Posts tagged with "therapy"

Fishing Without A Hook

I’ve been liv­ing the strangest exis­tence late­ly. It’s been a life with­out struc­ture or mean­ing. I won­der what I’ll think of this phase of my life when I look back in five years.

Some days are eas­i­er than oth­ers. Sometimes, it’s a strug­gle just to find a rea­son to exist.

I have to admit that every pain, every sad­ness is inspir­ing. It may make my fin­gers bleed and my lungs ache, but the pure emo­tion that comes out of it is worth it, because that means I’m feel­ing some­thing, instead of the numb­ness that scares me most.

My one mis­take was try­ing to for­get some­one, when instead I should have been try­ing to for­get life in gen­er­al. I’ve always had the habit of think­ing too much, and not doing enough. I’ve been try­ing to set goals to get some­where, when it’s work­ing toward those goals that’s the impor­tant part.

I made an appoint­ment with my ther­a­pist again1, because some­thing is def­i­nite­ly wrong with me right now. It feels like I have the world at my fin­ger­tips. I have so much time and oppor­tu­ni­ty on my side. I laugh at the right jokes. I dance at the right songs. It’s all star­ing me in the face, but every­thing still feels emp­ty.

I’m not look­ing for answers. I just want to stop ask­ing ques­tions.

  1. I haven’t been back since last October [↩]

Images

This week I’ve been see­ing images when I wake up in the mid­dle of the night. Usually in the form of slow, flesh rip­ping decap­i­ta­tion, or bul­lets enter­ing non-vital parts of my body, like my arms. Not of self-muti­la­tion but muti­la­tion of the self. These images, in some form or anoth­er, have fol­lowed me my whole life, and went away after I start­ed ther­a­py1. Now they’re back.

There’s been a new one late­ly though.

I have a one-inch thick, two meter pole through the heart, stick­ing out per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly to my body in both direc­tions even­ly. My heart and lungs have grown and healed around this pole, and even a gen­tle impact on either end, due to the mechan­i­cal-force mul­ti­ply­ing nature of the ful­crum that is my heart, could dis­rupt my organs and kill me.

So as I’m try­ing to fall asleep again, I see myself going about any reg­u­lar day, stum­bling around with this unwieldy pole, hop­ing I don’t trip, and no one bumps into it.

  1. Or per­haps, co-inci­den­tal­ly from something/someone else. [↩]

29 2/12: The Lachrymologist

I used to be a crier. Any strong emo­tion, good or bad (though more often the lat­ter), could bring on tears like a reflex. Now, I can’t remem­ber the last time I cried, which means it’s been a while. More than a year, I sus­pect.

Getting misty-eyed does­n’t count; that’s too easy. A poignant scene in a movie, the right song at the right moment, even see­ing some­one demon­strate a Tai Chi move­ment with mas­ter­ly detail and pre­ci­sion can cause my heart to swell, but the feel­ing only lasts as long as a few blinks after the blurred vision. When I refer to cry­ing, I mean when the tears are enough to over­flow and leak.

Self portrait at 29 2/12

 

When I was young, the kids in school would laugh at boys who cried — much less social­ly accept­able in this cul­ture — but I was nev­er embar­rassed about it. I thought it was nat­ur­al, the way some peo­ple are gay or Caucasian. I thought I’d grow out of it, the way one grows out of a fear of the dark grad­u­al­ly and sub­con­scious­ly, but I kept cry­ing well into my 20s.

I’ve always won­dered if my dad has ever cried, even as a child. I can’t pic­ture him doing it, not even when my grand­moth­er dies. He’s so care­free and log­i­cal that I can’t see any­thing affect­ing him emo­tion­al­ly. With my dad as my ear­ly mod­el for a man, I’m sure this is part of the rea­son I don’t feel like an adult yet. Society teach­es us that adults, or male one’s at least, aren’t sup­posed to cry.

I’m not sure why it’s been so long for me. Maybe the ther­a­py, com­bined with my study of Taoism, has evened out my ups and downs, help­ing me acknowl­edge my weak­ness­es (so I’m not as hard on myself), as well as the uncon­trol­lable nature of life. Maybe my life is sta­ble enough now that I did­n’t need that kind of release.

I turn 30 in 10 months, and I won­der when I’ll cry again.

The Turning 30 Series

Follow-Up

(I love these entries.)

First: lis­ten to this. Some days I feel exact­ly like this song. Those days are pret­ty good.

I remem­ber read­ing the blog once of the guy who said that his aunt was Nancy. She was a Canadian woman who suf­fered from men­tal insta­bil­i­ty and killed her­self (“It seems so long ago/Nancy was alone/a forty five beside her head/an open tele­phone”), and Cohen read about the sto­ry in the news­pa­per, and penned this song about her.

Anyway.

I like him. He’s very unbi­ased. He does­n’t try to cod­dle me or side with or against me or force me into think­ing any­thing. He offers per­spec­tives that no one else can give me.

I was­n’t sure where to start, so I just tried to bring him up to speed on my life in the time that passed between us. It began briefly with how well I was main­tain­ing the progress we had made but quick­ly drift­ed to the rela­tion­ship, and that pret­ty much took the rest of the ses­sion.

(From here on out, I’m going to refer to it as the rela­tion­ship. Just cause I’m tired of writ­ing “half-rela­tion­ship” or “rela­tion­ship” in quotes like that. I’d say that two peo­ple as involved as we were would cer­tain­ly be con­sid­ered to be in a rela­tion­ship.)

Continue read­ing “Follow-Up”…

Where Am I Now?

It’s been a par­tic­u­lar­ly try­ing week. I’ve been feel­ing so jad­ed. Broken. Helpless. Undefined.

Both the cause and the con­se­quence is that I’ve been sleep­ing ter­ri­bly late­ly. Next week I’m going to try to have a more self-con­trol and stay on a strict sched­ule. Bring some order into my life.

I tried to make an appoint­ment with my ther­a­pist, since I have $300 men­tal health cov­er­age with my work per cal­en­dar year (although this only amounts to two ses­sions). Unfortunately, I need a refer­ral from my fam­i­ly doc­tor to claim the cov­er­age, because refer­rals are only good for one year, and it’s been that long since I saw him.

I think of how judg­men­tal my dad was when I told him I was see­ing a psy­chol­o­gist. But then I real­ize that he’s prob­a­bly the only per­son I feel like I can real­ly talk to right now (my ther­a­pist, not my dad). I wish I could talk to my friends, but my thoughts are either too embar­rass­ing to admit to them, or too com­pli­cat­ed for them to under­stand.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to some qui­et, som­bre stuff late­ly. Trying to acquire a taste for Leonard Cohen’s mid­dle years, when he trad­ed in his gui­tar for horns and vio­lins, even some Depeche Mode. Depeche Fucking Mode. It has­n’t been help­ing.

I just don’t know what to do with myself late­ly. But I’m pret­ty sure I real­ly need to cry right now.