When the teen thinks your doctor called you fat

Monday was weird. Therapy felt weird. (I’ll do a separate post about therapy.) I was sort of numb and tired and just not really with it. I’ve been feeling weird and off kilter since Thursday or maybe Friday. I’ve gotten so much stronger and capable in the last five years. The teen is still really strong though, and her feelings are like a tornado roaring through me and destroying any grip I have on reality. The thing is, there is a thing that the adult think needs to be discussed, although she is feeling quite embarrassed over it. The teen is adamant that it not be discussed or acknowledged, and she is feeling so much shame and self hatred over this, it’s unbearable. I saw my doctor on Tuesday. It was just a med-check appointment because of all my fibromyalgia meds.

Trigger warning! Talk about eating disorder and weight. If you continue reading, I ask that you please try not to judge my behavior. Please be kind. This is such a sensitive and embarrassing topic for me, a lot of my eating stuff ties into my mother’s eating disorder and the shame I felt my whole life over not be thin enough for her.

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For the first time in my life, my doctor brought up concerns about my weight gain. Always, always in my past there have only been concerns about weight loss. But now this.

I know I have gained weight, I know I haven’t been making healthy choices, and I know there have been so many times that I have binged but not purged in the since the awful rupture in April. I know I have spent a lot of time avoiding exercise and hiding in my bed these last 6 months.

The teen is livid with herself. She hates everything about this body. She is ashamed and disgusted and it was awful to have weight brought up like that.

My doctor is wonderful. She was kind and not judgmental at all. But it doesn’t matter, not really. That discussion was all the teen needed to take over and unleash ED. Sometimes, my eating disorder creeps up on me, like when I realized that I have been binging since the rupture. Other times, it sneaks up on me like when I have the best intentions to eat right and exercise, and before I know it I am restricting and only eating a limited number of foods without purging. And then there are the times, like now, when the teen takes over and begins severely restricting right away.

It’s only been a few days, but the thing is, the teen feels better, less overwhelmed and crazy. Things feel slightly fuzzy and distant all the time when you are restricting and that feels safe. I’m not sure I want to stop this, to stop her. I’m not sure I can stop it. I know this is a bad path to go down. I know it’s not healthy, or smart. But really, I just want to lose the weight and show up to my next appointment not so fat. I don’t want another talk. I’m not sure the teen can handle another talk.

I know I should talk to Bea. I know this, and the grown up me wants to. The teen though, is so, so strong, and she does not want to talk to Bea about any of this. She does not want to tell Bea that her doctor called her fat (okay, not exactly what happened, but for the teen, it’s exactly what happened) and she doesn’t want Bea to agree with her doctor. There’s also this little voice in her head, in my head, that says I am too fat, no one would believe that I have been restricting for the past week. The voice says that if anyone did believe it, they would be glad, because I am gross.

I don’t know where this leaves me. I guess I just needed to write about this, to try to sort it out, to at least not lie to myself.

Maybe I quit

Things have been…..well, not great. I’ve been functioning thanks to the perfect part of me. I had therapy today, after a week and a half break. It wasn’t good. I’m thinking of quitting. It was awful. I shouldn’t have gone. I never ever should have shown up.

I talked about nothing, surface stuff, a monologue designed to keep Bea from talking about serious stuff.

She eventually brought up the last week and when I emailed and felt like her email back was shrinky and gone. She said how we’ve just always had contact and that maybe it would be more fair to me to have no contact unless it’s an emergency, so I wouldn’t have to do this contact her, feel like she’s gone, be hurt, and shut down thing. She said maybe she should set a no outside contact boundary. That she can imagine it is painful to feel like she’s gone or not responding in the was I need, that clearly I had a need she wasn’t meeting that last week, but that she thought about it and maybe it was an opportunity for growth for me. So now she doesn’t even want to email with me. Which is where most of my talking comes out– in writing. I just shut down. I wanted to cry, walk out, hurt myself. Instead I went far away to that quiet fuzzy floaty place in my head. I like it there.
TRIGGER WARNING!!!

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She asked how I moved from needing something from her to being okay, what was that like for me, what was my process? She said it was okay if I was mad at her. Nothing, I said. I’m fine, I’m not mad at you, everything is okay. She says it’s okay if it’s not fine, but it sounds hollow. I don’t believe her this time. And my process? I cut when the feelings get out of control, when I’m too far away, when I’m not numb enough. I stuff food on top of the feelings, the memories, the pain. If I put enough food on top of it, I can bury it awhile. Then I feel gross, dirty for shoving food in my mouth and I go throw it up. That helps too. It fixes everything for a while. So there. That’s my process.

💥💥💥END TRIGGER 💥💥💥

I can’t do this. I really can’t. I can’t tell her how much she is hurting me. I can’t talk to her. And it’s only getting worse, going today made it worse. And now I don’t see her for a whole week. I waht to disappear. I want to not exist right now. It’s all too much. I’m not sure I can fake my way through this. I’m going to try. But going to see Bea today was a horrible stupid awful thing. Kat has an appointment on Wednesday in the afternoon (I go in the morning usually but Bea has an appointment) and I don’t think I can take Kat. I’m not sure I can face Bea right now. I don’t know what I feel towards her, but it’s a lot of painful hurt feelings, frustration that she wouldn’t just let me have my happy surface monologue, anger over this past month of December, this painful feeling of needing her and not being able to talk to her, and more things mixed up. I don’t even know what to do now.

I ended up writing and email, and I sent it. Of course, I haven’t heard back and I’m unsure if I will……….

Bea,

I’m not even sure it’s okay to email right now. So I’m sorry. I’m definitely not going to talk about this right now. Sooooo, writing is all I have……….

I wrote this last night, to give you today. Obviously I didn’t give it to you….

So. I’m here. And I’m probably not talking, or I’ve spoken an entire monologue about nothing. I don’t want to be here today. I do NOT want to talk about things. I don’t even know what to write to you here. I have a journal, letter, something….writing…that I’ve been writing since the beginning of December— December 5, I think, I started it after that really bad last week of November– and I feel like I can’t give it to you to read. I’m stuck and lost and this is silly. I’m wasting your time and I am sorry. I don’t know what to do now.

That was something I had written to give you today. And I couldn’t even do that. I don’t know what to say. Today made things feel worse, so much worse. I wish you would have just let me keep the happy-everything-is-fine-on the surface monologue. I really really needed to stay on the surface. I’m kicking myself for not just cancelling. Because I knew it wouldn’t be good. I just can’t handle this.

Honestly, right now, my instinct is to quit therapy. To hide out in this nice bubble and to have everything be okay, and just fine; to stop everything, thinking and feeling and talking and being more than a facade of perfect, because I can’t do this. My instinct is to quit, and to have Kat take a break for a few weeks. I feel like my entire life is spinning out of control, with the bottom dropped out from under me, and I have no one to talk to. Absolutely no one. I don’t want to talk about this relationship. I’m not mad at you. I’m something but it’s all these things twisted together and I can not, will not, make myself so vulnerable to talk about this, to talk to you about you mattering to me, about you hurting my feels myself. No. I won’t. I can’t.

So now want? Because I’m lost, and afraid and alone and the only thing my map is telling me to do is to run away.
Alice

I don’t want to hurt anymore

Please be safe if you read this post. I was very blunt about eating disordered behavior, self injury, and sex. I’m a mess right now, and this post is a whole lot of crazy dumped into one place

I’m not okay. I want to be okay, I’m in this trying to act like it’s all fine place, but I’m not okay. I am absolutely, 100% not okay.

I spent the weekend….(well, really it started when Kay informed me that I don’t exist for her any more)………in bulimia land. Binge. Barf. Stuff my face. Eat crap I NEVER eat. I ate 17 mini Reese’s eggs. Seventeen. And then I threw them up. Later, it was tacos with cheese. And pizza. And French fries. 53 French fries. Muffins. Ice cream. 3 mini ice cream cones. A blizzard from DQ another day. Chips. Fried cheese sticks. More French fries. 46 this time. Eat. Barf. Binge. Purge. I’m gross. I feel gross. I’m ready to swing the other way, to the no eating at all and being a control freak. Because I can’t keep doing this. I’m gross.

I had sex with my husband. 3 nights in a row. I wanted comfort, I wanted him to love me, I wanted to feel, for even just a moment, that someone in my life wants me and isn’t going to leave. So, I instigated things by a real kiss. And when he kissed back, that slutty little girl/teenager part took over. I was so far gone it’s like it wasn’t me. I felt like I was sitting somewhere behind myself. So far gone, it was fine. No freak outs in the middle of the act. I was fine. Until I wasn’t. But that was okay, because after he went to sleep, I simply added a few new slices to my body, and then I was okay again. Except I’m not okay at all.

