The Funeral: Part One

 Important People in My Life, Life, Traumatic Stuff, Triggers  3 Responses »
Feb 152012
 

It was a day like no other.

Given her long-term health problems, I had often wondered what Aunt Maisie’s funeral would look like. For such an obstinate woman, she was remarkably popular – as, for reasons I don’t fully comprehend, the entire McFaul clan seem to similarly regarded. Perhaps it’s a rural thing; they seem to know everyone within at least a 10 mile radius, and know them well at that. Me, I’ve never even spoken to my next door neighbours.

Maisie’s funeral service was conducted at her home. Hotel California is situated along a dark and relatively quiet stretch of road a few miles outside a small town. As you approach, you crest a hill, which is about 1,000 feet from the house. As A and I rolled up said mount, with the unfamiliar-to-the-place Eimear following us, we were dumbstruck by the sight that greeted us.

Nearly an hour before the start of the service, a line of cars was parked from the entrance to the house right back to us. There were police cones on the other side of the road, in place to prevent mourners from parking there as well. I was stunned when I realised there was even a cop car, ensconced in which were two officers, waiting in preparation for the events about to transpire.

As I got out of my car, I shook my head in disbelief. Not that I care that much, since by that juncture I’ll be dead, but I wondered briefly if I could hope to have even a quarter of this turnout at my funeral. I concluded that this was, in technical terms, Not Bloody Likely.

We waited for Eimear, and as a trio duly proceeded towards the house. Strangely, the vast yard that surrounds it was mostly devoid of cars (save for those of the immediate family) – it turned out, of course, that this was to accommodate the hearse, and the mourners’ cars which would be arriving to cart Paedo, my mother and aunts, and Maisie’s vast entourage of descendants to the cemetery, its gaping six-foot hole for Maisie waiting patiently to be filled.

I made the initial mistake of trying to get in through the front door. There wasn’t even standing room in either of the two rooms onto which the small hall leads. Some random old git offered to try to shift people around in a bid to accommodate us, but I thanked him and demurred, deciding to go around the back. People were randomly standing about in the yard, most of whom could have been Lord fucking Lucan for all I knew them (or perhaps not, since Lord Lucan’s smug face is not exactly an image unfamiliar to the world). I ignored them, and shoved the back door open.

Fortunately for me, my mother was standing in the back hall. I was perturbed to observe Georgie, Aunt of Evil, standing in close proximity, but I ignored her and reached to embrace my mother. Praise merciful God/Allah/Dawkins/Flying Spaghetti Monster: my mother decided to come outside, and free me from the burden of having to stand in such a cramped and oppressive atmosphere.

Frankly, I remember few – if any – of the words spoken between us for some time. I think Eimear, who is what may be politely termed a ‘motormouth’, stepped in to speak of the various inanities of which she is usually full. I lit up a fag and stared at my (new) shoes (new shoes! NEW SHOOOOOES! Did anyone else like Twin Peaks?), desperately wishing the whole sorry thing would just be fucking over.

“Oh!” exclaimed my mother after 20,000 years. “It’s the ladies!”

I looked up, aghast. ‘The ladies’ is a euphemism for my mother’s golf club acquaintances. Aside from converse with Aunt of Evil, the last thing I wanted to deal with was these women. Some of them are nice, genuinely, but several conform perfectly to the traditional golfing stereotypes: gossipy, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, look-at-me-and-my-perfect-hair. There was one there in particular that, although admittedly she and my mother get on reasonably well, I felt was in attendance for the sole purpose of relaying events to her little cronies (Daniel: you know of whom I type).

Unusually, my mother was not horrified that these women had ‘caught’ me smoking (I’m nearly 30, for Christ’s sake!); not surprisingly, she had more important things on her mind. That said, we had been at a funeral of another member of the golf club – a good friend of my mother’s, actually – a few years ago when the subject of baptism curiously and inexplicably came up. As I went to proffer the view that this was a load of shit and that I was grateful that my parents had not presumptuously forced my infant self through the silly process, my mother kicked me under the table, and said, “oh yes, Pandora was christened in such-and-such a Church.” I remember shooting her a look of abject disgust and anger.

Anyway. As if this wasn’t going to be long enough without silly tangential musings. In the spirit of politeness and occasion, I made small-talk with a few of the assembled golfers (of whom, it turned out in the end, there were something like 10 or 12). When one, let’s call her Amy, pulled me aside and said, “Pandora. Congratulations!”, I felt the familiar tug of paranoid anxiety grip me.

“Congratulations?”

“Yes – you know, for your internet writing. You were nominated for an award for it, were you not?”

“Oh yes. That,” I said, feigning a casual shrug.

“Yes, that! Brilliant!”

“Thanks. I didn’t win it, mind you,” I lied. I looked into the woman’s fucking eyes and lied.

“But it doesn’t matter,” she returned, the cause for her emphasis of the word ‘matter’ being the source of some puzzlement to me. “Just being nominated…that’s amazing. Really well done,” she purred, continuing – as is her wont, to be fair – to overemphasise words of little import.

I smiled bashfully, and once again thanked the Flying Spaghetti Monster when someone else just then butted in. I know it’s my fault that Mum found out about the awards ceremony, but in the name of retaining my anonymity – or, more accurately, in the name of protecting everyone else in this so-called life of mine from the sordid truths of said existence – I wished with a fervent passion that she’d not gone around telling everyone she knows. Even the fucking McFauls know about it, and half of this fucking blog is about them!

My relief was short-lived, however, as Aunt of Evil exited the back door and proceeded in the direction of our little splinter group.

She came up to my mother, and prodded her about something. Facing her – literally facing her – became unavoidable. I took a deep breath and nodded at her. “Georgie,” I acknowledged.

“Pandora,” she returned nervously. “A.” At least she had the grace to be embarrassed. A muttered some sort of equally-anxious response.

And, for then at least, that was that. I waited a few minutes in order to feign a politic exit, then told my mother that I wished to observe Maisie’s body.

She led me in, fighting her way through about 4,028,374 (living) bodies, all gathered in one sodding room. She tactfully opened the door to where Maisie lay, and let A and I squeeze through it.

I mentioned in my last post in this series that when Mum and I had seen Maisie’s body at the cuntspital that she looked surprisingly alive, as though she were merely sleeping. I also said that I don’t normally think that about corpses. Here is where my more standard thinking in this arena came back to reality, slapping me like a wet fish around the jowls as it did: Maisie looked fucking horrendous.

The undertakers had tried to do her make-up to exacting standards, but the biology of death dictated that they would fail in their noble endeavour. Her lips, even through her lipstick, were black. Her chin, rigid as it was in its deceased state, seemed to sag beyond her head like some rancid piece of meat. She had one of those expressions that elderly people in care homes who are devoid of teeth are often seen to sport. I won’t say that I was horrified, because I’ve had enough exposure to dead bodies to know what to expect. But, despite having that awareness on a sort of intellectual level, I was…disappointed, I suppose. She looked so fundamentally unlike herself that I couldn’t help but feel sorry that this was going to be everyone’s last image of her.

Like I had in the hospital, I kissed her(/the corpse – it really wasn’t her) on the forehead, and mumbled something or other. I think it was something like, “sleep well,” which is a fucking stupid thing to say. I had, however, said it many times: Alter Ego was fawning around her Facebook account (in between a myriad of deactivations of same) uttering such things and generally behaving like a normal person who’d been genuinely bereaved. Am I bereaved? Was I? Yes, Maisie was a constant in my life, and yes, she was never personally unpleasant to me…but it was so bloody complicated. Do I, will I, miss her – miss her as a niece would normally miss her previously omnipresent aunt? I truly don’t know the answer to that even now, a month after her demise.

By the time we left the body, the service was almost upon us. My mother negotiated her way through the preposterous crowd towards the living room, from which the same old prick of a minister we’d met on the Wednesday was to conduct the service. I tried to get away, but my mother insisted that she wanted me with her, which was fair enough. Pursuant to that, of course, I wanted A with me, which wasn’t entirely fair on the poor sod: I’m not the only one in the relationship that has a distinct and, at times, overwhelming crowd phobia.

I sort of stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. One of Aunt of Boredom’s (AKA Maureen’s) two sons stood to my right, with some geezer I didn’t know in front of him. My mother was directly in front of me; Georgie was to her right. Beyond my mother, Suzanne and Student – Maisie’s granddaughters – sat on the edge of the sofa. I couldn’t see any of my (first) cousins, nor did I observe Paedo. But then, the place was that packed that spotting a cunting elephant wouldn’t have been easy.

Somebody thrust an order of service into my hands. Initially askance at this – we had to fucking sing?! – I melted a bit when I saw the picture they’d placed on the front of the document. It was a good photo of Maisie, insofar as such things exist. She was not, in her latter years, an attractive woman – but she looked so happy in this picture. More than that, she looked maternal, loving and – and it pains me to use this word – sweet.

It reminded me of the good things about her: her generosity, her understanding of the many difficulties I’ve faced (well. That she knows of..!), her willingness to put herself out for me (and my abject failure to ever return that favour), the silly yet weirdly (in retrospect) endearing way she’d always insist on you having “another wee cup of tea” before you left Hotel California. I looked at it, and tears pricked my eyes. As they do as I type this.

I tried to avoid looking at the image for the rest of the day, but I failed miserably. Every time I fought to avoid it, my gaze seemed to involuntarily fall upon it. And every time that it did, I felt that little more sad, that little more regretful. I could have done more. I could have been less negative. Yes, my aunt had bad streaks – but, like I am wont to do with many people, it struck me each and every time I saw her smiling face on that silly piece of paper that I failed (and fail) to see the good that was virtually punching me in the face. And I could have done more.

The service began with a desultory warbling of some hymn or other. For whatever reason, I can’t remember what that was; I do remember that proceedings ended with Amazing Grace, apparently a favourite of Maisie’s, but whatever this was I’ve no idea. In fact, aside from a few instances which I shall henceforth relate, I don’t remember a great deal of the service. Frankly, I don’t think I was missing much, but perhaps it is churlish to say that.

The minister prattled on about how we should be comforted by God’s amazing love and all the usual shite that the clergy bring out verbatim at funerals. He even sounded like he was on stage – on stage, and acting poorly. They (whoever ‘they’ are – not They ‘They‘, thank fuck) say that the sign of a bad actor is knowing that he or she is acting, and so it was with our dear friend here. I do remember that I actively didn’t listen to most of this, because (a) I don’t agree with a single fucking word and (b) I’ve heard it all, so many times, before.

As I felt his predictable little voice evanesce away from my ears, an odd thing happened. For want of fixating on something that wasn’t him, my mind punished me by looking at that bloody picture. And I cried. Not “wah wah wah! *sob sob sob*!”, thank…well, thank whatever you damn well like – but tears were there, in a relatively constant stream. The strangest thing about this was that, for possibly the first time in my life – my entire life, not just my adulthood – I did absolutely nothing to fight them.

I remember thinking at one point, “at least they’ll know I’m genuinely grieving,” though (a) I don’t know who ‘they’ were supposed to be (again, not They ‘They’, who would have found the whole thing terribly entertaining had they been in situ), and (b) as discussed above, I don’t know that I am genuinely grieving. Further, the thinking of such thoughts shows clear manipulation. If that was my view, then I wasn’t exactly crying for my own benefit, was I? I was crying for appearances. That is reprehensible beyond any measurable scale. In my defence, the tears were involuntary, but it strikes me that perhaps my failure to do anything about them was a cynical ploy. And that – using someone’s death to appear more human (despite my recent rant about that usage of that word – see me and my bloody self-contradictions/hypocrisy?!) – that sickens even me. Maybe (Old)VCB was right when she diagnosed me with BPD.

Ballrootvicar bollocksed on for three more centuries during which I continued to ignore him with stubborn defiance – but when I heard my mother’s name mentioned somewhere on the periphery of my hearing, I turned my attention back to the man. In whatever eulogy he was attempting to perform, he was mentioning the grief of those family members closest to Maisie. When he got round to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I saw the shoulders of both Student and Suzanne shake piteously. I shed a tear for them, briefly, then watched in some perplexity as Suzanne supportively rubbed Student’s back.

Deep breath. This is hard for me to admit, but I’m going to do it. I felt something that I’ve almost never felt in this sort of context; I felt envy. I envied their closeness, and lamented my distance from it. They are not just cousins; they’re properly family, which to them trumps all. However, more importantly to me, is that they’re not just cousins/family; they’re friends. For those fleeting seconds, I longed so deeply for the comfort and unabated joy of friendship, for ordinary platonic love. I have no ‘real life’ female friends, something that has never bothered me in my life to date. I’m not even sure that it was their shared gender and its more-customary-than-mine female expression (#feminismfail there, Pan) that bothered me; it was simply that I had no friends there with me. Oh, yes, Mum and A were there – but Mum had her own grieving to do, and much as I love A and feel that he is a friend as well as a lover, the relationship is by necessity different from pure, simple friendship.

Daniel lives in England, and even though he left Northern Ireland nearly a decade ago, I miss him every day. Brian and Aaron do live here, but – and mainly through faults of my own, I confess – I rarely see them. Neither of them would have come to Maisie’s funeral even if I saw them every day anyway, and neither would I have expected it of them. If anything, I found it a little odd that so many of Mum’s friends attended, yet here I am whining about having had none of my own.

Whatever the case, I envied my cousins(-once-removed) and their innate understanding of how each other felt, and though I could probably not be good friends with either of them – whilst I like them, and believe that’s mutual, we are too different to ever be close – I desperately wanted a piece of what they had that day, and was briefly overcome with the greatest void of loneliness I’ve ever known. It is often said that it’s eminently possible to feel despairing, gut-wrenching loneliness whilst in a room full of people. I have never seen a more quintessential instance of that dictum.

This is turning into an epic self-pity-party. To get back to the logistics of the event, at some point the random bloke standing to my right was invited to speak. It turned out that he was the “Pastor” from Suzanne’s Church.

Suzanne, rather unfortunately, is a Presbyterian. Any of you familiar with the denomination will probably have guessed where this is going.

He spoke with the casual but wholly palpable arrogance that I’ve always associated with plane hijackers about hell, fire, brimstone – and how an all-loving God will burn you in agony for an eternity if you don’t submit to his narcissism. Now, let me clear something up here: I know there are Christians that read this blog, and I apologise for any offence I’m causing in this rant. Despite not agreeing with you, I have nothing per se against religion, Christianity included: it is this warped, horrible version of it that grates on me so. I don’t believe in God, obviously, but if He does exist, I can’t believe that the fuckwittery of this brand of Presbyterianism can be true. A loving, benevolent force as exemplified through Christ is not the God of which these people speak. I wished, not for the first time, that I came from a Catholic background.

