Slightly Broken: Dreading The Past in the Future

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

Again, another that I wrote before I’d started committing to the whole bloggy thing. And it feels to me like I need to include these things because this is for me an account of understanding myself, partly through the agency of therapy but also the conscious decision to lay out (if not confront) some aspects of my life. So this is from 01/05/12 following a therapy session which I found really difficult.

Why do I start to crash emotionally when I have nothing in particular to do? Is it because I’m well aware of what happens when I’m unoccupied: my thoughts wind back to unhappy memories and invent ways in which I can be unhappy – so I’m trying to avoid them. Is that self-help therapy? Quite annoyed with myself that I’m, on the verge of talking about the underlying shit from my past but not quite going there when talking to my Brain Lady. It’s frustrating to not know whether she’s got it in mind to explore more deeply than just the sleep and relationship habits – whether I’ve evaded or hinted at things. Do I want to talk about them? I don’t know. And yet, if, underneath these problems are the causes (however displaced) of my proper habits and states then this is the time to discuss them. Or is it? Do we really have the time or objective of getting into the heart of things? Or am I now minimising and diverting attention from myself? For pity’s sake. But if this new routine does fix my sleep… why get into the past at all?

I feel sick. Whether it’s the prospect of enduring the coming team meeting and presentation or from the last hour of discussion about myself I can’t tell. It’s the getting near to these thoughts and feelings that is perversely making me feel worse and more nervous; perhaps because I’m allowing myself / being allowed to avoid it all. Do I just need to confess that in addition to the dead feelings, relationship equality worries and sleep fucktedness there’s this history of being abused in my teens and the self-harm that resulted from it as well as the years of failing to resolve that?

I’ve kind of put much of this into abeyance through time and other activities and now I feel like it’s all back – and although I do feel differently about it all, the chance of bringing it up and discussing it again – for the first time, given my penchant for written emoting – this is making me unwell. I do feel sick and somewhat faint at the prospect of talking anyone through what happened to me just so that they can maybe help me.

How to communicate something I’ve repeatedly failed to communicate about? Just say it. Write is as the opening gambit and then start the therapy session with it? Hardcore. Or write it and somehow get it to my Brain Lady – to do what with? Read it and ask me questions? This feels fucking childish. Is this just outside the remit of these sessions? Circular: don’t want to talk about and can’t talk about it so don’t need to talk about it because that’s not the purpose of these sessions. So…. nowhere then.

Start a brutally honest blog about it all and see how it feels? What’s making this hard and all backwards is that at the moment I feel fine – because I’m doing all this self-work and so I feel I don’t need to do this. Which is false. Because I feeel fine-ish during this period of prescription and extra care I’m ignoring how I may feel when left to my own devices once more. And that’s just stupid. This is an opportunity for me. It’s not about my Brain Lady. It’s about me and I can get from this as much as I want to. So I guess I need to make some decisions. Or just act – and see what results from that. Follow an improv principle – commit and react. Terrifying.

I have the answers and most of the questions but if they remain unspoken how can they be used?

Later:

Okay so I’ve successfully spent the rest of the day in self-induced rage and tension. Well done. Have failed to be able to talk to M about it. I’m going to have to do something about this blog idea, because this is getting silly. I’m angry with myself for putting me in this situation. My problem (or one of them) is that I really want to do a cry for help, but I’m never loud or clear enough when I do – so I’ve rarely been noticed in my various attempts over the years. Perhaps it’s because I think it is terribly crass or something to demand help, but less so if someone else offers it to me – with the degree of forecefulness I require to engage.

Alone In The Dark

Posted on By Captain Pigheart

My fingers were clenched tight and the bony ridge cut into my fingers. I could feel my blood pulsing past the nicks and gashes in the dismembered skeleton I hid behind, as if they were my bones and it was my blood the floor was awash with. I was giddy with the scent of that coppery tang overlaying the reek of old blood, rotting and soaked into the floorboards.

The night bled around me and I hugged myself tighter to the empty body which scarcely concealed me. I had been warned about the cellar. But I still allowed myself to be drawn here by the soft music and the eager chatter of my friends. Perhaps this was one of them. We’d been joined as we walked down the long corridor by men and women whom I had seen when I was with my parents. I think they knew them, but my parents had steered us away when we met in the caverns. Time and time again we are told not to go off alone, especially at night, and especially to these places. I feel stupid now.

The thought of my parents distracted me from the awful sounds which came from the self-imposed darkness. I didn’t need to see anything to know that I shouldn’t have come. I knew no one would be coming for us. No one goes out on winter’s eve. If only I’d said no to my friends. If only I hadn’t argued with my mother and sneaked between the peals of the night time bells. If only I’d stayed at home.

The gnawing and ripping continued but my eyes were squeezed shut so tight I could see the angels in stark white relief dancing past me, grinning and offering their hands. I knew at least not to let go, no matter how close the snarls and meaty slaps became. I was safe as long as I was blind.

Perhaps I slept. I couldn’t have stayed silent and unseeing for so long. The idea that I might have dozed off scared me almost as much as what I had slept through. It was quiet now. There was no feel of blood lapping at my thighs as I knelt there, alone in the dark. It felt much later, perhaps it was morning now. My eyes ached with the fear that had kept them closed. My hands were sore, but clutched only each other now. I summoned my courage – I had to escape. The way we had come in would surely be open now, even if I would be leaving alone.

Tentatively I opened my eyes, hardly daring to relax my eyelids for fear of what I might see. I was right to be fearful. It was still night. Silent and staring one of the angels crouched before me. I knew it was too late, but I closed my eyes again because I did not want to see what would happen next.