My daughter has been making her dolls play “kissing games”, pretending to be pregnant and to have her baby be “born” and she told me this weekend that her private area felt moist and steamy. I was already so triggered by her play, the use of the phrase “kissing game”. It doesn’t matter that Bea assured me it was normal and healthy play. It is triggering and scary and I struggle with that. And then, she says that. And I couldn’t breathe or think. When I didn’t respond, she told me “not to worry because it feels nice”. Oh my god. I want to die. Or throw up. Maybe both. And hubby realized something was wrong, so he set her up playing video games, and I stayed frozen, stuck in my own head, physical memories attacking me.

When I finally could move, I hid in the bath tub. No, first I ate ice cream and tacos. Then used the running water to cover the barfing sounds. Then I took a bath, used my razor to cut some more, and proceeded to hide in my bed, dissociated and staring at nothing. When hubby came to bed, I kissed him, stripped off my clothes and went far away, except to know that he was there and wanted me. I’m disgusting. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just be normal? And of course neither of us mentioned my frozen no talking freak out earlier in the day, and he never even asked what happened.

I texted Rory several times this weekend, either just saying hello, or checking that she still wasn’t mad at me. We made plans for a weekend away together. I don’t want a weekend away. I want to leave my life. I want to pack up my car and disappear. They’d all be better off without me.

I emailed Bea. I told her I was a mess, that I was being bad, that I felt bad and wrong for bothering her on her vacation, that I didn’t know why I was even bothering to email. She wrote back, telling me it seems like I need a secure base, that it’s okay and everyone needs that, and she said she was here. But then in her second email, she said that I’m not out of line (oh my gosh. Out of line. Does this mean I’m close to being out of line? Or have been before? Or she expects I will be? I feel like a kid that just got reprimanded) and that it was fine to bother (and what does that mean? Is she just using my language, or am I a bother? Does she mean I do bother– annoy, bug, make her wish I would leave her alone– her, but it’s okay that I do so? Or that I’m not a bother? What does that mean?) her although it may take her longer to respond to emails. And I emailed her back —–even though a lot of her wording felt bad and cold and scary, I emailed back and tried to reach out again, because I very well might have been reading it wrong, or who knows—– about the triggery mess the day was yesterday, and about being mad at Kay for just leaving me. She said it was okay to be mad at Kay. And that she hoped I had been able to shake this yucky feeling. I told her how I feel like a 32 year old woman behaving like a 5 year old child, how I am instigating things with hubby, how I have been in bulimia land all weekend, and maybe I just want her to know how bad I am being to test her to see if she will stick around even when I’m being bad, I told her I felt lost and like I can’t trust anyone, and this sense that everyone is going to leave, that I was so stupid to think otherwise. I dumped an awful lot of my freak out into that last email. And then she responded. And it seems I have hit her limit for having compassion for my neediness, for wanting to be there for me, for being able to validate my feelings, to be a secure base and to help me be able to maintain trust in her. I think she’s done. I hit her limit, like I knew I would, and now, she is all gone too. He email was cold and shrinky and it didn’t sound like her. It sounded like a shrink wrote it, like a standard, fill in the blank response.

This is my fault. I present myself as this normal, together person. I’m so afraid of people knowing I have trust issues (and honestly this was so second nature to me I didn’t even know I did it until like a year into therapy) that I react with the amount of trust I think a normal person would have. So, if a regular girl would trust her good friend this particular amount, that is what I portray. But inside, I’m freaking out, and I trust nothing. And I did the same thing in therapy. I trusted Bea as much as I thought I should. I also kept a lid on all my reactions to her for a long time– anything she said that hurt my feelings, made me mad, made me feel like she didn’t get me, or didn’t care, or really wasn’t going to be there, I kept it to myself. Oh, I wrote about it, I even wrote her emails that I never sent. But I was not about to let her know the depth of my crazy. And while I have gotten better, recently, at being honest and even emailing after the fact to say that something she said hurt my feelings or made me worried, I still don’t let her know the depth of the crazy in me. Because, oh my gosh, if she knew how alone I feel and how much I worry about trusting her, and second guess everything she says, and how I so easily feel left and triggered over nothing (seriously nothing), she would declare me too crazy and too broken to work with and she would leave.

And I spent the morning today with migraine. I was irritable, and not able to tolerate anything. I literally wanted to hide in my closet and never see or speak to another person again. I wanted d to run away, and never acknowledge my past life. I thought about downing a bottle of pills chased with a bottle of wine. So, then I did some sewing. It was as close to coping skills as I could access. I have been sewing for Kat’s (and mine) American Girl dolls. I think the little girl part of me really likes making things for the dolls, setting up the doll stuff, dressing them, and styling their hair. It’s a good thing for the little girl, and it’s a distracting activity that can keep me somewhat calm feeling for hours. But then Kat came home from school, and it was just her and I all day. And I yelled at her. I don’t mean I yelled because she did something bad. I mean I just yelled. I yelled because I’m mad, because I hate everyone and everything and the whole entire world. I yelled the way a child or a teenager yells; to be mean, to show hurt and anger and rage and pain. I yelled. I apologized, I explained that mommy was having a grumpy day and it had nothing to do with her, I told her mommy had no right to yell like that, I told her I was sorry, I told her it was okay to be mad and hurt that I yelled. I realized I needed to get us out of the house, and to not be alone, or I would most likely yell more. I texted a mom friend of mine– who is a very good friend, actually– and asked if she and her daughter wanted to go to the pool. We met at the pool, and the girls played and we sat in the hot tub and talked, and it was okay. I told her I was having a bad day, that I was irritable, and not in a nice mood, and she accepted that. I just didn’t have the energy to put on my miss perfect Mary sunshine face, and I’m so sick of lying to people who are supposed to be my friends. So I didn’t pretend. I didn’t go into major details of way I was in a bad mood, but what I really needed was someone to accept me where I was. And she did that.

I texted hubby while I was still at home, after I had yelled for the 5th, 6th, 7th time. His response? “Do I need to come home?” It didn’t feel supportive. It felt like he was saying, “I don’t have time to deal with this, but I am stuck with a crazy, broken, defective wife, so I might as well ask if I need to come home and takeover for her before she screws up our child and turns her into an emotional wreck.” I told him no.

I don’t know what I want, or what I need. I only know I’m mad, and hurt and confused and scared and sorry. I hate that whatever happened in my childhood has once again turned my daughter into a giant trigger. I hate that I have put myself in this place of not trusting anyone, of always being scared of what they really mean and what they really think and what they are really going to do. I hate that I feel like I have to have sex with my husband so that he will love me. I hate that Kay leaving me has made me this crazy person, terrified of being left and afraid to trust anyone with anything. I hate that I feel disconnected from everyone in my life right now. I hate that I’m so dissociated that everything is a blur, and I’m numb and gone, and I hate that I’m too afraid to do anything to be more grounded because that means feelings and I can’t handle the feelings. I hate that Bea is on vacation, because right now, I feel like I could go to therapy everyday and that still wouldn’t be enough to contain this mess in my head or help me feel like I’m not alone. I hate that my parents weren’t there emotionally like they should have been, and that I’m unable to cope with anything because of that. I hate that it’s 4:15 in the morning and I only slept a little more than an hour because of nightmares about Kenny and the boyfriend together.

I hate that I’m a broken, out of control mess, and the only way I know how to fix it is to be a control freak over every aspect in my life, so that nothing can get screwed up, and so there is no time to think, or feel or be scared. I hate that being that way means everyone in my life will think I’m okay, including Bea, and I won’t say otherwise. I hate that I can see myself turning from this healing road and heading down this path, and that I know it is a bad path, but I want to follow it. I want desperately to follow it. And what does that say about me, that I would choose to follow the fork in the road, the bad path, instead of the healing road? But it’s safe. It’s familiar. Nothing bad or scary happens on this path. I know it’s a path that ultimately ends in hurt and mess, but for a while, when I’m on the path, it’s clean and bright and filled with flowers and pretty trees and cute little forest creatures. I don’t really want to follow this path. I just don’t want to hurt anymore.

Monday: part five, honesty about the eating disorder

This was maybe one of the most surprising things I wrote (and allowed Bea to read) on Monday. This is all about eating disorders, and why I don’t want to talk about it. Bea has mentioned it a few times, casually, but I am aware this is the year she wants us to at least have more of a conversation and bring the eating disorder out of the shadowy land of make believe and into the real world. I feel the need to place a trigger warning on this, because I was more honest than I’ve ever been, and it could be triggering if you have or have had an eating disorder. Please read safely. Xx

Which brings us to the whole nutritionist thing. I know I said something about it Thursday, and we had somewhat of a conversation…..but I wasn’t so here and grounded. Gah. I want her to get better. I do. But then. I don’t know. It just feels very threatening. Like if she gives up her eating disorder, then I can certainly give up the odd eating habits I have. Ugh. I don’t know. And I know you think I should be able to talk about it, but I don’t even know what to say. And I know my eating stuff exists in this shadowy not real place, but I sort of like it that way. I don’t want it to be real to anyone but me. Because then…..I don’t know. I can say there is nothing wrong. That I have quirky habits, am a picky eater. I don’t know. I only know I get very afraid to talk about it all, and I feel like just talking about is it going to mean someone taking it away, that I won’t be in control anymore. And that brings out this very defiant teenager feeling part in me, and it makes me want to grab onto the eating issues with both hands and never give them up.