You know, that’s kind of amusing in a dark way. Factions of the McFaul dynasty are viciously (and contemptibly) sectarian – notably ScumFan, but not just him. I have attempted on innumerate occasions to convince the boy that this whole Catholic/Protestant divide in Northern Ireland is an absolute load of bollocks, and whilst he hears the words and occasionally makes vague gestures of agreement, he doesn’t listen. And that brings me to what I find funny about the whole thing: if, say, ScumFan happened upon this blog and read about what his grandfather had done to me as a kid, I don’t know what he’d do. However, if he happened upon it and saw the words, “I wish I’d been born a Catholic”, I can almost guarantee that he’d disown me. Pathetic, isn’t it? I love this little country, truly I do – but I detest that that will always be an entrenched part of its heritage.

Anyway, this knobhead Pastor wanked on and on with his bigoted bile, to the point where he annoyed me so much that I started making various small noises or fidgety gestures in a bid to get his attention fixated my expression of sheer disgust. He was so self-absorbed in his vile little world, however, that if I’d kicked him squarely in the nuts and screamed, “you’re a fucking wanker, you cunt!” into his face, I doubt he’d have even batted an eyelid in recognition.

During the so-called prayer that he conducted, I actually started muttering bitchy comments at him. You may recall that a million miles up the page I stated that one of Maureen’s sons, my cousin Marvin, was standing beside me, just behind this pastortwat. Although neither my mother nor the pastortwat seemed to hear any of my misgivings, evidently Marvin did; he looked up at me, caught my eye, and – gesturing to the pastortwat – rolled his eyes. I shot him a knowing grin, which he was quick to reciprocate. I knew that A, behind me, would be seething with boiling rage too, but I was so hemmed in by others’ bodies that trying to turn to him would have been like conducted an ugly 4×4′s three-point turn in a danky bedsit. In any case, due to his visual impairment, A can’t ‘do’ body language, so I had to settle on non-verbal vicar-bashing with Marvin.

After this particular twatbag had finally shut the fuck up, it was time for one more bloody prayer, this time with the bald-headed first bloke. I gazed wistfully into nothing in particular, making a pronounced point not to close my eyes nor bow my head. I never do, incidentally, but I made a concerted effort to make it obvious that day. To no avail, obviously, because the very actions in which I was not partaking were the very actions in which those whose attention I sought were.

Finally, the assembled congregation – all of whom I hope are non-choristers – ‘sang’ a tuneless rendition of Amazing Grace, and the service was over. 10,000 people milled their way out of Hotel California, and into the yard to await the next move.

Maisie’s children and grandchildren went to the coffin for one final look at their (grand)mother, and then her coffin was closed forever, and wheeled out the back door – the door she’d always used to access that house that she’d so loved so well.

—

This post has been exhausting to write, and – I’m sure – to read. Sorry for the heavy emphasis on introspection, but then, if I can’t navel-gazingly reflect on my own blog, where can I? To be continued as soon as I am able.

Crash, Bang, Wollop

 Life, Meh, Moods, Triggers  11 Responses »
Dec 082011
 

This week has been shit. My mood took a nosedive on Monday, and really only started recovering today – though that could be wishful thinking, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed, shall we?

It started on Sunday. I don’t know if I mentioned it on this blog or not, but a while back my mother bought A and I a joint birthday present of a weekend away in a hotel, and said weekend finally rolled around last Friday (the first time they had availability in months). We’d only had one proper day of ‘normal’ life between returning from London and heading off again, and as someone used to doing almost fuck all with her life (partly as a I’m a slave to the hangover-inducing demon of Seroquel, partly because of a crippling type of agoraphobia, partly due to Christ knows what), burning the candle at both ends in this fashion was distinctly unusual for me.

It’s not that I didn’t have a good time either in London nor in the hotel – it really, truly isn’t that, and how could it be? – but I will admit that it was draining nevertheless. Up early, do stuff, meet people, live late, sleep poorly, do it all again. Drive 90 miles, have dinner, have a drink, talk to people (in rural areas of Northern Ireland, people love to talk to randoms. Having been raised near a town, this is alien territory for me), sleep poorly, up at something vaguely approximating a normal time, do stuff, eat, drink, have to put up with the mad drunkard who wants to tell you her life story and how she gave up benzos on her own but still snorts coke, go to bed, sleep poorly, drive 70 of the 90 miles, have car throw a fit, carefully drive remaining 20 miles whilst convinced car is about to blow up, get home, ruminate on potential vehicular disaster, feel ill, go back out because you’d forgotten there was a concert that night, don’t enjoy pre-gig dinner and drinks, go to gig, enjoy gig but find it tiring, leave gig in icy, pissing rain, wait for taxi, come home, sleep poorly, sleep all next day.

You get the picture.

Regular readers will know that I positively revere my car. I love the thing with a passion unsurpassed anywhere else in the material world. If I had to choose between the car and my iPhone, or the PS3, or this laptop, or my gong – I think I’d choose the car. I live in a low-level but constant fearful dread of the day when he finally dies on me. (Admittedly, and quite obviously I’d hope, that terror is nowhere near the sky-high level at which I perpetually frighten and torture myself regarding the hopefully long-in-the-future prospect of my mother’s death. I am distinctly and completely petrified of that, and think I’ll have such a major breakdown when it ((hopefully finally)) happens that I might die myself. So no, it’s not that bad – but it is highly significant nonetheless).

So when the car started going mental on Sunday afternoon, I was terrified. Chug chug, roar roar. It was like something out of fucking Formula One. It was so loud that it made every millimetre of the vehicle shudder and vibrate, which caused us as occupants nausea and headaches. Worst of all, there was damn all that I could do about it on the motorway. Well, I could have pulled over and had the RAC come out or something – I do have such cover on my insurance – but (a) how long would they have been? Sitting at the side of a motorway for hours on end would not only be soul-destroying, it would potentially be dangerous; (b) unless my life was actively threatened, I wasn’t willing to lose my no claims bonus; and (c) it was clearly an exhaust problem, and I’m not sure the good people at the RAC go about carrying the exact exhaust parts for a 12 year old and actually rather rare model of Peugeot on them.

So I drove it home. It was the least worst option. It was pissing it down when we got back to the house, so my attempts at looking underneath the car were somewhat hampered. Still, I had something of a go. No tailpipe was visible, but the rest of the fucking exhaust lay at an angle, so I suspected the former was still there, just tilted so that it was under the bumper.

Anyway. Blah. After the concert on Sunday night – and it was testament to the band’s excellence that my poor mood and physical (somatic?) illness were temporarily assuaged by the performance – I don’t think I got up until about 2pm on Monday. I then proceeded to do nothing. And then…I went back to bed.

I must have sent my mother a text message about the car, because on Tuesday evening she rang me. I made the mistake of answering the phone to her, and she plied and plied and plied me with questions: was it doing this, did it sound like that, did it swerve like this, did it turn into a Transformer and blow shit up like that, blah blah blah. And I cracked. It wasn’t her fault – as she, in a fit of justified pique at my completely unreasonable response, reminded me, she was trying to help me – but a state of heightened sensitivity and agitation that had been threatening for days finally overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t deal with having to think about anything.

She hung up abruptly, telling me she would call our mechanic.

I paced the room for a bit. I ranted on Twitter for a bit. I chewed the tops of my fingers for a bit (acting out?). I cried, simultaneously trying to claw out my eyes, for a bit. I considered resorting to self-harm for a bit. I banged my head off the wall for a bit. I wrote pathetic, whinging paragraphs overusing the term “for a bit” for a bit.

(The last one isn’t true).

My mother interrupted this phase of mentalism by ringing back with the mechanic’s advice (which was to take it to Kwik Fit ((the closest branch being half a mile from here)), rather than to him ((circa 10 miles away)), in case the peelers ((translation for the Non-Norn Irish amongst you: cops)) heard the car roaring and threw three penalty points at me). I don’t know what she said to catalyse it, but in telling her that I had gone mad again, I ended up blathering incoherently in a dysphoric, crying, desperate stream of grammatically disordered bollocks. At this point my mother developed sympathy; although she didn’t let the conversation desist (how can she not know how much I loathe phones by now?! In this case, she was making calls on my behalf!) – indeed, she came off with the usual CBT-like platitudes at which I still shudder after all these years – she did try to be helpful and kind, and I greatly appreciated that.

Long story short (well, vaguely shorter than Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady anyway), I was still blubbering and blabbering aimlessly when A came home, but his presence helped to enable me to eventually get Mum off the phone. Not having to use the device calmed me a little, but the nasty experience didn’t entirely abate.

Mum rang again yesterday to advise that an appointment had been scheduled with the local Kwik Fit for what is now today. Objectively good, subjectively night-marish. She observed that I seemed capable of conversing in a more standard version of English than that to which she had been subjected the previous evening, and as such assumed that I was ‘better’ (which I was, if you count ‘depressed’ as better than ‘depressed and agitated’).

In the course of the ensuing conversation, therefore, she asked me a lot of questions about the awards ceremony, and I was forced to lie directly to her. So I didn’t win then? Oh no, no [feigned casualness]. But they must’ve mentioned my name? Oh you know… No, she doesn’t know. Well…no… [Outraged and aghast] Good Lord, my name didn’t even crop up?!! [Brainwave] Well, it was a subsidiary award, not one of the ‘main’ ones. Oh right. Well, that’s a shame. [Thank God, maybe that's an end to it].

So where was the presentation? [Shit]. Er…in South London. South London’s quite big, don’t I know? OK, the Southbank of the Thames. But she wants to know the name of the place. Er…er…[fucking traitorous mind goes blank]…the BFI [she won't know what that is, so it's OK]. What does that stand for, she wonders? [Resigned now]. British Film Institute.

And so on, and so on, and so on. I don’t blame her for her curiosity – it’s my fault she found out about the whole thing in the first place – but I hate having to wing this bullshit and keep up the enduring pretence that this persona demands.

I don’t generally have any particular moral conscience about lying; I’m a selfish bitch, and it benefits me occasionally (I should punctuate that statement by saying that this is more historical than current; for example, the old teenage favourite of “I’m staying at a friend’s” rather than “we’re going to an over 21s bar in a dodgy area until 6am”, which was so frequently followed with lies to cover the first lies, then lies to cover those lies, ad bloody nauseum. I don’t often have cause to lie these days, but as observed I am selfish, so I couldn’t rule out employing it as a potential tool of convenience). However, lying about something so (relatively) huge feels like a big, fat pile of fuckery sitting in my mind.

I discussed this a little once before. Look what this blog has become. I’ve been writing it, at times very prolifically, for two and a half years. As was noted in the introduction to it at the Mind Awards, I don’t just a write a few sentences going “life is a pile of steaming wank” every so often; I write essays. Reams and reams and reams and reams. Look at the support network that I’ve developed from this writing and from the associated Twitter account. To use an arrogant word that I thoroughly detest, but which seems apt in context, look what I’ve “achieved”; a versatile array of lovely online recognitions, and, in this particular arena (ie. blogging/social media), what is probably the biggest mental health award in the UK.

And my mother knows nothing - nothing – about it. That is fucked. That is seriously fucked.

I mean, she knows I write stuff, and that it’s about mental health. My own idiocy alerted her to the fact that I was nominated for something big for said writing. She knows I do it pseudonymously. But that’s it. If I have any talent in writing – something of which I remain unconvinced – then, in this context at least, she can never “appreciate” it.

It’s a necessity, but it’s one that I bitterly regret.

Anyway, off I go on a pointless and rambling soliloquy yet again. My point, were I ever to sodding well make it, is that this huge, suffocating, grotesque lie added to my distress over the week. London, the hotel and the concert were great, but they were exhausting too, especially given the short timeframe in which they all came to pass. Christmas is closing its sky-scraping, dark walls in on me. The car trouble was a serious stressor. And I had no choice but to shove a gag of deceit down my mother’s throat.

So, although as I endlessly harp on, I believe that my mentalness is largely non-reactive, I think this particular mentalist incident (or set thereof) was (were) attributable to this cosmic confluence of events. Everything just came at once, and, overwhelmed, I couldn’t cope with it all. Whilst arguably my particular expression of the stress – thought/speech disorder, disproportionate anxiety, ruminative propensities towards self-harm as a “solution” – may have been examples of insanity, I don’t think that being upset and fucked off per se was anything other than quite normal. Even for a normal. If you know what I mean. Which would be rather impressive, because I don’t.

Anyfuckingway. Today arrived with the threat of having to see people (and see people without someone with me for support) in the form of having to go to bastarding Kwik Fit (each time I’ve typed that in this post, my fingers have behaved innately and tried to type Quick Fit. Why can’t companies just use the English language properly and stop trying to be “clever”?!).

I rose from my pit with a heavy heart. I went out for a smoke, got dressed (entirely, and quite typically, bypassing the “and washed” part. I never have written about my ablutophobia here, have I? I must do so one of these days) and left the house with the reluctance of a lover of life walking to the gallows. I am pathetic in the most fundamental of ways. Who in their right mind (well…) is filled with abject terror at the thought of getting their car exhaust fixed?!!!

So off I went, my transport ominously dragging me forth (read: car angrily growling and reverberating), to cross the seas of Acheron (drive up the road a bit). After quite a few irritated looks but, fortunately, no examples of Scylla and Charybdis (police*) accosting me, I duly found myself staring fearfully into the gaping infernos of Hades (Kwik Fit). I withdrew my last remaining hope of rescue from the final good vestige of my soul (took the keys out of the ignition) and proceeded onward to Tartarus, my final destination (the Kwik Fit reception).

(* That one’s quite dubious, but those two did fuck you up if you ran into either of them, just like the peelers probably would, so the crappy analogy works for me.

…

Oh, hang on. It wasn’t the police that fuck you up. It was your parents. How could I possibly have thought that Larkin had existential commentary on the police to whine out in his musings? They fuck you up, the police. It doesn’t quite work, does it? Hmm. I’m fighting a losing battle with classically depressing poetry here. This is not good. But just for clarification: Scylla and Charybdis are perfect metaphors for the ills of modern policing, and if you don’t agree, then you are wrong. Sorry, GCHQ.).

OK, enough of that pretentiously moronic guff. Terrified, I went into Qu… Kwik Fit. In what should have been an Oscar-winning performance, I confidently and charismatically explained to the bloke why I was there. He was talkative and friendly – and, to my exasperated shock, made me feel at ease. He took and checked the car, returned, and told me what was wrong. What was particularly impressive was that he took me underneath the car and specifically showed me the damage (the centre-piece had separated from the still-present tailpipe). He checked that he had a replacement part in stock, told me to come back in 45 minutes and…well, and that was that.

I went and had lunch…alone. Well, alone except for my Kindle. Result, Pan. Result! I rang my mother – she had made me promise to do so – to report on what had occurred, then I went back to Kwik Fit and waited for the car. In a few minutes, Friendly Bloke confirmed it was ready; I paid him, he wished me a merry Christmas (which, even though I hate the silly festival, was a lovely sentiment), I reciprocated, and I left. With a beautifully silent, functional, darling little car.

And I felt OK.

And the car was OK.

So I felt more OK.

Which is…OK :)

—

Actually, it’s not entirely OK. I’m not really in great form at all (it could be worse, but you know what I mean), and there’s no particular reason anymore. But I wanted to end the post on a high note! So…er…here’s a more genuine one.

