I have been trying to review last week’s session with C in my usual detail, but I’ve had a very stressful day (gruesome CAB appointment, and much Disraeli trouble 
) and that, coupled with my ungraciously low mood and lethargy of late, has left me weak and defeated. I’m going to eat and try writing again, but it may just have to wait. As the wonderful Splintered Ones is always good enough to remind me, it comes when it comes and can’t be forced 
Anyway, I don’t know why but I wanted to write something. I suppose I worry constantly that if I allow myself to avoid posting for a few days, I’ll fall into a rut of utter insouciance towards writing. I’ve invested so much time and effort into this blog*, and I only want to discontinue writing when I actively choose to do so – which will not, I hope, be for many years. However, I am intimately acquainted with the tenacious lure and power of inertia, and I do fear giving myself even so much as a few days’ break from writing will lead to a de facto dead blog. I’m probably over-reacting, but I fear it considerably, and the thought makes me tearful and desperately sad. How can one be so attached to a website?!
[ * I worked out today that over the 181 one published posts (before this one, which is 182), I have written in the region of 700,000 words. I'm trying to get a plug-in to measure the figure exactly, but as a rough guide, there you have it.]
So, bearing in mind my fear of an apathetic fall from whatever low level of grace I may or may not be occupying, I’m going to publish the following pile of wank, which I wrote last Tuesday evening in the wake of the C session. I was trying to articulate the exact nature of my misery, and while it’s drivelsome bullshit, I think it does grasp that reasonably well. To be honest, it probably describes my current mood quite well too.
Alas.
I am not in the frame of mind to write anything here, but maybe that’s exactly why I need to do so. Perhaps I need to articulate these so-called feelings that pervade my sorry consciousness (oops, did/does that sound like wallowing?
) I’ve had a strange day. I saw C this morning – specifics to follow – which has set me up for a weird week; as I normally see him on Thursdays, I’m going about thinking that tomorrow’s Friday, and that A will be there for the weekend. Since it’s not, the rest of the week stretches out, seemingly infinite in its loneliness. C has, I think, hit upon something I have been trying desperately to hide from him. I don’t want to discuss it right now because it’s a sensitive issue, and in any case I might be mistaken in my reading of what he thinks (I don’t think I am, but then I suppose I wouldn’t think it if I did think I was wrong, would I..? Hmm). I may or may not be more forthcoming in my review of this session, but whatever the case, the matter reminds me yet again of how imminent the separation is (as Tossface Mr D-P still hasn’t bothered to respond to my recent ramblings) and how invested in therapy – in C – I am. I mean, I already know this – I have done for a very long time – but until relatively recently I could box it up and store it away in some far-flung, virtually inaccessible area of my brain. That fails to work nowadays, with this severance looming in the air.
So. I feel rejected. I feel lonely, yet simultaneously I feel the need to hide away from the world. I feel forgotten and I feel cheated. I feel desolate, sad, and depressed. Tears prick my dissenting, hateful eyeballs, and I feel my bottom lip quivering in a threatening, child-like fashion that I have not felt (at least with this strength) for quite some time…well, apart from the last time I saw C, that is. I still think ‘grief’ is a good word. Pre-emptive grief, but grief nevertheless. I do not pretend to understand the horror of what living with the impending death of a loved one with a terminal illness (and I hope I’m not disrespecting anyone in saying this – many apologies if so), but this feels like the closest I’ve ever been to that situation.
Friendships often taper off in my experience, and whilst you may look back on them and regret not making more of an effort to sustain them or whatever, you’re not generally faced with the abject grief that an instantaneous dissolution of your relationship would bring. The ending of some romantic relationships may be more sudden and hurtful, I suppose, but I still find myself thinking that this feels to me more akin to losing someone important to death. Perhaps it is because I am fixated with death. Perhaps I am just a histrionic bitch. I don’t know.