“Yeah. Of course you want to grab onto this with everything you have and not let go. With all that is going on in your life, all the upheaval and changes, how could you not? I’m not taking it away, I don’t have that power. I only want to bring it to the light, so you can make informed choices.” Bea says carefully. I can feel how carefully she is treading, she is so aware how touchy this subject is and what a big deal it is to be talking about this at all, and I’ve been so honest…ugh.

“I am making a choice.” I mumble, whisper, the sentence. I’m not sure I even want her to hear what I’ve said. It feels a bit sassy, a bit like teen me is peeking out, testing the waters.

“It feels to you like you are making a choice. From the outside…it appears, at times, that it is controlling you.” It’s said kindly, and gently.

“No, not at all. I make the choice.” This time, I’m firm and bordering on rude. I hate the way I sound, but I can’t really control it, either. How do you explain that you can’t stop your reactions, even when you don’t like them or want to react differently?

Bea accepts the anger in my voice, and lets it go. She isn’t going to win this argument, and I don’t think she warms to fight with me about this; she warms to support me, help me.

And that defiant teenager feeling part of me is not nice. It’s not even just sassy, or difficult. That part is mean and cruel and easily angered over nothing. And really, bulimic behaviors are gross. Like seriously gross. I’m not sure I can actually talk about that. Because it’s gross. And embarrassing. And…this is seriously uncomfortable to even try to put what I think I into words…….it’s the whole…weight thing. I assume, I feel, like anyone who is discussing food with me is judging me and my weight, thinking I just shouldn’t be eating at all, that I’m too fat to eat. I don’t know. I think that discussing eating draws attention to my body, and I can’t…I don’t like that…..it’s just not okay. I don’t know. And then I think anyone who knows about the eating issues must think I should try a little harder….like be a better anorexic or something. And I can’t….I don’t know, discussing bulimic behavior is as intolerable to me as actually saying the words of things that happened when I was a kid out loud. Not okay. Disgusting, and anyone who hears it will judge me as gross and bad and want nothing to do with me. ……….. So, I am scared to talk about eating stuff because I don’t want to not be the one in control, and I’m afraid I’ll look crazy because of the eating issues– the rules, behaviors, I don’t know…I’m afraid to show just what a control freak I am– and I’m afraid to have this angry, mean part of me show up. Because I don’t know what will happen then. It’s scary. And all the eating stuff is really so twisted in with so much of my life, where in the world do we start? It’s messy. And I don’t like messy. And maybe there really is nothing wrong and I am just a very quirky eater. Maybe none of it is even a big deal and I’m making a deal out of nothing. So there it is. All the reasons I’m afraid to talk about this.

“You,” Bea says, “have been doing some very hard work. You have been doing a lot of processing, haven’t you?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“This is big stuff. This is what I have been saying, giving it shape, color, making it real. You made the fear of talking about this real. I can tell you, I can handle the angry teenager when you are ready for me to see her. And I’m not thinking anything bad about you, nothing at all. I’m not going anywhere.”

I let a few tears of relief, of just too much pent up emotions, slide down my cheeks. I’m shaking with nerves, and with relief. She can handle the angry part when I’m ready for that part to be seen. Not now. But she says she can handle it.

“So many people have control issues. Especially if trauma is involved, because trauma is a huge loss of control. Of course you are looking for control. And this is a very big way you can have control; a very concrete, here and now way. It’s not crazy.” I think Bea is reading back over the paragraph I’ve written, and is now addressing other fears she is noticing. “We can talk about this more as you are ready. I’m really glad you are looking at it, and sharing this with me.”

“I’m not…not changing…this..” I say, slowly.

“You don’t have to.” She reassures me. There is no panic or worry in her voice. She might not like what I choose to do, but I think she understands it as much as a person can, and she accepts it for where it is at the moment.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I think you are in the thinking and processing and writing about it stage. And that is right where you need to be.”

We sit in silence for a moment, and I’m afraid Bea has moved on to reading the last part of my messy list. I have one more thing I need to say. Really, I think it’s the defiant angry teenager who needs to say it, because I feel afraid and silly and embarrassed to say it. But I do. “I’m in control.”

“What?” Bea asks. She didn’t hear me, I mumbled it and had this sarcastic angry edge to my voice that isn’t common for me at all. For a moment though, I think she is saying ‘what’ in a ‘I can’t believe you said that’ sort of way, and my feelings are beyond hurt. “I didn’t hear you,” Bea clarifies, after I don’t say anything else. Maybe she realizes I was hurt.

I shake my head, feeling so dumb for not realizing why she said what, and repeat myself. “I’m in control of the eating stuff. And I don’t have to change or stop. And I’m in control of talking about it. That’s the rule right? You can’t talk about it?”

“Well…if you need that rule, then yes. But I really hate to have things I can’t bring up at all in this space. I’d rather bring it up and have you make the choice, tell me you don’t want to talk about it.” She says softly.

“And then you really won’t talk about it?” I double check. Angry teenager does not trust anyone, and believes everything is a trick. Who can really blame her, though? That’s been her experience.

“I really will listen. If you say not right, not today, I’ll listen. And I won’t talk about it.”

I think about this. Maybe I am trying to convince the teenager it’s okay.

“And you are in charge of when or if eating changes.” Bea adds.

“Okay. No rule that you can’t talk. Okay.” I say. I sort of feel like saying ‘you win.’ except I know that’s the angry teen, so I hold that inside.

“This is good. It’s hard, it was a lot of hard work. But I am glad you shared it, and that the eating has some reality to it for me, and maybe for you, too.” Bea says.

I nod. I mostly feel pretty numb. I really can’t believe I have shared the reasons why I won’t talk with Bea, and she took them pretty okay. It’s a lot, but I’m glad Bea knows. I feel okay about that, which surprises me.

Picking at the scab

It’s Monday morning and I’m in Bea’s office, snuggled with Hagrid on her couch.