Most of you are probably aware of this, but just in case you’ve missed it, voting is now open for the 2011 This Week in Mentalists awards. You can vote for your favourite blogs and discover lots of new ones over here! And if you’re new to TWIM, don’t be shy. It’s a welcoming place.

Dermatillomania: Do ‘Normal’ People Pick Scabs?

 Random Mental Health Related Philosophising, Triggers  28 Responses »
Nov 252011
 

***Possible Triggers for Self-Harm***

I’m sitting here on my sofa, contentedly watching A play Saints Row. Legs folded comfortably over one another, relaxed, comfortable. A perfectly ordinary way to while away a dark and rainy November evening.

Except for one thing. As I sit here with my lower legs bared, I cannot help but be drawn to gaze upon one of them. You see, I’m mesmerised by a deep, beguiling, dark flow of blood pouring out of my shin.

I’ve not started self-harming again, in case anyone finds this a perturbing state of affairs. Or rather, that is to say, I didn’t sit down consciously with my scalpel or a knife, and inflict a gaping wound. I have no idea how the gash got there, but that part doesn’t really matter anyway.

What does is that the wound was healing – until I pulled the scab off it, and re-opened it to the air and all its multitude of dangerous impurities.

I pick every scab on my body. Regularly, and compulsively. I have some fairly hardcore eczema in my ears, and I have the most disgusting, lurid habit of digging scabs of dead skin out of both aural cavities with hair grips (I know. I know! But if it’s not hair grips, it’s my nails – so should you ever encounter me in person, make sure I have one of the former with me ;) ). And as for spots – I squeeze the few of the fuckers that I get without exception, and in fact actively go in search of others – usually non-existent – to burst. In that way, I end up picking random bits of skin; in doing so, I frequently and unwittingly scar myself.

I have always engaged in these anti-social behaviours, much to the repulsed chagrin of my manner-minded mother and, to a lesser extent, A. When, historically, Mum would call me up on an incidence of same, I would simply say that I couldn’t help it.

I continue to hold to that prerogative. I truly feel that there is no way to control any of this mistreatment of my skin; frequently, the actions are unconscious, but they are always compulsive.

So anyway, I never really thought much about the nature of the phenomenon until recently, but if I had, I suppose I’d have termed it nothing more than a bad habit – and one that was not, at least to some degree, particularly unusual. Since my descend into utterly chaotic madness (as opposed to ‘mere’ clinical depression), though, I’ve come across the term dermatillomania.

According to the linked Wikipedia article, in order for compulsive skin picking to be deemed dermatillomania, one has to experience anxiety in relation to it. Whilst in my case, that doesn’t commonly precede picking, what does happen is that – should I be stopped from scratching – then I’ll start panicking.

Arguably then, I suppose I could say I had this ‘condition’, being as it is compulsive, and obsessive. But perhaps I’m just over-pathologising myself – it would hardly be the first such time, would it?

Either way, I can’t imagine not skin-picking. It’s one of those things that just cannot compute in my tiny, limited brain. So, bad habit or dermatillomania – do other people really not do this, or is it just that they have enough self-control to avoid indulging the practice when they’re in polite company? I can logically accept that it’s the former, but I cannot truly believe that the latter is not the more accurate picture when fully painted.

Is this yet another manifestation of my wide-ranging madness or it just…meh? Do you do this or do you honestly, truly not?

—

Later

A side note: A and I are off to Laaaahhhdahhhnnn in the morning. Tomorrow, to my delight, we will finally meet bourach for the first time. Yay yay! Sunday sees a lunchtime meeting with my best mate Daniel, and (hopefully) his partner Craig, then drinks in the evening with the lovely CVM. And – Jesus Christ almighty – Monday night sees the long-awaited awards ceremony. GAH! I know I was banging on last week that I was excited rather than nervous, but I’ve just lost a mission on Saints Row six times in a fucking row and packed, so now I’m in an apprehensive rage, which has led to a still-excited-but-OH-FUCK-I’M-ACTUALLY-GOING-TO-THIS-THING sense of…well, oh fuck, I’m actually going to this thing.

Wish me luck as I take my worried strides in the unknown…

Bye, by the way! See you next week. I’ll try and post about how the awards went on Tuesday (or, as I probably more accurately mistyped, Ruesday. Rue because I’ll no doubt feel slightly deflated at not winning anything, even though I already know that’s going to be the outcome. Well, no one ever said I was rational). Love you all, lovely people. Take care. xxx

Hypomanic Hogwash (and Seeing the CPN)

 Christine, CPN, Life, Moods  6 Responses »
Nov 022011
 

Having finished my posts on the first stint of therapy that I had with Paul, I’ve been left feeling surprisingly disenfranchised as regards my writing here. By that I mean that I have no idea whatsoever about what I should write. I mean, when I hadn’t finished the stuff on Paul, I procrastinated and procrastinated, and avoided having to tackle those posts by thinking of other inane stuff to throw at these pages. Now, in stark contrast, I can think of nothing. This is what might be known as a ‘fail’.

So, then. Let’s go with an obligatory ‘I had an appointment’ post. This one was with Christine, my CPN, on Tuesday.

The weekend had been an odd one. If you follow me on Twitter, on Friday night you might have seen why. I was behaving in a completely out-of-character fashion: gushing about how much I loved everyone, ravingly extolling the virtues of random Babylon 5 YouTube videos to people whose names I failed to correctly spell, wittering on (admittedly with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek) about how fucking awesome I supposedly was, asking people to participate in C(o)untdown contests (what the fuck?!) and generally going about screaming (or whatever the equivalent is on Twitter) “WAH!” and “WOOOOO!” and suchlike. What. A. Freak.

Saturday was better, but marginally so. The in-laws, who are selling their house, were throwing a party – ostensibly for no reason, but it felt like a ‘goodbye to Nice House in Shite Town’ kind of event (though, that said, as far as I know there have been no offers or any meaningful inquiries about the sale). Anyway, after visiting A’s father and step-mother who live relatively close to his mother and step-father, off we headed to the abode of the latter. And, although I was conscious enough of how mental I’d been behaving on Friday night and sought to curb the obvious signs of same on Saturday, I generally behaved like a twat then too. My sister-in-law, very drunk at one stage, welcomed what she appeared to see as my enthusiasm (ha!), as my mother-in-law seemed to do also. My own mother, however, was less impressed. (I forget the expression she used, but it was probably something along the lines of “catch yourself on,” a Northern Irish colloquialism that I have always loathed due to the unavoidable fact that it makes absolutely no sense in terms of syntax).

At one point my mother particularly riled me by throwing a blithe back-handed insult in my general direction. I can’t be arsed to go into the specifics, but Clarissa has cogently written about her own mother’s infuriatingly similar behaviour here, so read that if you want to get a feel for what I’m on about. This remark ignited an underlying irritability, masked by my ostensibly great mood, and I called Mum up on it, but of course we ended up getting sucked into the usual pointless circle of blame: “I’m always to blame”, “No, I’m always to blame,” yadda yadda yadda. So rather than fight it out with her, I sat down silently beside her, then suddenly started telling her why Anthony Burgess had decided to write A Clockwork Orange. My mother eyed me with bewildered suspicion, and after listening to 10 minutes of myself rabbiting on, I felt compelled to join her. A Clockwork Orange is an incredible book – one of my favourites ever written – but seriously, what the fuck? My pseudo-scholarly analysis of the background leading up to it was one of the best examples of a personally acted-out randomness that I can remember since my school days with Daniel (one such recollection: my mother was out at golf one evening, so Daniel and I ended up playing the fools by wearing cushions on our head, grabbing an abandoned curtain pole, and running up and down the quiet street squeaking, “weeeeeeeeeeeeeee! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”, all whilst each holding one side of the pole. And that’s just one such example).

So yeah. I was mad. Someone’s going to come on here and ask if I had been drinking; well, that’s in the affirmative, but honestly – this was notlunacy fueled by alcohol consumption. If anything, knowing things were a bit weird, I was more measured in my imbibing that I otherwise might have been. And alcohol, even mixed with the current medications that I take, has not in and of itself ever affected me like this. Other people’s mileage may vary, but that is mine.

On Sunday and Monday, although I behaved apparently fairly normally, my brain was certainly hyper, and thoughts seemed to race through it faster than the speed of light. Until Monday evening, that is, when I promptly and suddenly fell about 80,000 figurative parsecs, and was paralysed by a deep – but mercifully brief – depression.

Essentially, the above tale characterised my meeting with Christine on Tuesday morning. She asked a lot of questions about my behaviour and mentality over the weekend, to the point where I was beginning to wonder if I was in some sort of bizarre Capgras situation wherein she’d been replaced by a GCHQ operative quizzing me about whatever act of criminality or terrorism they might like to pin on me (not really, by the way. That was a demonstrative hyperbole, not my actual thought process):

  • Had I been irritable (yes)
  • Had I been sleeping normally (no – if ‘normally’ means well, that is)
  • Had I slept at all (not to any meaningful extent – a couple of hours here and there maybe, were I blessed with a lucky night)
  • But had I not needed any extra sleep (apparently not – highly unusual)
  • What had my energy levels been like (jumping around the place like a twatting hyena on crack)
  • Had I dominated conversation (it varied from person to person, but in most cases I must have seemed like a self-obsessed bastardface – so yes)
  • Was I able to curb any compulsion to talk (no, fucking babbled endlessly on about every piece of meaningless minutiae pertaining to any given subject)
  • Had I been afflicted with racing thoughts (yes, to the point where it felt like a cognitive kaleidoscope was exploding over and over and over again in my head)

You get the picture. She had started her analysis by saying that it may be difficult to distinguish whether this wankery had been a simple good mood or an episode of hypomania, but as I answered the questions put to me one by sorry one, she noddingly came to the conclusion that it was, in all probability, the latter.

The distinction is one I find hard to make myself especially as, as Christine noted, a genuine good mood is a very, very rare thing in my life. On this occasion, however, my behaviour had been so horribly out of character that I had to agree with her final assessment: I was probably mental.

I got myself into quite a tizzy about it. Firstly, I tried to claim that it could not have been a hypomanic episode, because it only lasted a few days. She refuted that, stating predictably and reasonably enough that there was great variance in the duration of such moods across everyone afflicted by them.

OK then, but the last time I remember being hypomanic to any notable degree was – fuck me, it must have been 18 months or more ago. (There have been very minor instances of it since, in the sense that they’ve only lasted for one evening – and, curiously, seem to be the exclusive…er…privilege (ha) of my visually impaired friends. I cannot stop talking when I see them, and I’m restless and jump about and make too much noise and pace and flit from topic A to topic B to topic fucking Z). I’ve certainly had what I believe to be mixed episodes in that time – those have been a sorry staple of my life for quite a few years now, though I only realised they had a name after I started writing this blog – but hypomania has been relatively and curiously elusive (and, indeed, its big brother – the full-blown euphoric mania – has been more or less non-existent).

Given the good mood that accompanies episodes like this, I was, on Twitter, heard (seen?) to express a murmur of regret about the paucity of them in my life. However, La-Reve promptly and correctly reminded me that hypomania – whilst better than actual mania (which she has experienced, even if I haven’t) – is actually rather shit. This is true, for two key reasons. One: the higher you are, the lower you fall. Two: actions have consequences.

By the latter point, I mean that, when I had calmed down, I was absolutely and completely fucking affronted by my behaviour. I am not like that. I am known in certain company, that of my in-laws for example, as someone who enjoys a laugh and a bit of craic – but not as someone who jumps around elated, squealing in wide-eyed delight because someone suggested putting a fucking CD into the presiding hi-fi. I am, I hope, known on Twitter as someone who really does care about the people with whom she’s developed genuine friendships – but (I hope) not as someone who wastes bandwidth CAPITALISING EVERYTHING SHE FUCKING TYPES TO TRY TO MAKE THE POINT THAT SHE LOVES EVERYONE SHE’S EVER SPOKEN TO (BECAUSE, WHEEEEE, ISN’T SHE JUST SUCH AN AWESOME PERSON) EVEN MORE CLEARLY THAN SHE ALREADY HAD (or, in greater likelihood, quite the opposite).

So yes, I was (and am) embarrassed, and I told Christine so. She shrugged it off a little; whilst she feels that this was a hypomanic intrusion, she also thinks that I behaved as some more extroverted people might generally act as standard. The assertion irritated me slightly; it is, indubitably, true – but it is not true for me. If I were a natural extrovert, laden heavy with an arrogance that blinded me, then of course it wouldn’t matter – but I’m not. I’m me, and the person I was last weekend didn’t correspond to my self-perceptions at all. Other people’s norms do not matter in this equation.

Christine asked me when I was next seeing NewVCB, and I responded by stating that it was next week (Wednesday, I think). She appeared glad to hear this, and asked me if I was still OK with possibly going down the mood stabiliser path. I confirmed that I was, especially in light of all this shite. She acknowledged that she had some concern in that regard too.

We talked about Lithium versus Lamotragine. Reading between the lines, she seems to favour the former, but my preference is distinctly for the latter. Despite the contents of this post, as most of you will be aware, my symptoms – if I even have a form of manic depression at all – are very predominantly depressive. Secondarily, I’ve heard of people putting on weight on Lithium – and since that’s the primary reason that I want to reduce my Seroquel intake, it feels like taking it to mitigate Seroquel’s lost mood-altering effects could be a false economy. Lamotrogine, by contrast, seems to carry a greatly reduced risk of weight gain; indeed, I’ve read that in some cases it actually seems to reduce the bulge.

Not that I’m unwilling to experiment, mind you. It’s just that my first preference is for Lamotragine – if, for whatever reason, that fails to function as I hope, then I’d be ready to at least try Lithium.

At my mention of depression, Christine asked had that more generally characterised my mood since I’d last seen her. The answer to this was ‘not really’ – but, when a greater timeframe is applied to the question, it would have to become ‘yes’. In June, say, I was feeling pretty positive, and felt that my outstretched fingers were within mere inches of grasping the branch that is recovery. Now, although I don’t feel hideously awful, that former optimism has become a shattered reality, unobtainable and out of reach.

I exemplified it to her thus. A has observed over the last four or five months that things with me have been on a slow but definite downwards slope; apparently, at increasingly frequent intervals, I have exhibited a general aura of malaise and despondency, I have all but completely lost interest in leaving the house alone, and I’m really avoiding things that have traditionally given me pleasure. Although of course A cannot be said to be entirely objective – he is, after all, emotionally invested in me and my well-being – he sees things without the internal bias that the mind of a mental (or of anyone, in relation to themselves) inevitably creates. I might have said that I was plodding along with relative ease; his testimony highlights a more truthful version of reality.

Christine said that she would discuss what came up in our appointment with NewVCB before my meeting with the latter. She went on to ask about psychosis (nothing much), dissociation (nul points) and then, to my consternation, therapy. It wasn’t her fault that I was slightly dismayed – it’s Nexus’. I reapplied to see Paul again about five weeks ago, and although they confirmed I’d go back on his waiting list, I’ve heard absolutely nothing from them since. This is, as you might imagine, frustrating.

