. i hear so much about people who were sold to pedophiles and they remember it.
what makes me not remember?
them. they made me not remember.
i honestly believed i had never had sex before eric.
and yet i also want to believe that they initiated not one but two abortions.
but it hurt for months when eric and i started having sex. and i bled the first time.
that doesn't make any sense.
what am i remembering.
i'm supposed to know enough. you say i know enough now. that the way i feel is how everyone like me feels.
like what i remember in one way can not be true because it doesnt make sense. but don't you see. i never thought i had a good or even remotely ok life. it's not ok or bad. it's normal bad or special bad.
and i'm special bad. but i can't believe it.
i honestly don't see the end of today.
the end of tomorrow.
i want day treatment.
but special day treatment.
because i'm more than most programs can help.
i want day treatment to take my brain out and clean it of all their initial meddling and put it back in the way it was supposed to be. the way my genes made it. i want my initial organic brain fixed back to the basics. same with my body. like a blood transfusion for trauma.
or at the very least i want to be knocked out for a couple of days so my body can heal a little bit before i have to go on. you know how some people describe crack? they describe it as the first time they ever felt unconditionally loved.
it's all i can think about. i have my own little version of that. its the blackness. but like drugs it doesn't last. but i need you to understand that i really do need more help right now
i need. need need NEED to be put out of my misery before my nerves all spontaneously combust. i want to continue to make good decisions.
or maybe i just need a rigorous exercise and neuroSOMETHING routine. you used to talk about something to listen to. i can do that now. but i also need. like help. like somehow help checking on me every day. progress of keeping my routine. and i know i should be able to do it myself. ok. and i know you think i should have kept me job. and yo are disappointed in me and all that. but i think there was more to it than juuust quitting. i'm a pressure bomb.
i'm just going to stop now. but...
please help me.