“So,” Bea takes a breath, and then continues, “I think it is interesting that you describe Kat’s grumpy mouse (this mini mouse puppet who has the grumpiest personality on the planet and only likes rude, gross, mean things. It’s sort of a representation of the parts of ourselves we find unacceptable and fear being rejected) as having to become ‘real’ if it is going to school with her. Because that’s what we are working on with you, right? Integrating all the parts and feelings, so that you are whole, and not just grumpy or just perfect. So it’s not this or that, but this and that.”
I stop looking at her, and look down at the blue rug her chair in on. We’ve apparently come to the end of small talk….of being on the surface. And, part of me knows it has to be over with. I can’t maintain being on the surface, I can’t keep stuffing feelings down, or distancing myself from reality. But…I don’t want to be in this room. I don’t want to have this conversation. It’s funny how even in the spring, Bea’s office was one of the safest places on earth to me. Even through the summer, no matter how much I stayed on the surface, I needed to see her twice a week, to know she was there. It felt safe. Now, it feels anything but. Everything in me is screaming that it is dangerous to be here, that I need to leave.
When it’s fairly obvious that I’m not going to respond, she continues, “I think it would have been very cruel to ask about things a few weeks ago; I know you needed that distance. But now, it’s all past. You got through it, and it feels like things are becoming more settled. Now, we can pick at the scab a little bit.”
I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. I get it; I have held it together all summer, but I’m not so sure I can contain it all much longer.
“You’ve helped Kat through a lot of transitions. You helped your nanny through a really hard time; one that could have been been triggering for you. Your parents separated for a few weeks and are in therapy. Your hubby and his mother had a huge fight, she said terrible things about you. You’ve got Kat settled with her ABA techs, and you even have managed to provide some safety and connection for the one tech who was a challenge. You have worked with the school, and been very organized, to get Kat settled there. You’ve been on top of things all summer. You’ve done some really amazing things summer. But what happens when you can take Kat to school that first day, and leave her crying in the classroom, and then drive home without crying? Those feelings are there somewhere.” Bea says softly. She’s spoken about this before, how kids starting school is a big change, kind of the end of that baby and toddlerhood. That is is normal to feel nostalgic and have tears. I want to shout at her, ‘and what if I don’t? What if I am just detached and fine? Then what?’ But I don’t. I don’t say anything. So Bea continues, “You needed this break, this time to be detached. I knew that. And I think that this summer showed us a lot about therapy………”
And that’s where I really just go away. I think she says the summer showed us a lot about therapy and our relationship and how strong I am. I don’t know. All I can think about is that I am not doing this, this conversation is bad. And that now she expects me to always be okay. She expects me to never fall apart. To hold it together. The one person I thought it was safe to be real with now has expectations that I can get through hard stuff and function and be just fine. I don’t know. I can’t think, everything is fuzzy and hazy and Bea’s voice is far away and nothing feels very real right now, and my body feels numb, almost separate from me.
“…….so maybe we could start there,” Bea says.
I lift my head and stare at her. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” I tell her blankly. I’m lost.
“Well, think of it like we are taking your internal weather report,” she suggests.
“I’m fine. I don’t know.” I shrug. What the hell does she want from me?
“I’m sensing that you are pretty far away right now. Has it felt like that this summer? It felt like to me that you were staying on the surface, but that you were aware of things going on deeper, at least at times.” Bea takes a drink of tea, and focuses on me.
I’m not sure. This summer was weird. I was aware of keeping things locked away, because I couldn’t deal with them then. But it’s like part of me was…gone. But part of me was aware and here even if only on the surface and detached from emotions. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” I shake my head. I feel….confused. I’m not sure how to explain this.
“In the past, you’ve described being in the bubble almost as a negative thing. This felt different to me.”
“No….it wasn’t the bubble.” I pick at my fingers, hiding my hands in the sleeves of my oversized sweater. “It was….here…but not. Both?”
“Mmmhm,” Bea gives me one of her ‘verbal nods’, encouraging me to keep talking.
“Like….I don’t know….” It’s so very hard to find the words to describe this. It’s like even pulling the experience from my memory is difficult. I fight my way through the fogginess, and come up with only a few words. “Maybe it was like……maybe being just gone enough?” It comes out as a question, and in a way, I am asking Bea if I’m right. If that makes sense, if that is explaining anything to her.
“To stay detached from all the feelings? And to stay right on the surface?”
I nod. That’s it. But not. I don’t know. “Yeah…I think…I don’t know.”
“Have you ever felt so unreal that you are surprised when someone talks to you? Like it’s surprising that they can see you?” Bea’s voice is conversational; if a person were to her tone but not her words, they would never guess the crazy making question she is asking me.
I shake my head, slowly. That’s not it. It’s more annoyance when people talk to me, because they pull me back from being away. It’s tiring to keep this balance of here, but not here, of just on the surface but detached from feelings, and having to interact with people and act normal is tiring and hard. I stutter, and repeat myself, and lose words, and leave big gaps in between thoughts sometimes. But I’m way too hyper-aware of my surroundings to ever be surprised when people talk to me. I don’t say any of that though, how does one explain that crazy to another person? “No. Not like that,” I tell her. Then, after a moment of silence, I say, “I’ve held it together, and stayed on the surface. But I’m not….”
“Not what?” She prompts when I stop myself from speaking. My crazy fast and amazing filter is back in place.
“Not sure…” I start and stop a few times. I finally bury my face in Hagrid’s fur, and take a deep breath. “I’m not sure how much longer…I can…I mean, how much longer….”
“How much longer you can contain it all?”
I nod. Yes.
“That’s what I was starting to get at. We need to talk about the cost of being okay, functioning on the surface,” Bea says slowly. I have a feeling she has been planning this for a few weeks; that when things settled down, we would talk and pick at the scab. I feel a little betrayed, even though I knew we had to talk about everything, so many things, eventually. The feeling makes no sense to me.
“I don’t know. It is what it is. I don’t know the answer,” I tell her. Nothing feels quite right. Even far away, I still feel like I need to leave, like this is not safe.
“Let’s start with the basics. Sleep. Eating.” Bea’s voice is neutral, but it still incites panic in me. I squash it down.
I shrug. “I don’t sleep. I don’t know. It’s….up and down, restless. Even when I do sleep, I don’t feel like I did.” I don’t mention the doctor or the sleeping meds. I’ve given up on them anyway, they don’t work. “I just…I don’t know. Some nightmares, some waking up feeling scared but no dreams to remember, I don’t know.”
“I wonder if the nightmares are better when we aren’t digging everything up. Stirring the waters.”
I shake my head.”Yes and no. Sometimes, I think so. But then…like camping and the Ferris wheel. I think they were worse. The worst they had been in a long time, because I wasn’t talking. But I couldn’t. I don’t know.”
“That’s good information for us to have.” I think she says more, but I can’t focus on what she is saying.
“It’s my fault I don’t sleep. I don’t….I just..” I shrug.
“Why do you say that?” Bea is curious.
“Because I fight sleep. I can be so, so tired, and I will fight falling asleep. It doesn’t matter.”
“That makes sense. You’ve had a lot of bad things associated with sleep.” She tries to normalize to for me. But it doesn’t really help. Not right now. I need to be able to sleep, and knowing my fighting sleep makes sense doesn’t fix anything. I just want to be normal.
“Does Hagrid help?” She asks me.

I nod. I want to tell her that he is safe and helps so much more than I ever thought possible. I want to explain that having him to hug after a bad dream is priceless. I want to say so much about how magical he is in my life. “After bad dreams, it helps to hug him.” I finally say. It seems too vulnerable making to say more.

“There is nothing more grounding than cuddling a dog.” She agrees. “I’m glad you have him.”

I stop talking after that. I’m not talking about eating. Not today. Maybe not ever.

“What about eating?” Bea asks. She’s not going to let me escape that one.
“I don’t….I don’t want to talk about it.” I hug Hagrid, like he can help convince Bea to leave it alone.
“That tells me it’s something we should talk about. Is it more control or less control?” Bea’s statement isn’t really clear, I’m really far now. This is not okay, not a safe topic. The gist of it comes through anyways, though.
“I don’t know. It’s fine. I just….I don’t want to talk about it.” My voice is hollow, wooden.
“When I say we should look at the basics of sleep and eating, those are two things anyone should monitor in times of stress. They are two things we all need to survive.”
I shake my head. What am I to even tell her? That I’m eating a limited list of ‘safe’ foods? That it’s the shortest list I’ve had in years? That I screw up and eat something off the list at least once every few days, and so then I full on binge and purge? That I’m back to my old purging rituals? No thank you. I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to have that part of me be seen.
“What about your feelings? Do you know where they are?”
A year ago I would have thought she was nuts. Now, I shake my head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t…they just had to be….detached. I don’t know.” I shrug.
“And that’s what our work is right now. Finding those feelings; reconnecting to them.” She says this softly, like she is trying to reassure me it’s okay.
“I don’t know how anymore.” I’m too overwhelmed. It’s all too much.
“I think we start with this summer. One small thing at a time,” she tells me.
“I have a list….notes, journal entries, I don’t know. All from the summer. Things I couldn’t talk about at the time. ”

“Should we look at it?” Bea asks.

I pause. “I don’t know…………I’m not sure what is on it now, I don’t really remember.” I want to check the list before I hand it over. Maybe I don’t want to give it all to her right now. I’m not sure how much I trust right now.

“When you’re ready,” Bea says simply.

I can’t hold everything together anymore, and this feeling of panic over the conversation is too much, and the idea of letting it all back in is too much. “I’m scared,” I admit. And then the tears come. Single tears that quickly turn into sobs that I can not stop, no matter how hard I try, or how fast I scramble to shove all the feelings away.

Hagrid anxiously licks my hands and my face, curling himself into a ball; half on my chest and half on my lap. “Hagrid says ‘I think you found your feelings, mom’.” Bea says this calmly; it’s okay to cry and to have feelings.
I finally, and fairly quickly, win the fight to lock everything back down. I wipe my face with my hands, and look at Bea. It’s like I’m trying to prove I’m okay, but I think a part of me is almost silently begging her to see how scared and messed up I really am right now. “I can’t do this. I don’t know how.” I make the statement with almost no emotion attached.
“A little at time. We do this very carefully. We don’t need to go so deep, or so quickly that you are having dissociated days, or struggling so much. We control it. This summer showed us that, at times you can be aware of things under the surface and control it. We wade in, slowly. Before, last year, we dove in, fast. Everything was new and coming up for you so quickly, and it was really hard. You needed space to talk and help containing it, and it all needed to be brought up and talked about. But now, we slow down. We don’t need to rush things. You shouldn’t have days where you are in a terrible funk; maybe the day of therapy, that icky after therapy feeling sometimes, but not all the time.”
Bea is talking, and I know this is going back to the beginning. To what she told me last year, about taking the time to get our garden ready for planting, before we look at our plants. But all I hear is that I screwed up and she is unhappy with me, and now things are going to change. I think I nod my head, mumble some agreement. I don’t even know. This doesn’t feel real. It feels all wrong.
Somehow, the sessions ends. I don’t know. I manage to convince Bea that I’m fine, and Hagrid and I leave. I talk to the parking attendant; pleasant chit chat, social niceties. And in a fog, I drive to one of my favorite walking spots. I don’t want to walk downtown today; I don’t want to stop and chat with people, or smile and say hi. I want to be alone.
I want to be alone because Bea picked the scab, and nothing feels right. I want to be alone because I feel vulnerable and afraid. I want to be alone because I need to think, and sort out some of the things said in session. I want to be alone because nothing feels more lonely to to be all alone, even in a crowded place. I want to be alone because the scab has been picked, and I need to decide if I can keep picking at it, or if I need to let it scab back over and ignore it.