Christine asked if it were possible that my decline in spirits was related to the absence of therapy. Although I believe that I have melancholic (as opposed to reactive) depressive moods, it would be churlish of me not to entertain this as at least a possibility. Indeed, I think A has noticed a slight correlation, and I told her so.

It was therefore agreed that if I haven’t heard from Nexus by the end of this week (ie. tomorrow, since I’ve heard fuck all in the time between seeing Christine and now), that I would send a polite and brief follow-up email asking what the craic was. I kind of feel uncomfortable about doing so, as it seems to me that I’m making demands on the charity’s time – but in rational terms, I suppose a quick email is hardly the work of a servant of Satan. At the end of the day, I’d rather know what was going on than not.

The session (with Christine) drew to a close with a conversation about the awards ceremony, and my going to London at the end of the month in general. I shared with her that although this crappy blog being short-listed for something so prestigious, something so fucking big, is an honour of the like I cannot adequately hope to express, that I have a certain amount of anxiety about the ceremony itself. It’s a big deal; there will be a lot of people there, and many of them are household names (that said, that will probably mean damn all to A and me. We know nothing about most celebrity types). Let’s not forget that I have social anxiety on top of everything else!

She amiably and empathetically acknowledged this issue. “But,” she added, “you have as much right to be there as they do!”

Well, because of the appalling taste* of the short-listers, apparently I do ;) [* Comment applies to this entry alone, and not the other four in my category, nor nominees in other categories either. The short-listers have great taste in some of those!]. I mean, yeah, I’m nervous – how could I not be? – but although I honestly don’t think I have a cat’s chance in hell of winning anything, I still see much opportunity in going to the event. So I’ll be shitting a brick, but I’m still excited.

Also, I seem to have organised a fuck of a lot of things during our sojourn, meaning that I’m not actually 100% sure if I can ‘do’ a mini-Mad Up or not :( I’m finally meeting the wonderful bourach for the first time, I’m seeing my best mate Daniel, plus another lovely friend, CVM – and, when you take the ceremony into consideration, that leaves me with very little free time. Christine provided wise counsel on this; it is not a good idea to over-exert myself on the trip, especially when I’ll probably be an anxiety-ridden mess anyway. I’m not completely ruling it out, you understand, and even if I am, I’ll be back in England’s green and pleasant land in the not-too-distant future anyway. Let us see, yes? Please forgive me in advance, if it doesn’t happen? *begs like a puppy*

Christine and I parted after arranging another appointment just before A and I head off to the mainland. To her credit, she realises the magnitude in my life of this trip, and accordingly wants to offer extra support where she can. Not everything about NHS mental health services is completely shit.

Anyway, things are mostly back to normal here. I’m aggrieved that I’ve had so little time to hermit this week because of the aforementioned appointment, having to get new tyres on the car and, tomorrow, having to take the car to my mechanic in preparation for his MOT (‘his’ in that clause is not a typo. I do anthropomorphise my car). Next week is even worse, and I crave solitude and social tolerance of my agoraphobia. But I don’t seem to be even remotely manic, which is good, and I’m not overtly particularly depressed, which is even better.

If you notice anything out of the ordinary on Twitter this weekend, I want you all to beat me with a big stick. OK? OK. Good.

Good night, lovers. <3 xxx

Semantics, Psychosis and Severance – Paul: Week 24

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Sexual Abuse  7 Responses »
Oct 202011
 

As any of you who have followed my accounts of my sessions with Paul will know, I have a lot of time for the man. I both like and respect him. However, there are a few criticisms that could be justifiably levied in his direction:

  • He almost always reads something into everything. I appreciate Dr Freud’s input into therapeutic theory and practice, but some stuff – just some – is just that: stuff.
  • He is a vehement opponent of the medical model of mental illness (presumably the term ‘mental illness’ would in itself offend him. I’d actually prepared a post ages ago, in which I confoundedly asked why this description is so offensive to some people – I just don’t get it. But I’ve gone and lost my bloody notebook, so that’ll have to wait. Well done, Pan!).
  • He keeps blaming people around me for not ‘noticing’ my abuse. Yeah, because it’s fucking standard for each family in the entire universe to be intimately acquainted with the warning signs, isn’t it?
  • His constant use of the phrase, that little girl. So saying that I have a mental illness offends Paul? Well, saying that I have a ‘little girl’ inside me offends me.

I think the palpable irritation of the foregoing probably sets the tone of this session quite well. Indeed, it makes me think that perhaps I was being slightly disingenuous in recently so vocally applauding Paul in comparison to C (though, that said, I stand by my assertion that the former has been more help to me than the latter – I spent many sessions in C’s company wanting to punch him, and only a few such occasions arose with Paul). At any rate, from the offset in this appointment, he irritated the hell out of me. Also, although towards the end there was finally some useful work being done, I felt a bit out of it for most of the session (I had been up to 3am the previous night trying to stop a good friend of mine from killing herself, and had not slept for ages after retiring either) and the whole thing felt a bit disjointed. So, I’m going to go through it in bullet points. Of course, my version of bullet points is everyone else’s version of a protracted essay with a few random, indented dots thrown in for no clear reason, but what else would you have come to expect? Beware of triggers for self-harm and child sex abuse, though the latter is not especially graphic.

  • We discussed our relationship briefly at the start of the session. He proffered the view that one thing that had not really occurred during our time together was any trace of him trying to “rescue me”. Apparently, he’d seen some “scary stuff”, mainly in relation to my erstwhile tendencies towards self-harm (‘normal’ cutting did not, I think, faze him especially. However, my particular modus operandi was often to carve words into my flesh or, latterly, to stab myself with a scalpel. I’m actually shrugging as I type this – such actions really are no big deal to me. They must be to him, though). I opined that his reactions were “refreshing”: C, for example, would often have seemed perplexed by and disdainful of my self-injurious behaviour; A would groan every day it happened; Mum was abjectly horrified. Paul’s dislike of the activity was certainly evident, to be fair, but he never tried to actively stop me from engaging in it, knowing that destructive as it was, it was an important coping mechanism for me at the time. Anyhow, as I noted to him on this occasion, I hadn’t self-harmed for ages. Medication was partly to blame – not that I dared to tell him that – but, to his credit, so I think was therapy.
  • You may recall that around the time of our holiday, A and I had been invited to ScumFan McFaul’s 21st birthday bash. I’d had this out with Paul before – A and I were making excuses to avoid the event, whereas Paul’s stroke-of-genius solution was to say, “well, I don’t want to go because [Paedo] used to rape me all the time.” He reiterated this point in this meeting, which annoyed me intensely. The McFauls, for the most part, and my mother, definitely, do not deserve to have their lives ruined by this information. Does no one give a shit about altruistic utilitarianism any more?!
  • I added, in relation to same, that even if I did confess, that no one would believe me anyway (which is probably true). They’d probably think I was making it all up for attention or something, but the most flattering scenario would be if they held the view that my beliefs and recollections pertaining to Paedo were psychotically inspired. “In other words,” as I said to Paul, “they’d think the mental illness causes the idea of abuse rather than the abuse causing [in part, I'd stress, not in its entirety - not that Paul would agree with that] the mental illness.”
  • He said that in his view I didn’t have mental health problems. Apparently, insanity is where nothing makes sense. He claims that everything I experience and do makes complete sense when considered in context. That’s all very well – I do concur to a large degree – but Paul is a trained psychotherapist, and I am a mentalist that has become very well informed about all the issues surrounding my conditions. The McFauls are laypersons; they aren’t going to know any of the psychosocial connections at play here. If someone tried to explain it to most of them (Suzanne and StudentMcF possibly excepted), it would rush right over their heads and vanish like Willow the Wisp. In any case, “coping mechanisms” versus “mental health problems” is a purely semantic debate, to my mind. You could call it Bouncy Fluffy Bunniness and the nett effects would be identical, so why do the fucking words matter so much to him?
  • Paul wondered why I’d never demonstrated any overt psychosis in session with him (query: why is it OK to use the word ‘psychosis’, but both ‘mental health problems’ and ‘mental illness’ are teh sux0rz?). He was distinctly unimpressed when I made a reference to Seroquel, which further irritated me. Regardless of what he thinks, I think Seroquel has helped me immensely – and surely, when it comes to one’s health concerns, one’s own observations are of pivotal importance? Anyway, he instead ventured that perhaps that particular brand of mentalism hadn’t been “needed” in the room with him. Was it that I was safe there, he mused? I was willing to entertain that notion, but added that although I felt safe with him, that I didn’t necessarily feel ‘safe’ psychologically. A lot of the work had been challenging and extremely intense. He agreed, then said that, based on my previous experiences, that perhaps I unconsciously feared that I would be judged.
  • This led to a conversation around my mother and her refusal to believe my claims about Paedo, when I tried to bring them up at the ages of 14 and 17 (or thereabouts). I defended her, however, on the grounds that she was engaging in “a quintessential pattern of psychological avoidance.” Paul sighed, and asked me for the non-intellectualised version, and I (rather reluctantly, because I felt my first answer had been fine) declared that I was perhaps insulted. My mother had, on the second occasion I think, accused me of making up my allegations of rape because I didn’t want to go to Hotel California. (Of course I didn’t want to go to Hotel California – rape was why!). I was insulted because I find women who make up stories of rape and/or domestic violence to be abhorrent individuals; not only do they dilute the genuine pain and trustworthiness of actual victims, they also make (generally) men look worse than the poor sods really are. I don’t want to be seen by anyone, least of all my fucking mother, as such a person.
  • Apparently Paul detected anger in my voice, which surprised me as I had deliberately feigned nonchalance. The problem is that if I express – or even if I just am – anger/angry with my mother, then she will die and it will be my fault. I said so to him, then launched an invective against myself for thinking and feeling something so patently fantastical. He leapt to my defence, saying that this was another thing that made sense in context – apparently, because I became the vehicle for so many heinous things, I (to my subconscious self) became a walking nuclear reactor, capable of bringing great evil and destruction to all. A reasonably fair assessment, to give him his dues.
  • At one point, for some reason (I think I must have been defending my mother again), there arose a comparison between my father, V, and Paedo. V was a complete twat, and everyone knows/knew it (apart from Aunt of Evil and her cunts). Paedo, ostensibly, is a nice enough old bloke (though in my view he’s a supremely boring imbecile, but when I have said similar to my mother she accuses me of intellectual snobbery, which I suppose is a reasonably fair charge). I exemplified the surface differences by stating that Paedo had never knocked seven bells out of Maisie. Then, to my eternal disgust, I muttered, “though I don’t know how he hasn’t, I’d have gone for her countless times.” Unsurprisingly this led to more self-castigation. Naturally, he defended me again, asking why every caustic comment I made had to be retracted. I responded by saying that I had just condoned domestic violence, which was repulsive. Apparently not, though – the issue of my taking the remark back was “much more complex” and I was using a reference to domestic violence as “an excuse” to “withdraw at the first sign of feeling”. “So,” I mocked gaudily, “I’m brimming over with resentment about Maisie’s failure to protect me and that comes out in throwaway bitchy comments?” His response? “Yes. Exactly.” Whatever. What-the-fuck-ever, Paul.
  • He monologued about how bad the abuse had been and how Maisie had “stood by [Paedo]“, not exercising a due duty of care towards me (and, he through in as an addendum, neither had she acted out of the unconditional love she is for some reason meant to have felt for me). As I witheringly picked my nails, bored of this endless psychobabble, he asked me to see it from that [fucking fucking fucking] little girl‘s point of view. Children don’t analyse and rationalise, apparently (wrong. I may not have a clear, linear recollection of my childhood, but I do remember doing just that), so my reaction to the family’s non-reaction was purely visceral. For instance, “I’m in pain, waaah waaah waaah, please help me, waaah waaah waaah…oh, look you’re not helping me, waaah waaah waaah waaah waaah.”
  • The conversation meandered towards an incident in Fuerteventura. A and I had been sitting at this lovely beach bar, looking out over the bay and enjoying a cool beer. All these little kids were running around mad, splashing in the water or jumping about in that pointless, irritating way that only children do. Aloud, I randomly mused, “I wish I’d had a happy childhood.” After a second or two, I was completely aghast at this out-of-the-blue, out-of-character remark. A seemed – I don’t know, moved? – by it, and when it was duly relayed to Paul, he in turn pronounced it “very poignant”. I was reminded of another occasion in Fuerteventura when yet more children were running around on the beach. Some of them were naked. I am not joking, readers, but this horrified me. Part of me was so disturbed that she could barely look away, thus cementing my belief in that old theory of the compelling car crash; part of me then forced myself to look away, because I felt like a paedophilic voyeur even noticing these youngsters. He said, “most people have a happy ignorance about child sexuality, and therefore have no issues with child nakedness. Unfortunately, you’re not one of them.”
  • He said that I have a lot to grieve vis a vis my childhood and that in conducting my mourning, I turned everything upon myself. I was told that when cutting is not enough, I “degrade” myself. In response, I rearranged my features to reflect bewilderment. Degrade? “Yes,” said Paul. “You sometimes write words when you cut, degrading words like ‘whore’, ‘slut’, ‘bitch’ and so on. None of which you are.” I shrugged, reluctantly but truthfully stating that “they’re not normal terms applied to a child.”
  • Paul raised the subject of the photo of the baby. He proclaimed my reaction to it to be a “wonderful moment”, it having been a single image that cut through all my defence mechanisms and psychological barriers and yadda, blah, and meh. “I saw real sadness in you that day,” he said, “and moreover, you didn’t push it away. It’s hard to pin all that hate and blame on a baby, isn’t it?”
  • This was true. However, as I pointed out, pictures of myself as a five or six year old don’t only not have this effect, they have the opposite. Young Me leaves me nauseous.
  • Blah blah blah, twaddle and waffle for a bit.
  • Eventually he came back to the subject of words like ‘slut’ or ‘bitch’ and remarked that those were Paedo’s words. Although as I said I don’t remember Paedo saying anything much at the time, I reflected that he wouldn’t have had to. Paul agreed, stating that his actions and attitudes spoke louder and intimated the same.
  • Ever defiant, I insisted that I still didn’t like the child, regardless of who actually proscribed her a whore. “Not liking her doesn’t mean I can’t absolve her of blame, though,” I added thoughtfully. And I don’t think it does either. He replied by stating that that was a good start, and that eventually, as he helped me build bridges between her (Aurora, let’s just say again) and me, I would “grow to” like her. (This is complete bollocks. I really, really don’t like children and, in fact, am generally rather scared of them. Of course, he thinks I don’t like children because I specifically hate Aurora and the legacy of madness she’s left me. I do not concur. I think that I don’t like children because I fucking don’t like children).
  • I disputed his assertion that I would like her, but not on the aforementioned grounds, valid as they are in my view. What I told him instead was that (as noted elsewhere) I don’t have a linear path of memories of my childhood. So, if I cannot access Aurora’s personality in the form of her thoughts, feelings, ideas, experiences and so on, how can I ever get to know her? Without those she is, in effect, dead (occasions of which she tries to invade my mind notwithstanding). I am not her, even though I occupy a body into which she grew.
  • For what I’m pretty sure was the first time, Paul deflected the point away (C did this infuriatingly frequently, but familiarity breeds contempt, as the old adage goes: Paul doing it once irritated the shit out of me). Rather than respond specifically, he said that in demonising Aurora, I was “shooting the messenger”.
  • For some reason, the conversation turned to a very brief article I had published some months ago in a national periodical, in which I whined about how terrible NHS provision for psychotherapy can be. I happen to know that C reads said publication. That’s not why I published it, but I did take some satisfaction in knowing that he may well have read it. “It was basically ‘fuck you’ in 150 words,” I told Paul. “Isn’t that really bitchy?” He laughed, and said that “bitchy is good sometimes.” I went on to add that occasionally I allow myself some slack for bitchiness in this area – I mean, the NHS therapy thing was a ridiculous debacle for which I was not responsible. Paul nodded his agreement, but added that all too often I “take the slack back.” True enough.
  • He alluded to the fact that, as well as not showing psychosis in session (mentioned 23 miles back up the page), I also rarely demonstrated anger. This is curious in a way, because I frequently ranted and raved at C, which was sort of a back-handed compliment to him; it denoted total ease in his company. In that way, not being angry with Paul (or, at least, not demonstrating anger) could be construed as vaguely insulting. Not that I said any of that to him, of course, but in any case he wondered if I felt that he would not “accept” my anger. I don’t know; I have never got beyond irritated with him (as I did in this session at points), so it’s hard to say. But why can’t (or won’t) I express that irritability, then? I have simply never felt comfortable doing so, yet I otherwise feel contented in his presence and, as this blog has amply testified, feel that he has helped me a great deal. Anyhow, I made some comment about “being very well aware that I’m my father’s daughter” – by this I meant that I felt that I had to be careful with anger, just in case I ever went into a dangerously blind rage (though, I should note, this was and is not my expressed reasoning for not exhibiting anger in front of Paul). I exemplified by telling him about the events that precipitated this post, though I’m still not going to say what they were here. Paul examined the incident in question against some of my father’s behaviour, and all but dismissed my concerns. I am most assuredly not like my father in any way, in his stated view.
  • As the end of the session approached, he noted that the one following it would be our last together. He lamented that fact because he felt that whilst we had achieved quite a bit in six-ish months, that realistically we had only begun to start scratching the surface of the tiresome iceberg that is my so-called trauma. “In the last few sessions especially,” he said, “we’ve covered a lot of very deep stuff. It’s frustrating to have to end it here.” I agreed that the timing was unfortunate, but brought up a point that NewVCB had made – that a break isn’t always a bad idea. Paul actually agreed with this, which is probably the first and last time that his opinion and that of a consultant psychiatrist will ever meet (and hark! The Earth wasn’t subsumed by the sun, and the galaxy wasn’t pulled into a super-massive black hole by this unlikely confluence, once-every-parsec of events!). Nevertheless, despite my insistence on the issue in the previous session, he asked me if I felt “abandoned.” I said ‘no’, citing the upfront-ness of Nexus on how short-term their therapy had to be. With the NHS, there had been – as far as I was concerned – an implicit understanding that my therapy would be relatively ongoing, at least until such times as I was socially functional. It was only after an attachment had been allowed to be formed that I was advised that that would not be the case. So, I told Paul, in comparison – and given the charity’s very reasonable issues of resource limitations – I felt quite OK about the ending. The fact that I could eventually go back gave me a further buoyancy about the whole thing. “I know we can’t start exactly as we’ll have left off,” I continued, “but at least we can dispense with the whole ‘getting to know each other’ formalities, and just get to work.” He agreed: he remarked that the time between the stints of therapy would be useful for me to consolidate the work we’d already done, and that I’d come back to the process with an increased understanding of myself, Aurora and ‘our’ situation.