Anyway. That was pointless. I’m always told I should put my “emotions” into words, rather than uttering an allegedly meaningless sentence such as, “I’m pissed off,” but then everyone knows how I’m tortured over the forthcoming end of my relationship with C. How many dozens of thousands of words have I written on it? Enough, that’s for sure.
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Hi, I have been a lurker on your beautiful site for a while now, and I just wanted to say ‘Thank you”. Thank you for posting, for your honesty, for allowing your life to help others. And it does help. I am going through very similar situations, and it is so comforting to know that some one out there in the big wide world…., well, that I am not alone. Thank you.
Are you the same Torah that wrote this brilliant post over at MN? If so, thank you very much for it – it was extremely touching.
Even if you are not, thank you anyway for the generosity and kindness in your comment. Your support means very much, and I am so glad that you’ve found my words comforting. It really is good to know that.
I’d be thrilled to receive comments from you again, but I understand if you don’t want to say anymore. Just know that you will always be welcome
Take care, big hugs. x
Yes, that was me on MN. I am still very scared and unsure of blogging and commenting, but I just felt like I wanted to connect with you.
I don’t know how everything works there, but do you ever feel angry with C somehow because he’s not doing more to keep things going? Even if it’s not really under his control?
I guess it’s just that when my psychiatrist (the only one that I cared about) left my insurance company, and was therefore unable to keep seeing me, I felt abandoned and angry with him even if there was nothing he could have done.
I’m just projecting I suppose. *hides*
About the blog inertia, I think it happened to me. I used to have a blog where I wrote regularly, and when I stopped… it was never the way it used to be. I made a new one in attempts to make everything feel newer and less tied to my identity, but I don’t think it has worked.
Now when I do write I keep deleting my posts, suffering from some kind of blog stage fear.
Well, at times I am angry with him, yes. I think also that even if my greater anger is with ‘the powers that be’, that very often it’s C that gets it in the neck anyway because he’s the only personal representation of the bureaucracy in the background. So in short, yes. And then I feel guilty about it! *sighs*
So I can empathise with the situation with your psychiatrists. I’m really sorry to hear that. Why do mental healthy systems seemingly never work out as we need them to do?
That’s definitely part of my fear. I’ve got a mostly regular soapbox here, and even though the posts change in content and even subtly in style, it’s still very much ‘me’ writing it (or Pandora, but that’s another debate!). I fear that if I took a break that it would come across as someone else, or as forced, or whatever.
I’m sorry your new blogging ventures haven’t worked as you’d wanted, though I have read and like your current one – just so you know
Anyhow, Nessa, thanks very much. Take care and big hugs. x
Yes, it really sucks that after such a long and hard search for something that works, once you find it they are like “haha! JK!”. Then it leaves you completely discouraged to try to find it again. Yes, there are chances that other people can help us but… where are they? Growing weary of this.
Also, after reading this I was inspired to update my blog a little bit. ^^ We’ll see how it goes. Thanks! Big hugs to you too.
Oh my god. I am feeling nearly identical to this post and it really hit home for me. I even was going to post something similar but feel now like you just poured the words out in such a beautiful fashion I have no need to repeat what you were saying for the both of us. Cheers and thanks for such a beautiful site!
Some people need to move to think (dancers), others to talk in order to think (Stephen Fry: ‘I don’t know what I’m thinking till I’ve said it’) – we need to write.
For myself everything that I allow others to read has been drafted and edited over and over again – trying to find the clearest way of saying it, with as fewer words as possible. It is written for an audience, with a a deliberate purpose. And of course only a minority of what I write ends-up being ‘published’ in some way.
Whatever one’s style, writing is easier if you never stop; writing something (anything) every day, whether or not it will be read by anyone else. It just makes life flow a little more smoothly.
But it is a useful ‘trick of the mind’ to try and separate-out which elements of one’s writing are ‘trying to make sense of the world to oneself’ from those that, deliberately or not, present an ‘image of oneself’ to others.
xN
Brilliant post, I love your writing but can relate to the things you are going through. Take care,
Sarah x