Don’t tell

I saw Bea Monday morning, like usual. It’s been just over 24 hours since that appointment, and I can hardly remember our conversation. What I do remember is telling her about the weekend, and her response that it seemed I had dealt with things well. She mentioned how I hadn’t been triggered by Kat, that I had been in protective mode. She asked what it was like seeing my mom play with and spend time with my daughter? I have no idea how to answer that. I’m not very present when I’m around my mom. It’s mostly like I have no feelings, wherever it is I go when I am with her, and the ones that do trickle in tend to be more triggery feelings. So I have no idea how I feel. Fine. Happy. I don’t know. What am I supposed to feel? That is sweet, seeing my mother and daughter together. Right? Then that is what I feel.

But she’s wrong. I didn’t deal with things well. I just left out the things I did to deal. Not once have I given her a run down of my weekends, or my days and willingly said, “well, we went downtown, hung out, and then Kat was all done so we drove back to my moms. While my mom and Kat played and my hubby helped my dad with some manly outdoor project, I stuffed my face with ice cream and vomited. Then I say outside and played with my mom and Kat. After dinner, I went to the store to get some hair color, and colored my hair. While the color processed I ate a bunch of junk food, and then threw up a second time that day when I was supposed to be showering. In the middle of the night I had nightmares, hid in the closet, and got caught hiding by my hubby. Which only made me feel ashamed and vulnerable. But it was fine because once he fell back asleep, I went to the bathroom, found a razor and cut. And bye-bye bad feelings.” I don’t talk that openly. I still expect to be shamed, judged, condemned, or lectured for my behaviors, so as soon as I admit them, I figuring out how to back track. I purposefully leave that stuff out. It’s my filter, and it’s second nature. I don’t know what else to say about it.

I think part of me was disappointed she didn’t question me about how I was saying my behaviors were out of control and yet according to my story of the weekend, nothing happened. A part of me wanted Bea to back me into a corner and force me to answer or talk about those things. Because they are scary. I think a part of me thought she knew me well enough to realize I would leave those things out, always. Of course, a part of me is thankful she has left well enough alone. I don’t quite trust that she won’t ditch me if I was truly upfront about things.

I wasn’t very there, and she knew that. I told her how my parents talked of renting the cabin this year, so our families– mine and my brothers– and them could all go for a long weekend. I don’t want to go back there, but then again, there is that idea….if I went back, maybe some blanks would get filled in. Maybe memories would be triggered. I don’t know. We are going camping and to a theme park for my daughters birthday with my parents and niece and nephews. We will be staying in a campground, at campground rustic style cabins. It’s were we always stayed with the smiths when we went. I’m both looking forward to a fun trip, a really nice way to celebrate Kat’s birthday, and already despairing that I won’t be able to function or be okay. But this is for Kat, so I know I’ll do it, and even if I’m dissociated the entire time, I’ll function normally.

I almost told her. About the memory I do have of the cabin. Well, one of the memories anyways. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Well, I was going to. This is what happened…..

It’s getting towards the end of the session. I feel like I’ve floated off, like I’m not tethered to anything. Bea is supposed to be my anchor, but I’ve been working hard to cut her off, she’s too close. So, I feel disconnected, not here. I feel like I’m all alone and no one understands. She’s mentioned that I hadn’t been triggered by Kat, but she’s wrong. I just didn’t say it, because I’m mad at myself over it. And I didn’t have a lot to do with Kat this weekend, minus the party, so it was limited.

“We are getting close to our ending time today. I wanted to let you know in case there is anything else you feel like you want to talk about that we haven’t talked about,” she says. She’s calm and present and everything Bea always is. Except things feel different right now. I know it’s because of me, because I’m so disconnected.

I shake my head. I’ve been crying the last few minutes. Over what, I don’t remember now. Bea told me, as she stated in her email, that she is aware the past is right here. But she believes it’s all the anxiety and stress of current day life that has made my defense go down, and she feels that all the triggery past stuff has slipped in because of that. Maybe she’s right. Does it matter? The point is, she keeps redirecting the focus to the present, and it’s the past I need to deal with. The present is all good stuff, or stuff that is being handled. It’s not what is causing me distress, no matter what she thinks. She might be the shrink, but I’m the one living in my head.

“There doesn’t have to be anything. I just wanted to check.” Her voice sounds firm, but underneath, maybe wavering. Is she feeling a little lost in how to deal with me? Has my floatiness confused her, made it harder to read me? I don’t know.

“I just…I have..I’m afraid to say it.” I sigh. How many times have I said this sentence?

Maybe Bea responds, maybe she waits. I’m not sure. Eventually, she does ask me if I want to talk about it. Maybe if she knew I wanted to, needed to talk about it she would help me figure out how.

“I don’t know.” I tell her honestly. I feel so lost. I’m not sure which way is up, if the memory is real, if it changes anything. I’m not sure about any of it. I want to talk to Bea, to figure it out, to not be alone, to share my confusion with someone I trust and who will be steady and not confused. But I’m not sure now. She doesn’t feel connected to me, she feels far away. Her emailed responses seem rote, and not her. I feel like she isn’t really here with me anymore, like she is done with me, annoyed over how I have been acting, how much time I take up, all my whining. I don’t know. Part of me can argue with that. But these teenage and child parts, they feel this, and they are running the show.

“Then I feel like it would be better to wait, to try to get you back to a more grounded place. I don’t think talking about things that are going to send you far away is the best thing when you are already so far away. I don’t want to send your farther away. We talk about pacing. We have time to talk about this. Maybe on Thursday, if you are feeling stronger,” Bea says gently.

I nod. “Okay.” My eyes fill with tears. I blink, furiously, trying to keep them from falling. I needed her to help me talk, not shut me down. This only confirms my thoughts that she is annoyed and done and not really here with me. My feelings are behind hurt. The person I have trusted most, even more than Kay, the person I have shared my ugliest memories, thoughts, feelings with, the person I was just beginning to believe could maybe handle my anger and my fears and the worst behaviors and worst memories has basically told me to not tell. She’s no different than anyone else. Don’t tell. Smile. Pretend it’s all okay.

“Does that sound okay?” She questions. Maybe she is uncertain of her choice. I don’t know. I don’t care. She made the choice, it’s what she really believes. Maybe she sees her choice is shutting me down, and she is trying to backtrack, so I don’t close up. Because she can’t do her job if I close up.

I look up at her, briefly meet her eyes. “It’s fine.” And a tear or two falls. I swipe at them, angrily. I don’t want her to know that she has hurt me. That’s not okay. We’ve been heading here since her insistence on focusing on my current world happenings. I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve felt on edge about her and whether or not she was getting it, and my feelings had already been raw and slightly hurting.

“Are you sure?” She presses, and her voice sounds like she really wants to know, and maybe she does, but I already know my role. Smile. Go along. Don’t tell.

I nod. “I’m okay.” And with that, I grab a tissue and wipe at my face. I’m sure it’s a mess.

I don’t remember the rest of the session, really. I know I smiled and nodded and tried my best to act okay.

Now I’m in this weird, fake okay, not here place. I spent the rest of Monday in bed, watching old movies and being oblivious to the world. I ditched swimming and yoga and didn’t do any cleaning. I have no desire to talk to anyone. I spent today doing the much of the same. Tomorrow, I need to get up and function and be okay. No more moping. I’m not even sure what I’m moping about. The fact that my shrink feels not here, like she doesn’t care? The fact that she shut me down, much the way I shut myself down for years? The fact that I’m a horrible mom, triggered by her kid, and even aware of that unable to fully control my reaction? The fact that I feel like I was nothing more than a living sex toy for most of my childhood and even into my teen years? I don’t know. I’m confused. I’m lost. I’m all alone.

Flashback fallout

Flashbacks, eating disorders behavior, sexual abuse, self injury. All of these things are in this post. It’s been a day. A very bad day. And I haven’t slept, and I need a place to put this all down and get it out. In a few hours, I’ll see Bea. Maybe she can contain this mess. I don’t know. But in the meantime, I’m posting this messy post. It might be triggering. Please be careful. Skip reading it if any of the above mentioned things might be triggering for you. Xx

I have to be up in 3 hours. I can’t sleep. If I’m still up in an hour, hour and a half, I’ll give up and start drinking coffee. This is so typical for me. I’ll be thankful that I have the nanny until 2 tomorrow, and maybe nap and then feel guilty, or lounge in bed and do nothing and feel ashamed and lazy, or do household chores and feel exhausted and then have no energy to give my daughter in the afternoon. But really, what will be new? Mom hasn’t had the energy to live up to her usual “mom-ness” anyway. But today, today, I cleaned and cooked dinner and ate almost nothing. A few handfuls of cereal, coffee, tea, water. I cut. I maintained control. I had a flashback, but I got through it. Life went on. I yelled at my daughter, a burst of anger over nothing, something dumb, something so typically 4. Ugh. But I kept control, I reigned it in. I scared myself. But I stopped the yelling. I cleaned, I made dinner, I played a little, I painted nails with her. I have a plan to be better tomorrow.