As you know, I am in fact going back soon. I really don’t know to what extent I have reflected on everything we did before – not in a discretely contained gap-in-therapy sort of way, at any rate. But I know that I have a much greater awareness and understanding of myself through the therapy as a whole, and I’m still hopeful that I can build on that in the weeks and months yet to come.

Pedagogical Lust and False Abandonment – Paul: Week 23, Part II

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Sexual Abuse  3 Responses »
Oct 082011
 

This post is continued from here. Please be aware of possible triggers for child sex abuse and related issues.

—

So, Paul had inadvertently reminded me of a recurring dream that I’ve had frequently throughout this year. Oddly, I haven’t had it much since I actually had this discussion with him, so maybe thrashing it out a bit helped aid it on its merry way. Whatever the case, I found its recurrence to be really strange – as I noted in my first post on this session, although I’ve always dreamt a lot, I have not been particularly partial to recurring dreams – and the subject matter of this one had perplexed me. I could understand if I’d started having frequent dreams about Paedo or something, but I didn’t. No, this dream was about Mike – my favourite teacher at school.

It basically ran thus. I had missed pretty much an entire year at school, yet rather than re-sit the year as would be sensible, I went back in May – having had absolutely no tuition in my chosen subjects whatsoever – to sit my exams, due to be at the end of that month and then into June. The sense of dread was so palpable I can still feel it; I knew there was no way I could pass, and I was dreadfully worried about turning up to Mike’s class, not having seen him for months. There was a sense of hideously foreboding terror as I walked to his room; not only was I going to fail, I was going to let him down by doing so and, furthermore, I already had let him down simply for not being there.

As far as I can recall, as far as the dream went, I never actually did get to Mike’s room nor sit the exams. It was about the build-up to doing so, and my worry about how I was going to try to turn things completely around within a matter of mere days. I remember my sense that I would need an utter fuckload of extra time from Mike, and how unreasonable it was of me to ask that of him, given my lack of responsibility in the situation. The dreams were so vivid that I could almost believe that I’d be transported back in time to an alternative world in which my 17/18 year-old self resided. Some thinking in theoretical physics posits that 11 dimensions (and therefore alternative universes) are at least a possibility, plus the recent results at Cern may, just may, eventually cause us to rethink the notion of time travel. If any of this is proven in my lifetime, I could well be convinced that these experiences, so compellingly real as they were, were not actually dreams.

Anyway, I am mad enough without trying to bring the weird world of science fiction into this blog. The point is the dreams felt as real as sitting here right now does, and I would wake up screaming to myself, “fuck, fuck, fuck, what am I going to do?” for 10, maybe more, minutes, before I realised that it had all been, yet again, a dream – and that I actually left school over nine years ago.

I shrugged at Paul. “What the hell is that about? A deep-seated fear of failure?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so – at least, not primarily. You were very fond of this teacher. Was that mutual?”

“Yes,” I answered. “It was mutual to the point that the others in the class regarded me as something of a teacher’s pet.”

“It’s about the relationship, then, isn’t it?” he opined. “I feel a sense that there’s something about ‘using’ this man to get him to do something he shouldn’t – in this case, provide hours and hours of catch-up time to you, at the expense of his own time and possibly that of others. I would even say, in that regard, that there’s maybe something in there about you taking on the role of an ‘abuser’.”

I shot him a puzzled glance. “Would it not be simpler just to think of it as some ‘father figure’ bullshit?”

“I’m sure that’s part of it,” he admitted, “but I’m struck by the issues of boundaries in your description of the dreams. Dare I say…[he cleared his throat embarrassingly]…was there some sort of sexual tension between you and [Mike]?”

I felt the colour drain from my face – partly because I felt appalled at the idea of any implied accusations of sexual misconduct against Mike, who was usually* always a paragon of virtue – but more because Paul had just hit the nail on the fucking head.

[* Mike was a bastion of black and sick humour, which was one of the reasons I liked him so much. I remember a couple of occasions on which, to my amused delight, he made statements aimed at me that could have been considered what I will politely term 'innuendo'. One such occasion was so blatant that the girl sitting next to me turned to me, laughing in school-girl, goggle-eyed amazement, and suggested he was flirting with me. I feigned nonchalance. How could he not flirt with me, I joked, smiling devilishly back at her. I look back on that memory with a lot of fondness, but I must make clear that he would never, ever, ever, not in a hundred-million years, have acted upon any frisson between us. He was a good man, an honourable man. He just happened to have a wicked sense of humour.]

“Quite probably,” I murmured quietly, avoiding his gaze.

“Perhaps there was a sexual drive there, designed to encourage him to brake boundaries,” Paul suggested.

“That’s horrible!” I spat. I then promptly followed my outburst up with a resigned, “it’s horrible because it’s true.”

“But put it in context,” he said, a willed determination present in his voice.

“Fuck it, Paul – context or no context, that’s as manipulative as it gets.”

“But you were manipulated, then accused [by Paedo, whether overtly or otherwise] of being the manipulator.”

“So? It doesn’t give me carte blanche to go around manipulating others later in my life.” I laughed, but it was a hollow, despairing sound. “I can see this fucking neon sign flashing above my head screaming “BORDERLINE“, warning everyone away from me.” (Though as I noted I can no longer be diagnosed with that most iniquitous of ailments. “Not that it matters, though,” I added, “because as soon as it’s on file, it stays on file.”).

He looked at me sympathetically, but gestured for me to continue.

“Well. I probably did use my relationship with Mike to obtain certain…liberties. But, by the same token, I worked my fucking arse off for him. I worked very, very hard – by parsecs more than the others in the class [this is true]. So in that sense at least, he was…I don’t know, rewarded?”

“Mmm,” Paul agreed. “You see, in the real world, you’re not manipulative. The relationship was co-operative: he rewarded you, you rewarded him. It’s only when you get into the realms of the unconscious – such as dreams – that you become a manipulator, an abuser. It directly sums up your life, doesn’t it? In the real world, you were a monstrously abused child, devoid of any responsibility for the disgusting acts you suffered. But you were taught to absorb [Paedo's] culpability, so you’ve always subconsciously believed you were to blame for pretty much anything that could have been construed as ‘bad’ in your life. Such thinking then comes out in things like these dreams, where your mind tries to convince itself that you are to blame, that you are nothing but a manipulative, slatternly, abusive bitch. And it just isn’t true.”

I sat in silence, strangely perturbed by his impassioned soliloquy of Pandora-defence.

In the absence of a response from me, Paul decided to continue. “I have this image of you as a young girl – an adolescent – standing beside this teacher thinking, ‘I could ruin this man’s life. I could seduce him and make him into a monster’.”

I had never thought of it like that. I didn’t not consider the seduction element, as discussed on the post I’d previously written on Mike, but to me it was just some silly teenage crush. Loads of school children have ‘things’ for their teachers, for fuck’s sake.

Uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking, I tried to deflect it slightly.

“When I was about 14, I used to follow him around like a puppy. I know it irritated him.”

“And what happened as you got older?”

I went to say that I didn’t follow him around like a puppy in my later years at school, but stopped short of doing so. It’s true – I didn’t do so. But when I thought about it, I didn’t do so because I didn’t have to. When I was in sixth form, I saw Mike for usually at least an hour a day anyhow. I also had another class two doors up from his room, so would frequently run into him after it was over and I had a free period, or was on lunch, or whatever. Quite often I’d end up in his room blathering to him about something or other for fairly extended periods of time – and at this stage, he distinctly wasn’t irritated by my presence. He would engage me in discourse about politics, existentialism, journalism, religion – all manner of social issues. Occasionally we’d even talk (shock! Horror!) about those weirdest of things that were our actual lives. Just as I enjoyed his company, he enjoyed mine.

“As you grew older, you grew more seductive,” Paul said in response to this, tilting his head in what I thought was a deliberately provocative manner. Not that he needed to be provocative in his mannerisms, because I felt that the statement itself was loaded enough.

“As I grew older,” I challenged through gritted teeth, “I became more intellectually engaging. Does it have to have to have anything to do with sex?! Yeah, there may have been a frisson. MAY. He would never have acted upon it, however. Never.”

“Of course not,” he acknowledged. “I’m just looking at the possible hidden dynamics of the relationship.”

As I said, it was a loaded hypothesis – but perhaps not an entirely unconsidered one. I heard a cynical laugh emanate from somewhere within my body. “It’s fucked,” I told him, “but it’s a slightly more orthodox version of sexuality than that to which I’d earlier been subjected.”

“In a way, but what is so troubling about it is not that you had a romantic interest in your teacher, or even that he may at some hypothetical level have reciprocated that. You’re walking around your school at the age of 14 with your interest in this man. For you, it wasn’t some typical school-girl crush; you had full knowledge of what you were capable of doing. It’s not this pubescent image of a little kiss, holding hands, blah blah. You knew where to put this, how to do that. You knew how to have sex, and you knew you could do with him it if presented with the opportunity, because, of course, you’d done it before.”

I wondered if Paul was not reading too much into this. Don’t all teenagers think about sex, readers? Don’t they know the mechanics of intercourse? I’m seriously asking. I don’t see any of that as being abnormal.

Indeed, A and I discussed this last weekend. A thinks Paul’s suppositions are utter bollocks – ie., he thinks – yes, teenagers fucking do think about sex, and its specific mechanics. It is possible that A and I are both perverted sexual deviants, I suppose, but I have yet to see meaningful evidence of such an idea.

So, I asked Paul was sexual ideation not a common teenage mental passtime. “Not with the refinement of knowledge that you had,” he insisted.

“Vile, isn’t it?” he went on, staring into space in a way that I can only describe as wistfully non-wistful (yep, I’m sure that epically successful summary conjures up a clear and informative image of his expression in your head). “So vile that you were so different at 14 – but not just at 14. At five. How many five year old girls even know what a penis looks like?”

Well, I’m hardly some socio-sexual research analyst so am therefore unqualified to speculate on the point, but my first instinctive, inner reaction had been, “all of them.” I laughed nervously at the ridiculousness of the notion. “I suppose that shows you the stoicism that after a while comes to permeate this…this kind of thing.”

He nodded. “And, to me, that’s largely where the trauma of the abuse comes in. The physical stuff is horrid, but it heals. If the abuse hadn’t become normalised for you, if you’d somehow been protected from it continuing, then much of the psychological damage that resulted from it all may not have developed.”

I sighed deeply. “You see, I can tell myself that it’s all fiiiine, because after all, it’s only Münchhausen Syndrome, False Memory Syndrome or bare-faced, over-imaginative lies. But then I’m told that positions I deemed entirely appropriate for all young people to hold are in fact uncommon, and I suppose if that’s true then it drives the whole thing home – it is entirely believable, probably because it’s true.”

“Yes,” Paul replied. “It’s easier to think you’re just mad, isn’t it?”

But I am mad. Why is so impossible for him to accept that one can be both mad and an abuse victim?

Rather than confront him with that, though, I merely stated that should my history with Paedo ‘come out’ to the entire world, that that is certainly how the entire world would see me. Few people believe that Paedo is even remotely capable of anything even coming close to what he really is capable of, and since I’m mental anyway, it would be conveniently explained away by my alleged delusional thinking or some such. In that way at least, Paul is right.