Why is it that I only seem to be able to maintain control of my life if I’m starving and cutting and barely sleeping? I don’t understand myself. Why is it when I’m falling apart at the seams, breaking in pieces, and hiding, I can accomplish nothing but extreme hatred of myself? And if I’m working through things in therapy, sleeping and working through the nightmares, the flashbacks, the memories, attempting to eat (it may not be “good” or “right” but eating is eating and there are only so many safe foods out there) and not throw up and not cut and not hide and be honest, I can’t seem to do anything, keep up with simple daily tasks like laundry and dishes, sweeping, cooking, grocery shopping, lesson planning, dusting, ext. Oh, yes, it’s these times when things get organized, furniture gets moved and big things get done; whenever stuff gets too much, and I don’t want to think, I’ll find a big project. But the day to day stuff lacks.

I don’t understand myself. Shouldn’t it be better when I’m not hiding, not faking okay, not shoving everything down? On Monday, Bea read the angry list out loud. And I lived, and she didn’t decided I was this terrible awful person. And I started to really think about the ideas of “Mom left me. He hurt me. I didn’t have a choice.” I thought I was okay with that, with the idea of it, becoming more real. Tuesday and today I hid behind chores and perfection. The bubble is back, a little. But not in the good way. All the out of control, scary feelings are right there.

I had this memory, this one thought, hit me today, out of the blue. I don’t know what even triggered it, exactly. I think it was partly Kat, something she said. And I just flipped out. But even as I was yelling at her, there was this memory right there, this picture, this feeling. His insistence on helping me change into pajamas, and tuck me into bed, and just this huge overwhelming feeling that I didn’t need help, I was big, but he was in charge and I couldn’t say no, and standing at my dresser, pulling out pajamas, looking out my window wishing my parents would be pulling in the drive way, but knowing they wouldn’t be home yet, it was too early, and feeling so lost and just left, and….I don’t know, not okay, because she left.

And so later, when Hubby got back home, I took a bath to try to feel human again, and calm down. I ended up cutting. And then I focused on cleaning and organizing. And Kat didn’t get a lot of mom time, I played while I cooked dinner, and I played during dinner, and after dinner we painted nails. But that was it. And it was dinner time when I realized I hadn’t eaten, and panicked over the food on my plate, and chose to not eat. And I felt more in control, and stronger. Calmer. Better. Like it was really okay, finally.

There was another memory pop up, when I laid down for bed. I had pulled the blankets down and folded them back, remade the bed with new sheets earlier in the day. And when I sat down and went to pull the blanket over me, it was like suffocating. I couldn’t find my breath. He would pull my blankets in over me, tuck me in, rub my back and it would all be so normal. Singing Jesus loves me. Like it was just a regular thing, nice. I hate that song. Hate it. He didn’t leave though, after. He stayed. And pulls the covers back down. I can’t do anything. There isn’t anything to do, except what he wants to do. But I can’t leave, or hide, or say no. I already agreed before. I already played this secret game, and promised it would be a secret. And he’s my friend, and he is in charge and it’s okay because it doesn’t hurt and it does feel good sometimes, and there is no reason to feel sick in my stomach or scared like this. But I do. And I didn’t understand why, not really. It was all confusing. There wasn’t anyone to talk to, or ask, or tell. Not my mom. She left me. She left me with him, and she left me emotionally. Not my Dad. He doesn’t see. They need perfect. And good, perfect girls don’t play secret games like this, I’m pretty sure of that.

And so it’s 3:46am, and I’m still awake because a memory that popped in my head has felt too real, and too frightening, and I’m too afraid too sleep. I’ve read a book, watched a TV show, and now resorted to writing it out. Because there is nothing left to do.

I’ve completely chickened out and moved myself out to the living room, turned on every light available, and made a cup of strong coffee. In all honesty, if there were a few more lights to turn on, I’d be happier. I’m sure Hubby will lecture me about it in the morning, when I get home from therapy. He’ll tell me how I should have gone to bed, how he got up at such and such time and couldn’t believe I was still up, just reading a book, or worse, he will have woken and realized I was up and out of bed at some ungodly hour, and he won’t be able to believe I would get up like that when I complain about not sleeping and am supposed to be working on fixing my sleep cycle. I’ll get defensive and mad, snap at him, push him away. He’d never think to approach it in a way that is gentler. Like asking me if it was a rough night, giving me an opening, to tell as much or as little as I like. Instead he criticizes me for things I can’t help, and makes me feel dumb, small, silly…..it’s yet another opportunity to open up to him that won’t happen because of his approach. Because it makes me feel like I don’t matter, like I’m not good enough, like I’m screwing up and doing things wrong, ruining his perfect world.

Looking for the grey and not okay

Monday night, before I managed to get my perfect facade back in place, I emailed Bea. I told her I maybe wasn’t okay. I told her I hated that she brought those things up. I told her that I was struggling. I said my feelings were hurt, and confused that she was saying we were done talking trauma; that maybe I was finally feeling like I was allowed to talk about the ugly things for the first time in my life. I said that maybe the fight with hubby was a lot worse than she thought, and I recapped the fight we had, although I left out the fact I debated ways to run away from my life permanently (I’m a little scared to admit that to my therapist). I said I didn’t understand why she wasn’t going to talk anymore, and that it felt bad and made me anxious. I said that I had maybe stopped talking about some things because I was afraid to keep bringing them up, that I thought she would get tired of having that same conversation, and that she would decide I was too needy, so I just put away the things I was talking about too much. I was really honest, more honest than I’ve been in a long time, despite the fact I kept things hypothetical by using “maybe” in almost every sentence. It feels safer somehow to do that. I even listed out symptoms, and admitted there was an increase, but I refused to say how much or how often. I sounded a lot like 15 year old me in the email; snotty and bratty, mean, and angry. But mostly? 15 year old me was scared, always scared, and felt really unloveable. She used the snottiness to keep a thick shell of perfectness and okayness around her.

Bea wrote back pretty quickly, thankfully.

Thank you for your honesty and for being the “real” Alice here–the one who has feelings, and struggles, and isn’t perfect. I will gladly bear responsibility for this, so if it helps you to rage at me then do so! It is that meaningful and important, and it wasn’t until today that I decided to try to break through the crust of perfection and “okayness” that has been so thick lately. I know the inside part of you, the part beneath the crust, has been denied its life lately, and while it might not be pretty it is real and authentic. And that counts. It has been denied its voice and its existence–warts and all–for too long.

It’s fine at times to have to function, right?! I get that. But that’s not our goal for therapy. Well, it is, but it’s to function authentically without sacrificing your real self to do so. I do get that the fight with hubby was really, really bad. I have been concerned ever since then. I don’t really know how we can move forward much more without bringing hubby into the picture. His need for you to be perfect and “okay” is about him, not you. He needs to understand what this is doing to you. You might be “okay” on the outside, but I feel like this is a big step backwards. We need not only you to step forward, but hubby and your relationship to step forward as well.

I didn’t mean it’s supposed to be over!!! Not at all. I just meant that it’s been less intense, with no new memories to process at the moment. I know there’s plenty more work to be done, but it hasn’t felt so intense lately. That is why I wanted to check in about the symptoms–that, and I also have been concerned about the fact that you have been stuffing your needs and feelings inside in order to function in your marriage.

Sorry for the trifecta today:( No, we aren’t all done I’m sorry, but I don’t regret it because it had to be done or I would be pretending everything’s okay too. And as a general rule across all my sessions, I need to talk less. I will be mindful of the stress–if you need me to talk more just ask.

Bea

I decided to write back, and her second response was that we are missing all the shades of grey, and that seems to be the biggest dilemma: how do we make it so the okay and the not okay parts can coexist at the same time?

I suppose the grey space would mean both parts– the good and the bad– would feel real. But how does that work? How do two ways of being, that both feel not real, merge and feel real? I don’t understand. Maybe it’s because my parents were professionals at living only the good and perfects parts, so I learned to split off anything ugly really early on. And thanks to Kenny, I had some really ugly stuff to push away and pretend wasn’t real. It feels like I have two me’s, two lives. I don’t know. It’s confusing. I keep trying to find a good way to explain it, but I can’t seem to find the right words.

This always seems to be what I come back to. I live in the black or the white, the bad or the good. If I’m living in a place where I am the good me, the bad stuff feels like it never happened, I can almost pretend it away, and I begin to believe that I’m a liar, and nothing really ever happened. Even then, I feel like I am wearing a mask, pretending to be perfect, pretending to be something I’m not. If I am living in a place where I am the bad me, I feel like the good parts are fake, and that I’m evil deep down to my core.

There’s the “good and perfect” story of my life, mostly the family/public version, and there’s the “story with the ugly stuff.” They might be about the same person, but the stories don’t really mesh. If I’m in a place where the good perfect story is what I’m living, then the ugly stuff feels fake, and like it can not intrude into my life or it will ruin everything. If I’m in a place where the ugly bad stuff feels real, then the good me feels fake. Well, even when I’m living the “perfect” story, the good me feels fake, like a very good actress, or someone who wants to be good but just isn’t. I guess it’s like how could it be real, feel real, when Friday night he was touching me, having sex with me, and Sunday morning we would all be sitting in church, and he would be a completely different person? It’s like I had to work even harder to be perfect so I could hide the bad things I did, but that perfect part doesn’t feel real, either; she hid all the bad, tried to be perfect, worked very hard to earn my parents’ love. That feels like an act, not like the real me.

It’s like only one of those “alices” can be real. Either the bad one who played the game, or the good perfect girl my parents loved. I don’t know. I don’t know how they are supposed to be combined. I wasn’t a stupid kid, I knew the game Kenny played wasn’t okay, that it was bad, and that I was bad for…well. Anyway. So I had to be perfect, and good, and pretend it was okay, and be okay, because I was a good girl, my parents couldn’t love a bad girl, and I knew good girls didn’t play games like that. I never want to be a child again, being a child was scary because I had no power or control over anything and oh my God, I really just realized that right now this moment. Being a child meant doing what my parents expected and always performing and being perfect and good enough in order to earn their love, and it meant never saying a word about the bad things happening with Kenny, because I was a good girl, and good girls don’t play games like that. Even I knew that. But I couldn’t say no. I had no power to tell anyone no.

And I’m not okay, and this isn’t okay, and nothing feels okay. But it only took me until late Tuesday morning to get my “outside okay” back. So. I admit it. I’m not okay. I’ve been pretending okay for a long time, but at least I was being mostly honest about the not okay in therapy and even a little with hubby, but then we had that fight, and all I’ve done is really pretend okay all the time, no matter what. Because I don’t know how else to be. Because if I really stop and think about everything, and stop hiding from feelings and the bad hard stuff, then I will fall apart, because it’s too much and it makes me feel out of control and crazy and like I might drown in the bad feelings. So, where do I go from here? I’ll admit, there is a small part of me that maybe is thankful someone saw through the crust of okayness. But I also hate it. Because now I have this mess in my head, and I don’t feel okay at all. I don’t want to hear that I will work through this. Or that I should sit with it. I can’t sit with it. It’s too much. Way, way too much, because it’s everything. It’s like I’m being smothered by it all.

I emailed Bea back, talking about the grey space. I tried to find the words, but it really was a convoluted mess of crazy. Mostly, it was everything written up above, me thinking out loud, trying to figure this mess out.

I don’t understand why things have to feel so messy, and so hard and so out of control if I’m not pretending to be perfect and if I don’t have that thick crust of okayness on. If I’m pretending everything is fine, I can ignore all the bad feelings, and smile and be fine. But, without that….I am falling apart. Bea cracked the shell on Monday, and the honesty filled emails I have sent since finished it off. It’s barely there anymore. The thick crust of perfection is more of a veneer now, and all my insides are falling out left and right. I’ve broken down into tears multiple times the last two days. I’ve caught myself dissociating and feeling fuzzy and not here. My eating habits are out of control. And cutting….well, we just don’t need to go there. Everything is worse.

I’m not okay. And I have no idea how to live in the grey.

She brought her sledge hammer

“So…I had to send an email to Carly, and I told her that I really did hope Jaime knew it wasn’t personal, that we liked him, it just wasn’t a good fit and that if she felt it was appropriate, she could pass that on to him. So I didn’t send anything to Jaime, but…well. It seems okay. Carly emailed back that I don’t need to apologize and that it’s okay.” I finally take a breath, and smile at Bea. It’s Monday morning, 8:10am, and I’ve been up since 4:30. I’ve also had two pots of coffee, done the laundry, planned dinner, unloaded the dishwasher, and swept the floor. Then I got ready for therapy, made a shopping list and headed out the door.

“Well, it sounds like you found a way to have some closure. That’s good,” Bea says.

I shrug. “I had to do it in a round a bout way, but I did it. Kind of.”

“This time, it was a round about way. Maybe not the next time. I think you handled it fine.”

And then, there’s nothing. Silence. I don’t like silence, and Bea isn’t talking. I find some idle chit chat to try to fill the silence, but Bea isn’t letting me go there. Okay. Now what? I’m lost.

Bea looks at me, and I have a feeling this is going to be bad. “I was thinking it might be a good time to talk about symptoms.”

I just stare at her for a minute. What? Why? No. That’s all I can think. No. “Umm. Well, I’m okay. You know that.”

“Yes, I know you are okay on the outside. But I haven’t brought up symptoms for quite a while. Some people might say I have been negligent to not bring them up. I really felt that unless you told me you were in a bad place, some trauma needed to be worked through in order for us to even work through the symptoms. I would dare to say you are in a healthier place with the trauma stuff now, and so it seems a good time to do a symptom check in. I’m not saying anything has to change, but we need to know where you stand right now. That’s all. Dealing with the past, processing through it, that’s good, but there’s no point if it’s not helping you in your present, and symptoms are kind of like present day manifestations of trauma,” Bea says.

As she has been talking, I’ve been slowly pulling my knees to my chest, and burying my face in them, covering my head with my arms. And then it’s quiet again.

“You know. I have a new client I’m seeing, and he tells me I talk too much in his sessions. In my head, it’s funny, because I have this other person, who tells me to talk more. But I think it’s time I stop talking so much, and let you see what comes up. I need to stop filling in the blanks for you.”

What? I’ve been working so hard to talk more. I have been talking more. I feel like I’m being punished. And she’s doing this today? On the day she is insisting we talk about symptoms? I don’t want to have this conversation.

Bea sighs. “Okay, symptoms. Have they been better? Worse? The same?” And that’s all she says. She means it. She doesn’t speak up, even after I’m quiet for another few minutes.

Finally, I say, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Talking about it means admitting I am not okay. Talking about it means ripping myself apart. Talking about it means talking about why symptoms are worse. No. No, and no.

She’s silent for a second. “Okay. Can we talk about why? What about talking about it feels bad?”

I don’t answer. I don’t have an answer. I just don’t want to talk about this.

“What is the it you don’t want to talk about?” She finally asks me.

I don’t answer. I feel like a defiant teenager. Like an odd reincarnation of my fifteen year old self. Snotty, bratty, stubborn, and mean. The only thought running through my head is all of it, I don’t want to talk about any of it, and you can’t make me.

Bea can apparently be stubborn. But, I’m in the mindset of either waiting her out, or just leaving. I wonder if I can just walk out. If I have it in me. Just as I decide I do, she breaks the silence. “So, symptoms. We had sleeping, nightmares, picking, cutting, eating. And others I’m sure I haven’t listed. I always feel like it’s the cutting that increases in frequency when someone is in pain– emotional pain.”

I’m not in pain. I’m fine. I’m okay. “I’m okay.” I don’t know if I’m trying to convince Bea, or myself now. My head is spinning. I’m pretty sure she told me earlier that we are all done talking about trauma stuff, that I’m in a healthy place with that now, and it’s onto symptoms. She’s ready for me to be gone. I’m supposed to be over the trauma now. And I’m not. I finally was just starting to feel like I could talk about it. Oh my God, I’m such a failure. I can’t even do therapy right.

“All right. You’re okay. So where are these symptoms?” She asks again. Why is she pushing so hard? I hate that she brought this up. It’s not fair.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Maybe you don’t want to talk about it because it feels like I won’t be able to handle it. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it because it feels like I could freak out and say, ‘oh no, you can’t be doing that.’ I’m not going to. And I’m not going to take anything away from you. I’m not asking you to change what you are doing to cope. This is just a check in. That’s all,” she says. And then, she hits my perfect facade with a sledge hammer. “I never assumed you stopped cutting. I never assumed that the eating stuff was fixed. But those things are doing too good a job now. Nothing can get through to you, and nothing is getting out.”

I can feel myself cracking. She knew. She knew I hadn’t stopped, and she knew that I was worse. Someone saw me. Crap.

“The cutting. Is it still happening?”

I nod. And feel a tear escape. Damn it.

“How often?” She asks me, but I will not answer that, so she adds, “More frequently?”

It feels like I sit for a very long time in silence. Finally, I nod my head.

She goes through the same questions for eating, and I nod my head. Yes, there is still an issue. Yes, there is an increase in the symptom.