He smiled amiably. “Well, at least one person believes you!”

“That’s a good start.”

For some reason, the discussion moved back to Christine, and how I don’t talk in any detail to her about the abuse. To my mind, this is entirely appropriate; she’s there to support me in terms of my everyday living, so far as I can tell. There is no reason to dredge up reams and reams of long-past bollocks when that is what Paul is meant to help me with.

He, though, wondered if she and NewVCB “shy away” from the subject. Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t, but to the best of my knowledge, qualified as they both are, they are not trained psychotherapists.

“Still, though,” I ventured, “does it somehow offend them or scare them? If so, why? I mean, it was me that had to live through it!”

I paused, reflected on the comment, then felt like the bitch to rule all bitches. “God, that was a dreadful thing to say,” I moaned. “I actually really like them both, and do believe they want to help me.”

“But it isn’t about them,” Paul insisted. “There’s a part of you that carries what happened with her at all times [fucking Aurora], and it’s that part speaking: you’re rightfully pissed off, and sometimes that just comes out. I don’t think you’re angry with anyone specific – except, perhaps, for the obvious.”

He paused dramatically for a second, wearing a thoughtfully perturbed expression. Just as I was about to ask him what was wrong, he continued, “you know, when you stutter and stammer over words in here, I can’t help but see these hideous images of you choking on him.”

This shocked me to my core. Does he really see that?! What a truly terrible thing for him to experience indeed. What a complete fucking cunt I must be for even allowing such evil into his head. I said so, adding that I didn’t understand how trauma therapists could do their job without going off their heads themselves.

“I know there’s supervision and whatnot, but it must be at best challenging to have to listen to – to have to see – this kind of stuff all day long.”

He made a gesture dismissing my concern. “I think that what you said about having to live through it rings true – I didn’t have to do that, did I? [Well, I don't know. Maybe you did, and you wanted to help others in this predicament? I don't exactly know your life story]. If I can’t hold some of the toxicity, what chance do you have?!”

He said, “look, Pandora. I don’t get my fingers burnt in these situations. Yeah, it’s fucking nasty, but I don’t. I hope that in that way the toxicity of this can be somehow contained for you.”

‘Contained’. My favourite fucking word. “I’ve been in therapy on and off since I was 14!” I exclaimed, hopeless and incredulous all at once. Paul me regarded me with a sympathetic but nonetheless searching expression.

“FUCK!” I eventually screamed into the air, at a random, ethereal, non-existent persona. “FUCK!”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he enquired as to what exactly I was shouting at.

“Just….FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK!”

Both of his eyebrows quivered minutely, but my God – he was clever and subtle about it. He composed himself more quickly than anyone else that I have ever seen in a similarly ridiculous siutation. In those few minuscule seconds, he diffused my sudden and quite frankly inexplicable ire, and I appreciated this fallacious, yet remarkably calming, tolerance, however bogus it may have been.

“It’s interesting,” I murmured, affecting indifference.

Paul tilted his head. “Tell me how,” he coaxed.

“I’ve spent – what? 10, 12 years? thinking that therapy was a right load of old bollocks. But now, I’ve met you – and things have changed. It does work. I feel better – or, at least, I feel that I’m worthy of being understood. Why is that? Why – how – does therapy actually work?!”

[I deliberately resisted the urge to tread into neuro-psychiatric territory at this juncture. Paul is an anti-psychiatry type, and sometimes I feel too old and decrepit (the fact that I'm only fucking 28 notwithstanding!) to try and defend a position that contradicts that of others. Previous discussions about Paul should exemplify this well.]

He shrugged with amusement. “If you find out,” he smiled, “will you please let me know?!”

I returned the smile, but he must have seen something regretful in my facial expression. “OK,” he started, after several minutes of study of my rather forlorn face. “There’s more for you to say here. Cough up.”

“This therapy is ending soon,” I said, again with feigned nonchalance.

“Yes,” he said, expressionlessly.

“Do you think that I think you’re abandoning me?” I queried, disgusted at the borderline implications of the question.

“Do you?” he batted back – to my considerable annoyance. Why is it so bloody hard for people to answer a simple sodding question?!

“No,” I declared definitively. “However, plenty of others appear to hold that view.”

He asked me what I meant, and I explained that both Christine and NewVCB had postulated the premise that because the therapy at Nexus was time-limited, that I would going to feel “abandoned” and “rejected” when the relationship between Paul and I was no more.

“I don’t,” I pressed. “I truly don’t feel that. My issue with short-term therapy is that two decades of mental illness cannot be reversed in six months. It’s a rational, pragmatic objection – not some borderline freakery, like seems to be generally assumed.”

“I’ve said to you before,” Paul began, “that in an ideal world we’d seen each other for at least two years.”

“I know. But you’ve always been so straight-up about the time-frame that we are afforded here, and thanks to your candour, I’ve been able to accept that. But that bloody word ‘borderline’ denotes to all and fucking sundry that any rational objection I have must be related to an abandonment complex.”

Paul was about to respond, but I felt I’d overstepped the mark a little. Yes, NewVCB and Christine were concerned about my feeling “abandoned”, obviously a central tenet of the borderline personality. However, in fairness to both of them, the key word here was “concerned”. They cared; they didn’t, and don’t, condemn.

Nevertheless. “It’s not about abandonment,” I complained. [The lady doth protest too much? I don't think so, but I'm sure there are those that do.]

“Of course not,” Paul responded, perhaps too appeasingly. “Throughout your life, you’ve been subjected to a string of dysfunctional attachments. Here, in this room, there is, I hope, an attachment – but of a different kind. It’s secure and non-abusive. You’re entirely accepted here. Yes, you’re leaving in a few weeks – but, I hope, you’re going to take that security with you. I’m here in the background; the experience of our relationship is still there.”

He paused, then – more deliberately than I might have liked – added that all relationships come to an end. “It’s about how it’s handled,” he said.

“Of course,” I nodded, in all sincerity. I thought back to the mess that was the conclusion of my time with C, and chuckled cynically. “I can’t help but think back to how poorly this was managed in my NHS therapy…but I know it shouldn’t, and doesn’t have to be, that way.”

Paul made some caustic anti-NHS-therapy comment that I wish I could recall.

“It genuinely wasn’t my fault,” I commented, with a surprisingly defensive tone. “It wasn’t entirely the psychologist’s either – it was more to do with the appalling mess of bureaucracy to which most NHS workers are sadly subjected.

“My psychiatrist has actually been really supportive,” I added. “Yet she and my CPN are still concerned about this abandonment bullshit. I don’t get it. Just because my NHS therapy – as a result of the utter fuckwittery of the Trust – ended badly, it doesn’t mean that I am a demanding twat, and that all therapy I might ever have will go tits up.”

“What do you actually think about endings in therapeutic relationships?” Paul boldly asked me.

I could have given a 4,000 word response, because I’ve bloody read enough into the subject. Instead, I gave him a simple – but accurate – analysis: “no one is in therapy forever. That’s exactly the point of it: it’s not meant to be permanent. If endings are handled well, that exemplifies to me what one is meant to do with the relationship.”

Paul smiled. “You’re right on the mark, girl,” he said. “Right on the mark. Do you think we can achieve a satisfactory ending to this relationship together?”

“Of course I do,” I nodded. “Would I like it to be longer? Of course I would. But do I accept that it’s not going to be? Of course in duplicate. To me, it’s about how it’s handled, and how well it’s been handled. And I think it’s been, and is being, handled well.”

He smiled at me. “I previously suggested that after this is all over, that you come back again after a few months have elapsed, ” he said. “I do hope you do so, Pan. “But if you don’t, I have every faith in you anyway.”

Body Memories and the Power of Silence – Paul: Week 23, Part I

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Sexual Abuse  2 Responses »
Sep 302011
 

I’m going back to Nexus, my previous centre for psychotherapy, as demanded by NewVCB, Christine, A and seemingly everyone else across the space-time continuum right from the beginning of the universe all the way to its infinite ends (don’t you just love the paradoxes of physics?).

Please forgive my customary flippancy. It is probably a good thing to be returning, especially since Nice Lady That Works for Nexus has responded to my email saying she’d stick me back on the waiting list to see Paul. I mean, I knew he’d pick it up when he saw my name on the system, but Nice Lady has already made sure he won’t somehow miss it amongst all the noise of all the other registered clients. Additionally, they’re also going to “call” me (groan) when someone has a cancellation, so that I can go in, pre-therapy, to “update [them] on [my] present circumstances.” That’s going to be a hugely insightful and interesting meeting. “Hello, Nexus Person. Me? Hmm. Still seeing psychiatrist. Still seeing CPN [when she bothers to turn up, which she didn't last time. I never did rant about that here - I shall rectify that in another post to be composed probably-not-anon]. Still writing that stupid blog, though thanks to anhedonia, avolition and other nefarious a words, not with the frequency or passion that I once did. Still mad. Still depressed. Still unemployed. Still x, still y, still z. Isn’t that so obscenely fascinating that you might have a passion-fuelled heart attack and die right now? No? No, I didn’t think so. It isn’t for me either.”

Anyhow, as any of you who regularly follow this nonsense will know, I’ve been horribly remiss in recording my last few sessions of my last round of therapy with Paul (as I was in the final weeks with C before him, but that was more about my avoiding having to think about the trauma it would have evoked, rather than being merely attributable to an apathetic lethargy caused, at least in part, by the rut of mentalism). I mean, I last saw him in June, for God’s sake, and now it’s the end of September (though quite how that came to be the case is quite beyond me. My life is passing me by…). So. I’m going to bang out this session today (and continue it tomorrow/Sunday), and the two that followed it WITHIN THE NEXT FORTNIGHT AT MOST. Should I fail to achieve this, you are not just permitted to bollock me: you are actively required to do so. OK? OK. Here we go.

—

This session was on 16 May, just before we went to Fuerteventura. It’s kind of fucked to start writing a review of it over four months later, but I have my notes, and they catalyse certain memories of it, so sod the dispassion and let’s get to it. It will not surprise you to learn that of course things opened with silence. I didn’t know what to say – who’d have guessed it? – and Paul refused to let me off the hook. In a fit of pique, I refused to break a stare with him. Why let him off the hook if he won’t afford me the same courtesy?

But I’m a weakling of a human being, and after several minutes had elapsed, I gave in and told him I couldn’t stare him out any longer. He advised that he had “not considered it a competition.” Whatever. Do you just stare intensely at people for what seems like ages for fun, mate?

In any effort just to say something, I ended up telling him about my neo-psychotic encounter with a Monty Python keyring. When I’d concluded the story, at first he didn’t laugh, which left me feeling utterly mortified. I was disgusted that I had dared find my little anecdote mildly amusing when it apparently wasn’t – but just as I was about to start verbalising my self-castigations, he sort of bowed his head and started howling with laughter. So, ever the psychological splitter, I then began to regard him with a measured incredulity – I mean, it wasn’t that funny!

Composing himself, Paul said, “how appropriate that Monty Python were involved. They seem psychotic at the best of times.”

I concurred, and voiced the view that the whole episode had itself been worthy of a Python sketch.

He used the opportunity to ask me about my friends (spot the heavy irony), the hallucinatory voices. “They seem to have been quiet of late,” he commented. “Why is that?”

I boldly stated that 600 daily milligrams of Seroquel was a forced to be reckoned with.

He smiled appeasingly at me for a welcome but frustratingly brief second. “Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true?” he said, his grin shifting to something slightly more sceptical.

When I elected not to respond to this remark, he continued by saying that maybe it had more to do with the fact that, as we had discussed to some extent the previous week, I was allowed to ‘hurt’ in therapy without that pain’s typical accompaniment of panic. As well you know, dearest readers, I don’t agree with Paul’s views on medication and the medical model at large – however, what I do think is that drugs only help to a point. It is only through therapy that anything approximating proper, long-lasting recovery can be achieved. I thus declared that I agreed with him on that point, adding that in that room with him I could speak with impunity about anything and everything, without facing any value judgements whatsoever (at which point he quipped that whilst that was mostly true, he had to condemn my taste in keyrings. I appreciated that amusing aside).

“You know, it’s odd,” I mused. “I spent a year and a half in NHS therapy, and yet it was only in the last few weeks of it that I felt able to share anything more than the least worse bits of this whole sorry saga with the psychologist. I know Nexus is here to counsel people with experience of sexual abuse specifically, and my previous psychotherapy wasn’t, but it’s still a really positive thing for me that I was able to walk straight in here and start talking about it to you.”

[At this point my mobile started vibrating in my bag, interrupting the flow of conversation. I was absolutely affronted, and when I brought it out of my bag to shut it up, I noted that it was my old friend Brian calling. It is not to my credit that in those few seconds I fantasised about rearranging the face of one of my closest friends for unwittingly intruding upon my therapy session, but that's the strength of feeling that in my experience so frequently bounces around the room on these occasions.]

“It’s not just about being able to speak,” Paul told me. “It’s also about being able to be silent.”

Ha! I think I call bullshit on that, Paul. As I said to him, “I always feel shit about there being so much silence in session. Which I suppose is odd as I do a lot of it, but you know what I mean.” Don the metaphorical mortar board and amend the uncertain tone of voice. ”Of course, intellectually I appreciate that of course there is therapeutic value to be gleaned from silence; you can derive psychological detail from same, and in doing so, afford benefits back to me. Nonetheless, it feels like time-wasting.”

He had been shaking his head, ready to softly scold me for treading into academic territory yet again. With the last sentence uttered, however, he was sated, and proffered the opinion that perhaps, then, it was somehow therapeutic to be allowed to be a ‘time-waster’. “You don’t have to be the ‘good’ client or the ‘good’ child,” he said. “Not in here.”

Not content with my earlier foray into pseudo-scholarly speculation, I hit back with, “I’m not saying this is the case, but if I were to offer a hypothesis [he rolled his eyes, a gesture that I chose to ignore], I might suggest that if I had silence enforced upon me as a child, that it makes sense to re-enact it now, in these circumstances, as an adult.”

Paul looked at me with vague curiosity. I think I’ve said it before, but sometimes you can almost see the cogs turning in his head. In this case, I’m fairly sure that he was trying to develop a response to my continued intellectualising, or perhaps he was mentally querying why I kept insisting on taking the sessions down that route (avoidance, I should imagine). Either way, I know – I knew with C, and I knew with Paul – that I’m not supposed to wank endlessly on about the subconscious thinking behind my feelings and actions. That’s his fucking job.

Thus began the beating-myself-about-the-face for not conforming to what is expected of me in this inherently bizarre social setting. “Why the fuck didn’t I become a psychologist? I’m ridiculously well-versed in o’er pretentious but probably empirically flawed psychobabble shite, just like they are,” I declared.

A ghost of a smile crossed his lips at this, but instead of replying he asked if the silence in session was forced or chosen. To be honest, it’s neither – or not insofar as I had previously considered it anyway. It just is. I said so, but added that on reflection it was probably closer to the latter. I mean, he doesn’t sit there and scream at me every time I use my vocal chords, so he’s hardly coercing me into keeping my fat gob shut.

And guess what? That resulted in a silence as long as the name of a Welsh village. I remember sitting there wearing this ridiculous expression that I suppose was meant to convey some sort of “oh fuck!” embarrassment and discomfort at my entirely predictable but nevertheless irritating failure. Having learnt my lesson at the start of the appointment, I decided not to look at Paul. Instead, the ever-fascinating carpet was the object of my less-than-dignified gaze.

“So,” Paul said eventually. “Is this a comfortable or uncomfortable silence?”

If the question hadn’t been so completely ridiculous, I’d have laughed in his face. How could it be anything other than the latter?!

“I keep racking my brains in order to think of something to say to you.”

“Stop trying to think of intelligent things to say. What would you say then?”

An even more ludicrous remark, I thought – though as I acknowledged, I knew what I was meant to say (or, perhaps more accurately, I knew what clients who are less dickhead-ish than I would have said in similar circumstances. They would have got to the fucking point).

I cleared my throat. OK then, I thought. Let us talk about what he wants to talk about.

“Have you ever heard of the term ‘body memories’?” I asked. When he nodded, I continued by saying, “well, association is the oldest trick in the psychological book. When I come in here, associating what we do with the reason I came here in the first place, I sometimes experience such things.”

“Which is a horrible thing,” he speculated. “How do they manifest?”

I see from an archived post that I briefly alluded to this phenomenon with C – in fact, to my retrospective surprise, I see that I used the actual words when discussing it with him. Fortunately for my too-frequently-blushing cheeks, I managed to avoid such hideous terminology with Paul. “Sometimes I feel like I need to urinate [I somehow managed to resist my urge to play with him by using the word 'micturate'], even though I actually don’t. I remember this happening from waaaay back into my childhood. If someone was drunk on TV, say, I’d feel this weird sensation, and it often continues this day [something of an odd issue given that my adult self is not exactly a teetotaller]. I was always completely mystified by it, but now of course my supposition, although I have no conscious recollection of it, is that he must have been pissed on one of our…encounters.”

“And how is discussing that for you?”

Aha! The inevitable re-phrasing of that old therapeutic mantra, and how does that make you feel? For once, the question was aptly timed. Even mentioning this bizarre ‘body memory’ caused my head to do what I described as “that thing it does.” In other words, I felt myself trying to float away – to dissociate – but I fought it. I didn’t want Aurora (or anything/anyone else) taking control, little bloody brat that she is. And hark! I was the victor in this case. Mwhahaha! Screw you, Aurora! However, my internally-fought fight against feeling smug at beating her down was somewhat less successful.

Paul broke into my mental tug-of-war. “As well as dissociating, you often choke or stutter whilst trying to talk about these things,” he said. The dialogue presented in these blog posts completely belies the truth of this statement. I am an unmitigated mess of oratorical shite every time I see him.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m abusing you here,” he announced, completely to my surprise.

“That’s not how it feels to me…”

“Well. I try to bridge the gap between the dissociated and repressed to the conscious. It’s inevitably difficult for you, and at those times it’s like I’m coercing you into feeling that pain.”

I reiterated that, at least on a surface level, I didn’t feel that way about things. “I can see your point, though,” I admitted. “But I think reliving the trauma and pain is a necessary part of the process. Not pleasant at the time, but helpful in the long-term, I think.”

He nodded, then – in reference to body memories – brought up another client. “She dreams a lot, and wakes up brutally tender and sore. She’s also constantly bothered with urinary tract problems, despite no medical reason for them.”

I felt immediate empathy with this and said so. Not with dreams resulting in tenderness per se, but regarding random flare-ups of embarrassing down-there issues. I’m frequently afflicted with thrush, which has occasionally been resultant from my now-discovered allergy to penicillin, but which more often develops for no discernible reason at all. I get it in my throat too, so you can see the whole rape-analogy shebang…so I have conversion disorder on top of everything bloody else, how fantastic! Seriously though, in my case I suspect nothing more than coincidence to be at play, but it is interesting and potentially revealing to at least consider possible connections.

Anyhow, Paul had reminded me of something else in his allusion to this other woman. “I dream a lot these days,” I told him. “I’ve never had recurring dreams – other than the one probably everyone has where they’re falling through air – until relatively recently. Now there’s one with which I’m constantly plagued.”

Oh boy. This fairly opened up a set of gargantuan twatting floodgates…

—

OK, I’m going to leave this post here for now, and continue the session review in a second one. There’s still a myriad of crap to cover, but a month or so ago I decided I was going to try to start writing blog posts that weren’t of the preposterous length to which I seem addicted, at least not every time I put fingers to keys. Since this is already 2,600 words long I have clearly failed, but I wish to fail no more than I already have. So, then, dear readers: duh-duh-DUH! To be continued…

—

Continued here.

Any Thoughts on Depakote or Lithium? ***¡Advice Please!***

 Medications, NewVCB, Psychiatry  53 Responses »
Sep 132011
 

Saw NewVCB last Wednesday morning.

Not much to report, really, and even if there was, as you’ll be able to tell from the appalling calibre of the following, I’m still not really in the form needed to competently review it.

She asked how things were and told her everything was fucked, thanks to my idiotic decision to reduce my Seroquel dosage. She checked that I was had gone back up to the 600mg dose, and I confirmed that I had, and had been doing so for about a fortnight.

Long and the short of it is that she claims it’ll take up to six weeks back on the high dose for things to start to improve. Wonderful. Well done, Pandora. It would be less annoying if it wasn’t my own fault. She encouraged me not to berate myself – she says patients do it all the time, and that if nothing else, it demonstrates to me what I do and don’t need. Well, maybe so – but I did this years ago when taking Fluoxetine, and should have learnt from that experience to leave such things to the quacks. But nooooooo. I know better, don’t I? Twat.

Anyhow, naturally she asked why I’d decided I’d half the dose. I explained about the horribleness of the hangover effects and the preposterous weight gain. I said that I’d be willing to tolerate the former for now (and as she noted, if and when I go back to work, I am more likely to get a ((post-hangover)) afternoon part-time job anyway, since most part-timers prefer mornings), but that I hated the weight gain issue because I was down to a size 16ish at one point (I hadn’t been that size since I was 16), and that having put most of it back on was pretty soul-destroying.

Her plan, then, is to wait until my mood has re-stabilised on my current medications (which seems unlikely to ever happen to me right now, but she opines to the contrary), and then we can look at how to play this in the long-term. She does, to be fair, acknowledge that even ignoring the physical issues surrounding my gargantuan size, it’s not good for my mental health to see 14 rolls lopping down around my knees, hiding even the briefest glimpse of my toes and their ingrowing nails. What she has suggested is reducing, though not eliminating, the Seroquel – and then adding in a mood stabiliser to make up for the loss of those same properties from said drug.

She specifically named Lithium and Depakote, though she expressed a mild reluctance regarding the latter; she laughed and said that she knew I was filled with abhorrence at the mere mention of breeding, but that nevertheless, she had to be very, very careful about the prescription of the thing to ‘fertile females’ on a ‘just in case’ basis. Apparently it can seriously fuck up a foetus/embryo.

I really don’t give a fuck about that, as – as she rightly noted, though I’m not sure how she figured it out as I don’t recall ever discussing it with her – I fully intend to never become pregnant. However, I think I read somewhere that it can interfere with the mini-pill, which I take as a contraceptive and fuck-off-menstruation-and-related-pain medication. A quick look just now has suggested that it doesn’t stop it working, but could increase levels of hormones in one’s body. Which could be a bit wank as I’m not unconvinced that oestrogen has an effect on mentalism, specifically depression (sometimes of the particularly vile variety known as ‘agitated’).

She did say, though, that she would prescribe it (regardless of my presumed ability to conceive) if she thought it best, on the balance of the foetus issue versus its active psychiatric indications. I was initially quite encouraged by this, because I’m not sure how I feel about Lithium: I’ve heard of others gaining weight on it (and one friend was constantly ill whilst taking it), so what would be the point in cutting the Seroquel (which I know works)? So, I thought, bring on the Depakote. Except that, since then, I’ve read the article on it on Net Doctor and see that it too can cause weight gain!

So, maybe either it or Lithium would mitigate the undeniably shitty hangover effects of Seroquel, but it’s quite possible my main concern would not be assuaged in any way. So what would be the point in modifying my current cocktail which, whilst problematic, has shown itself to work very well in terms of its indicated usages, only to find myself at the mercy of the same cunty side effects I’d hoped to avoid anyway?

All that said, I have known people to take mood stabilisers (Lithium in particular) who’ve found that it completely changed their life. Indeed, the Net Doctor article on it states that it’s a very good medication to take to boost the effects of pre-existing anti-depressants. So if I could get my depression and its related anhedonia/lethargy/etc to sod off (it’s never really gone away – it’s only got a bit less shit), then I might be more willing to leave the house and get some exercise to combat any extra weight anyway. But that’s a bit of a punt, really.

Have any of you any experience of Lithium and/or Depakote, and if so, what’s your view on it/them – both in terms of how they help (or don’t) psychologically, and on what the side effects are? If you take an alternative mood stabiliser (whether a ‘true’ mood stabiliser or an anti-convulsant) and you’ve found it useful and/or lacking in side effects, could you tell me a bit about it too please?

NewVCB also mentioned other anti-psychotics such as Risperidone, which typically have lesser weight issues than Seroquel. However, as a form of anti-compensation for that, you lose the mood stabilisation, so one such medication would again presumably be needed in that circumstance.

Despite my dreadful mood, I managed to crack a joke during the appointment, and was pleased to make her laugh. She asked me about suicidal ideation, and I told her all I could think about was my body flying off the Golden Gate Bridge or the high-rise apartment blocks close to my house.

“But don’t worry,” I added drolly. “I suffer from vertigo*, so…”

(* And it is ((usually, though not always, height-triggered)) vertigo, as opposed to acrophobia. I don’t really have the latter, bizarrely).

She laughed out loud, caught herself on and apologised, then started laughing (almost hysterically) again. I told her it was meant to be humourous and to laugh away. I like humour in this arena. I remember once ages ago that C cracked a joke (oh look – it was my very first therapy post. How quaint) about how my footballing allegiances were not at all good for my mental health (especially true that fucking season) – a comment made viscerally, for which he then apologised. Fuck that. Don’t apologise! Joke away. I mean, if you didn’t laugh, you’d have to fucking cry.

Anyway, medication issues aside, I handed NewVCB a copy of my last post, and that coupled with her usual questioning determined that I am “very clearly” in the midst of a major depressive episode. However, at least A and Mum are usually about somewhere, and my suicidality is operating “at fantasy level”, so there is unlikely to be any “danger”. I’d say that the lack of danger comes more from avolition and apathy rather than anything else, but there you have it. I shall, most likely, remain alive for the next while.

As I left the appointment (having managed to blag myself a script for Diazepam – which frankly I don’t particularly need, but insurance is always good) she said, for the second time since I first met her, “nice to see you, Pandora.”

Incidentally, the first time she gave me a complimentary goodbye of this nature, I was also similarly mental to last week (and both occasions were caused by fluctuations in medication, rather than being distinct ‘episodes’ in their own right). Why do I find that probably coincidental and innocuous fact so intriguing and revealing?

In other news – I haven’t written anything in the last week…BUT! I’ve had this laptop completely closed – it’s literally not been open once – since…fuck, I don’t know, last weekend? Although I have tweeted some articles and suchlike, I haven’t checked Twitter at all (ditto G+ and the odious Facebook). In this complete abandon of social media, I’ve been working on The Book. I’ve not written anything, as noted, but I have been studying the distance learning writing course I enrolled on when I first went off work a few years ago, and have been especially concentrating on the modules on novel composition. Much of it seems obvious – although this blog is factual and autobiographical, sometimes the narrative of posts takes on a tone similar to fiction, so I feel I have some pre-existing understanding of the idea. However, there has also been a lot of benefit in what I’ve studied to date, and I feel cautiously confident about The Book and its plot at the minute.

Furthermore, in my absence from internet sociability, for some reason I’ve been internally bombarded with quite a number of creative fictional ideas that I think I can turn into short stories, novellas, or perhaps a second The Book. There’s one about which I’m especially hopeful, which was garnered from a disturbed, haunting dream this very morning. At least nightmares have some purpose!

On Thursday, Wendy Perriam, whose excellent book Broken Places I reviewed for Mind, emailed me to thank me for said review. This was a wonderful buoyancy both for my own sake and for that of my writing (which Wendy was kind enough to compliment, which was incredibly flattering coming not just from a published author, but also from a published author who I hold in high regard). I asked her for a few tips, which she kindly gave me, and it’s added to my sense of ‘I can do this and it won’t be completely crap’. I’m not undaunted by any means, but neither am I totally petrified of my own potential incapacity.

The weekend was quite good. I’d been apathetic about going to one of our regularly organised poker nights on Friday because that meant fucking seeing people, but in the end it was fairly good craic – and guess what? Muggins won :D It’s my first win in a long time but it sees me atop the leader board. I’m the only woman in the whole group, yet the stats show me as the best player. Suck it up, gents!

On Saturday we met W, A’s best friend who was back in Norn Iron from England for the weekend, and ended up spending all day talking complete and utter bollocks and laughing at puerile nonsense. It was good. In keeping with what’s been occupying my own life lately, I suggested a writing challenge to W and A, an idea that both seemed to embrace for their own reasons of escapism and intellect. As well as just being fun (what even is that?), I think this could be useful in terms of my self-imposed deadlines – if A and W are in competition, I am going to be more driven to compete within this cause myself.

So, all in all, ostensibly things are good – but the reality, of course, is far from as black and white as that. I’m back into a firm agoraphobic, hide-in-the-house-and-brood-with-the-blinds-closed mode. But I’m keeping up with the studying element of my (hopefully) soon-to-be The Book, so there’s a sliver of a silver lining (try saying that after six pints of pale ale).

I’m seeing Christine tomorrow. She asked me, the last time I saw her, to do two things before tomorrow’s appointment: (a) ask Daniel to write me a reference for the voluntary position I was considering applying for and (b) get in touch with Nexus again to organise my second stint of therapy with Paul. Re: (a)…well, I have asked Daniel for the reference, to which he has agreed. However, I’ve not filled in anything of the application form, which therefore renders the request redundant. As for (b)…no chance.

Normally speaking, it seems like an uphill battle (at a bloody 85° slant) to acknowledge the mere existence of others, which both of Christine’s challenges require. I simply can’t face any communication without A holding my hand (literally and metaphorically). Beyond reading, I can’t really do anything off my own bat, and even if I could, I wouldn’t enjoy a milisecond of it. I haven’t had a bath in about a month. I keep trying to rewatch Babylon 5, but I can’t concentrate on it. I’m scared, I’m low, and I’m so, so tired. But I have something to cling to, for now at least.

Anyway, any advice you have on Depakote, Lithium or indeed any other mood stabilisers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks folks.