I don’t know what else is said. I cry a lot, and feel very broken and overwhelmed and like a failure. I don’t know what I’m doing. My head is spinning, and I can feel a migraine coming on. I hate this. I hate that she did this. I need to be okay. Why is that such a bad thing? Why couldn’t she just let me be okay?

I think Bea tells me acting perfect and stuffing all my feelings and needs down inside is a step backwards. I think she says something about how I need to see that I’m not allowing myself to exist. That I’m turning all my rage inward, and hurting myself. That the perfect act is not sustainable. But I don’t really hear her. All I can think is that she really is sick of hearing about my ugly stuff. That she is done with needy me, and it’s time for me to move on, deal with my symptoms and get out of here.

Somehow, I make it to the end up the session. I wipe my tears with the back of my hand, my head still buried in my knees.

“Do you want a Kleenex?” Bea offers me.

“No. I’m okay,” I tell her.

“Why do I have a feeling you have some in your bag, anyway?” She says. I’m always prepared, always organized. She knows this.

I shake my head. “I actually think Kat used all the ones in my bag. But I have some in the car, anyway.”

“Well, I have boxes of them, so take a few and throw them in your bag if you need them,” she offers one more time.

I don’t answer. Instead, I say, “I really just wish you had never brought this up.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” She’s quiet, soft spoken about it. She’s sorry I’m upset, but I don’t think she’s sorry she brought it up.

I say good bye, and leave. I try to realign my facade, but someone hit it with a sledge hammer.

Disconnection completed

This post is full of potential triggers– self harm, eating disorder and suicidal ideation. Please, please read with caution and be safe. It’s raw and mostly unedited; messy and very, very real. I’m in a scary place right now. I will be okay, I somehow still believe that, still want to be okay and heal. But this post isn’t pretty or nice and light reading. So please take care of yourselves, and skip it of any of the above mentioned things are triggering for you.

I don’t know what happened on Monday with Bea. The whole session felt off, wrong, scattered. I was dissociated enough that I only remember bits and pieces of the session, and Bea never once noticed how “not here” I was. I need to rewind, though. Because this story really starts Thursday, after therapy.

I left therapy on Thursday feeling sad, not quite right, but connected, like Bea was there. I cried off and on most of the day, had nightmares that night, and felt pretty awful. I wanted to do nothing more than avoid everyone and hide away from life, and everything that hurts so much. But I made it through. Friday, that started out okay, I took Kat to therapy, and then out to lunch. I was so disconnected and just “not there” that it almost felt like “zombie me” was living my life for me. It’s the feeling of going through the motions, but no one really being home, not even perfect me was up for the job of getting through the day.

Friday when I got home, hubby and I had a fight. It started because I had yelled at Kat for dumping juice all over the car. She’s had a thing lately about leaving cups upside down, and juice goes everywhere. I had told her several times to put the cup right side up. She didn’t. Hence, the yelling. And so, hubby and I fought. He said I was this terrible person, mean and selfish, and that he is only able to stick it out because he knows one day I’ll be like I used to be, and be normal again. He said some horrible things; listed out every bad thing about me that he can think of. I already know what an awful person I am. Now I know he agrees. The final straw was when he told me that Kat would be better off being raised by his mother (the crazy, narcissistic mother. See my “bat crap crazy mother in law” post to learn more about this woman). He said the words, and I had immediate visions of slitting my wrists.

I ran to the bedroom, packed a bag. Hubby promptly took my car keys. I was stuck. Which triggered me even more, if that’s even possible. So I hid in the closet. And while I hid in the closet, I held a bottle of my pain pills and debated downing all of them. I really, really wanted to in that moment. I was so hurt by hubby, beaten down by everything else being thrown at me from the past and the present, I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Instead, I emailed Bea. I emailed her about the fight, not about the suicidal feelings. That’s not something I easily admit to. She emailed back, reframing the fight. It didn’t help. She wanted me to talk to hubby, tell him what I am dealing with, make him a partner….because, after all, the point of going through all this is for authenticity and to improve my life now, in the present, and part of that is taking a risk and allowing hubby in to be a real partner, for an authentic marriage. It felt like she didn’t get it at all. Like she wasn’t seeing that this, his words, were the last thing I could handle. Like she didn’t get how hurt and desperate and falling off the edge of the cliff I am. And there was the beginning of the disconnection.

Saturday was spent going through the motions. Hubby is on a short vacation from work so I put on the facade of okay, and smiled my way through a day of family time. We went out to dinner, and ran into the child who assaulted Kat last year. The child and her family acted like nothing was wrong; the little girl ran over to Kat and hugged her, asked her to come over for a play date. I was so sickened by it all. I’m sorry, I know she is just a child, but I can’t stand her. Kat has been clingy and confused ever since.

Sunday was family fun day again, after a short ABA session. We took Kat to an indoor water park. It was a disaster. There was a kiddy slide, and it was empty, Kat wanted to feel the water first, so we walked around to the pool side, and when we went to put her toes in the water, the lifeguard blew his whistle at us. I tried explaining that she just needed to feel the water before sliding down the slide and landing in it– she’s 4. I mean, that can not be so weird. And it’s not like there were people waiting. He was all “you have to go down the slide to get in the pool, then exit the pool. It’s not for swimming.” I played the autism card. I never play that card. I don’t like to, I don’t believe we deserve special treatment, but sometimes accommodations should be made. And we weren’t holding anything up. No on was around! And he said “she doesn’t look like she has autism. She doesn’t look retarded.” And I lost it. Lost it. Yelling, swearing. In the past, I would have calmly and politely requested a manager. Now I lose it, screaming mad. I’m not a mad person. And then, I couldn’t reign it in. Every teenage male life guard got yelled at, flipped off, cursed. By me. I was the crazy screaming lady. Oh my gosh, I am so ashamed by my behavior. And later, I looked at that and thought, wow. I yelled at every male teen employed there. Kenny and the college boyfriend were both teenage males. Odd how they were the same age, yet years apart.

And so….Monday. I saw Bea. I don’t know what happened. I told her about the water park, omitting the fact I couldn’t reign in my anger; refusing to admit to the giant rage that had been in me and come out. She didn’t even see it, make a connection between teen boys who confused me, who hurt me in the past and the teen life guard who hurt my child (and me) with his words.

I know I cried a lot in the session, and hid my face, and couldn’t get words out. She pushed and pushed for me to talk to Hubby. Really pushed. I think that’s the point where I decided she wasn’t on my side anymore, and she just wants me to be okay. And so I pretended to be okay. Walls pulled up and around, armor on, dissociated and disconnected, I went through the motions of therapy.

At one point, towards the end, she asked me how the adult me feels about sexual attraction. I tried to answer, tried to let down the walls. It felt like she had a plan, like she was going somewhere with this. I couldn’t. She said she thinks the disgust and confusion and everything else is the little girl part of me. Thinking about it, I feel like the little girl is the part in charge of sex stuff; or, at least she’s in charge of how I feel about sexual attraction and sexual stuff. I don’t know. I don’t think there is an adult part of me for those things. Maybe I got stunted and never continued developing normal. Maybe I was just an over sexed little girl, who seduced a teenage boy. Because I’m screwed up, gross, evil. I don’t know. But I said none of those things.

I didn’t tell her how I sat in the closet with a bottle of pills, or how my cutting is out of control the last few days. I didn’t tell her how I have screwed up the no eating rule, and stuffed my face and vomited it back up more times than I care to count lately, or how the few times I have stuffed my face and been unable to throw up and the panic and terror I felt. I didn’t tell her I felt disconnected after her email, like she didn’t get it. I didn’t tell her how incredibly alone I feel; more so now because I have seen and felt what not alone is like. I think being alone was safer, better. No one hurts you that way. It sucks knowing how bad alone really is. I didn’t tell her how numb and overwhelmed by emotions and feelings and memories I am all at the same time, even though that is such a paradox I can’t seem to understand it. I didn’t tell her I just want to disappear, to cease to exist. I did not tell her any of that.

I did say I felt like everything was too much, that I could not do this anymore. I said that everything makes sense to her, but nothing makes sense to me. And Bea reframed it, telling me that just like Kat, she thinks I’m at a point where I need to know others in my life will provide safety and containment for me, but that I am capable of taking care of my own needs. Disconnect complete.

It feels like she’s done with me. Like I was too needy, too crazy, too broken. Like she only wants for me to be okay, to show that perfect facade I have. Like she is no different than my parents or my husband.

Everyone only wants perfect Alice. They don’t care that I’m so far down the rabbit hole I think I’m never getting out. They don’t care that I’m stuck in this hell my mind has created, or that I’m so confused and scared because I never know how I’m going to feel or act from one moment to the next. They don’t care that a single second can feel like forever when it’s his face I’m seeing in my mind, or his hands I’m feeling on my skin. They want perfect Alice. So perfect Alice they shall have.

Falling down the rabbit hole

Trauma therapy, life after sexual abuse & PTSD

Eating disorder