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The Evolution of Goldfish – Paul: Week 22

 Nexus, Paul, Psychotherapy, Recovery, Sexual Abuse, Traumatic Stuff  9 Responses »
Sep 012011
 

Right. For absolute God’s sake, Pandora, just write this fucking post and stop finding procrastination-borne ways of avoiding it.

It’s not that there’s anything particularly traumatic about what I’m intending to write, but these session reviews are long and tiring in their composition, and moreover, because it’s from a couple of months ago, the feeling is not as ripe in my mind as I’d prefer it to be. That’s entirely my own fault, of course; I have had plenty of opportunity to finish writing about Paul well before now. Instead, I’ve chosen to dick about – oh look, *shiny thing*! Fuck’s sake. Anyhow, the notes do remind me of some of the nuances and subtleties of the sessions – the way he might peer over his glasses, the palpable expression of hurt or rage within the room, my constant hair-playing – but I’m not sure if I’ll ever nail them quite to the standard I would have had I written them up in the afternoons immediately following the appointments. But therapy is a draining pursuit, and so it’s hard to summon the internal mental energy necessary to engage in such writing; to that end, I’m not going to promise to hold to that ideal when I return to Nexus in the next couple of months. I’ll try, but for at least some of the time, I will fail.

Anyway, here we go…

—

Paul was met with my usual opening gambit of complete, hair-fiddling silence, though it was eventually me that broke it by castigating the living shit out of myself for my failure to speak. He responded with some remark about my feeling that I ‘have to’ speak, and about how that made me ‘trapped’. He went on in an entirely predictable fashion: I still frequently behave as if I’m helpless and have to do as I am told. I am reminded of how submissive I really am in ‘real life’. Everything – well, most things – are given deferential consideration before I dare to respond, and generally I will kowtow to the other party’s wishes in the end anyway, even if I loathe them for it. My last-but-one job, of which I’ve never really had reason to speak here, is a glaring example that still (four and a half years later) sends shudders through my body.

After a great deal of fairly repetitive discussion surrounding Hotel California and my aforementioned submissiveness, he eventually went on to say that my current methods of coping with things and defending myself were such that I was ‘trapped’ in this world, and that Aurora was ‘trapped’ in her world, which is full of pain. “To you,” he continued, “she’s just a nagging problem. She buggered up your life, so although you’re intellectually aware of all the facts – that she was abused and badly hurt – you can’t really empathise with her, can you?”

It depends when you ask me, actually, which in and of itself is progress to my mind. I said that I had written an awful lot on this blog (I can’t be bothered to look for the link((s)) right now, sorry) about how my position shifted about, on how I recognised that I didn’t deserve any of it at all, and, crucially, about how I really felt all of that, rather than just knowing it as an abstract sort of concept.

“But,” I said, inevitably, “then I think of my fat five-year-old face and I feel nothing but disgust. If you put my mere outline in place of that image, I can pity and empathise with and wish to protect her, but not if it’s actually the young me. And then, of course, that leads to tremendous guilt because regardless of what I was like, I should still feel that concern for my younger self.”

Paul asked me to put Paedo into this mental vision that I’d conjured up and which was fucking with my head. In that time-honoured fashion of therapists everywhere, he asked me, “how does that feel?” (At least the emphasis here was on something specific, rather than on some amorphous abstract as it so often was with C).

I closed my eyes and let the image consume me for a minute. It wasn’t at all pleasant, but I tried to walk him through it.

“I feel fear, I suppose. Not intense terror in that Lovecraftian horror sort of way [Jesus, how up my own hole am I?], but…well. It’s more like I’d respond to a hallucination. Trepidation, perhaps?” Self-created Paedo leered at me in my mind. Aurora took a step back. I – the envisioned adult me – looked at him with an examining and curious sort of contempt, but none of the three assembled psychic (non-)personnel spoke.

Paul went at me again for trying to over-analyse the scenario, though he did admit to my description being a realistic one (in the sense that, the first time or two, rapes that are the start of systematic abuse are met with overwhelming terror – but that gives way a resigned stoicism as the abuse continues). “What else?” he pressed. “What is she feeling?”

I ‘looked’ at her. She didn’t look petrified at all, but I felt a sense of dread emanating from her. I suddenly knew what she was feeling, even if there’s not a specific name for it.

“It’s a sense of ‘oh no, not again’,” I told him.

“Not the reaction of a blameful child,” he mused. “More like a helpless wee girl.”

(Completely off-topic, but does anyone else find it odd – not bad, just a bit weird-sounding – when someone who isn’t Scottish or Irish says the word ‘wee’? I remember reflecting on this that day: how interesting it was to hear a Brummie say ‘wee’ ((utterly disregarding the fact that Paul has lived here for years, of course)), yet I say it a hundred times a day. Funny the little things you pointlessly ruminate upon whilst in therapy).

“I agree with you,” I admitted, “it’s just…” …I started my usual carry-on of being unable to articulate the words I wanted to convey… “it’s just that I can’t…can’t throw off this…this persistent self-disgust. That picture of me when I was five that I mentioned…Jesus, it makes me cringe.” Pause. “But…being cringe-worthy does not equate to being at fault for being used as a sex toy.”

“Indeed,” he nodded, his head cocked, his eyes unblinkingly fixated upon me. I wondered what it was that he was so intently looking for. A manifestation of how I was feeling? A tell, as we call it in poker circles?

“Indeed,” he repeated. “You could have been the worst child on Earth and you still woundn’t have deserved a second of it.”

“Do you remember I told you about the picture of the baby?” I asked.

“Yes. That was hugely significant, I thought. You looked at that little baby and thought, ‘You’re just an innocent baby – yet you’ll have that taken away from you before long. I know your future’.”

“I still think there’s something terribly sad about that,” I confessed, fixating my own gaze upon Random Point A on the off-green, non-descript carpet. I could feel his eyes upon me, but I refused to look at him. A lot of stuff was circling in my whirlwind of a mind, and it was frankly quite horrible to think about the issues this conversation raised. I don’t know why. I don’t like babies any more or less than I like five year olds, so my reaction to this one seemed wholly out of character.

“There is something sad about it,” Paul replied, “tremendously so. I recall the sadness in the room when we talked about that before. In fact, when I was writing up my notes on that session, ‘sad’ is the word I used. I think…I think you have some sort of separation from the baby. You can’t remember yourself then, you can’t see any of the physical characteristics you now have [wanna bet, Paul? The baby is certainly fat, so we have that in common], so perhaps you don’t think of it being really yourself.”

He’s right. I don’t.

But the picture of the baby was only once facet of therapeutic discussion that I thought particularly relevant: the other was the session in which we pretty much ignored the sexual abuse and focused on my parents and their tumultuous relationship. In the aftermath of that, and in particular in my writing it up here, I was a complete heap of psychological spaghetti, and at one point, seeing me in a flood of proper tears, A opined that “the therapy [was] finally starting to work.”

“I am given to believe that crying is a more appropriate way of expressing distress than other ways I have I might have chosen,” I self-decried.

Paul cocked his head. “You still view crying with contempt, then.”

Um…yeah. Of course I do. As I said to him, people look strange when they’re crying, and I don’t want to look any stranger than I already do.

I laughed then. “That coming from the girl who dyes her hair pink, blue, green, purple, etc.”

“What’s that about?” he queried. “The hair dying.”

Fucking psychology. Why does something always have to reflect something apparently deeper?! I drolly and cynically responded that presumably I was ‘seeking an identity’, and waited for him to lap the comment up in scrutiny.

Instead, for once he surprised me in dismissing the potential psychoanalytic ramifications of this most ordinary thing. He said, “maybe you just like dying your hair. My former mentor once told me that you don’t have to analyse everything: he said, ‘sometimes a fart is just a fart, Paul’.”

Whilst I laughed at the remark, I was ever so slightly pissed off that I looked like the one that was over-analysing. I mean, of course I do over-analyse, but oftentimes I am wont to dismiss psychobabble, and this was one such occasion. I’m not convinced he picked up on the derisive tone which nuanced my original comment.

As if to confirm this, he suddenly said, “sometimes it’s like you live your life in a goldfish bowl. Everything is there to be watched and examined, and there’s nowhere to hide.”

I snidely returned that if a goldfish was removed from its bowl then it would cease to have oxygen, wouldn’t be able to breathe, and would eventually die – thus, the goldfish bowl is a necessary place to be. Internally, I smiled at what I perceived as my clever comeback, and I looked at him with a smug and challenging expression adorning my facial features.

Right enough, he hadn’t planned for such a point, and was forced to concede it. It was desperately hard for me to hide my cocky satisfaction.

BUT! The man is too fucking quick for his own bloody good. After a few seconds, he ably destroyed my egotism by asking, “what about evolution, then? What if you don’t want to be a goldfish anymore?”

I resisted the urge to point out that merely wanting to evolve does not necessarily mean actually evolving, thinking I had already pushed my luck with my awkwardness. Instead, I went back to a more therapeutically pertinent form of dialogue. “This is the thing. If I didn’t want all this crap to stop, I wouldn’t be here – I would never have been here – in the first place. And I think things have changed a bit, or at least are doing so. Maybe I’m less of a goldfish than I once was.”

“It’s like there are two goldfish in two bowls,” he offered. “One gets its water regularly changed, and it’s well-fed. The other only receives the very minimum possible to keep it alive.”

“That’s self-inflicted,” I commented.

“Perhaps, but maybe when that fish was first hurt, it couldn’t deal with any more than that – it could only concentrate on its most basic needs of survival.”

“Yes, but it wants to deal with everything else now, and it’s brain won’t co-operate. That is so frustrating.”

“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “The fish still blames itself for everything. It forgets that it was hurt by abusers and is faultless in this regard.”

“I think its point is that other hurt goldfish progress to a level of not being hurt any more…Well, OK, not entirely – this kind of thing can never just go away. But said other fish somehow capably manage their lives, whereas this one does not.”

“Perhaps the best it can hope for is to move into a bigger, better tank with its healthier friend from the other tank, where that friend can take care of it. It won’t make previous events go away, but perhaps it could make them easier to deal with.”

This was striding into difficult territory for me, which I proceeded to explain to him. “This is a stupid thing to say, I know, but it’s so unfair. Surely people (or fish) who’ve been hurt the most deserve the most relief – and yet they’re usually the very ones that continue to experience the greatest pain.”

“It’s not stupid,” Paul replied reassuringly. “Of course the world doesn’t work like that, but it’s still unfair.

“One of the hardest things in this kind of arena is having to get clients to deal with the bereavement of it all. The pre-abuse person that they were – he or she is never coming back, and that results in a tremendous amount of grief.”

Something about the statement resonated deeply and painfully with me – probably particularly because I don’t really remember much from before it all started. I have no frame of reference of who I was, and who I ‘should’ have become. “Obviously I was always aware of that,” I told him, “but there’s something about hearing it here, in those terms, that’s really big.”

“Huge,” he nodded. “For some people, though, it gives them a reason not to bother with therapy. If I can’t give you your childhood back, what’s the point?”

An understandable but obviously fatalistic view. I said, “but recovery – insofar as that’s possible – is surely better than perpetual misery. Sure, tinges of regret that you can’t make it unhappen are inevitable, but…don’t you have to make the most of what you have?”

After a brief pause, I had to laugh at my own hypocritical optimism. I am the last person on Earth who believes in the ‘count your blessings’ response to depression and related difficulties. How crude of me to patronisingly bring it up in this context!

Paul didn’t respond directly, though. Instead he said that he felt that whilst we were still occupying the bowl of the healthy goldfish, we were at least looking over at the other one. I wasn’t, for once, trying to ignore it, and I could see through the stagnant water that permeated its enforced domicile.

It’s hard to articulate the kind of feelings that were bouncing around the room. As I told him, I was indubitably affected by the analogy and, presumably, aspects of transference and whatnot, but when he asked me to describe said effects, I found it exceedingly hard. I could hardly speak – not a first in therapy with Paul (so much not a first, in fact, that it could almost be described as entirely normal in that circumstance). After a lot of stuttering and idiotic gasping, I eventually concluded that I was sad. Perhaps grieving.

“I had DBT forced upon me once,” I complained. “One of the aspects of it is some old wank about knowing what you feel and accepting that. Accepting, I get – but knowing? There genuinely aren’t always adequate words to describe some of this stuff.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think we do always need to explain. ‘Sad’ is enough.”

After a few silent moments of apparent reflection, he added, “you know, ‘sad’ is big for you. It represents a transition from anger, which is incredibly noteworthy.”

I nodded, but felt no need to reply. We avoided each other’s gazes for another quiet few minutes, before Paul continued by stating that he felt that there was a “softness” to me in those moments.

Needless to say, whatever spell had been temporarily cast was suddenly broken. I was repulsed by the idea of appearing “soft”, and in horror begged him not to “say that”.

“No,” he protested. “It’s OK to be that here.” Pause. “Or is that a step too far for now?”

“No,” I robotically replied. “I’m being stupid.” Then: “I have this life narrative, I suppose. I’m a bit of a bitch, harder than a fucking coffin nail [anyone like Papa Roach? I think they're utter shit, but I do love that lyric]. You know. Misanthropic, a miserable sod. That’s me. A bitch.”

“I don’t see any bitch,” he responded. “Would it be easier if I did?”

There was a long pause before I randomly asserted that I was a child in a woman’s body. I told him that I took very little responsibility for myself, that standard practice in adult domestic living scared the living fuck out of me (example). I admitted to him about the dozens of cuddly toys I’ve ammassed over the last three or four years, despite having almost no interest in them as a child (save for Mr Friendly, of course). I confessed to the childish little ways I will sometimes privately talk to A (though mercifully I’m apparently not entirely alone in my experience of this phenomenon – Maybe Borderline reflects on her similar mannerisms with her husband here. Though I am nine years old than her…).

“Well,” Paul said, with a tone of exculpation. “You had to live as an adult when you were a child…”

“So am I trying to somehow vicariously relive my childhood?”

“Well, you’re trying to reclaim what was stolen from you.”

He brought up the concept of regression, which he says is sometimes used in trauma work. He said, “I wouldn’t ever do that here. You have to accept the loss, whereas reliving it in a therapeutic context only succeeds in avoiding the reality of the here and now. You are an adult – but you have an unheard child inside you, and the ongoing challenge is to allow her to speak.”

“I do think we’ve made some in-roads there,” I replied.

“Yes,” he agreed. “And the thing is, you’ve consistently turned up here each week. On time. That alone speaks volumes.”

“I must be getting something out of it, yes. I’m way too cynical to have kept at it if I wasn’t doing so, and I’m hardly engaging in the process because it’s fun.”

“Indeed. You do appear to be able to see the value in what we do, despite its inevitable difficulties. And that in itself is therapeutic.”

And, I think, so it is. I know I’ve had something of a relapse recently, but revisiting this session reminds me that progress has been made. I am intending to return to Nexus in the next few months to attempt to advance that further, and despite the current bleakness of my world, I am reminded, sometimes, that hope can and does exist.

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I Lied – The Mentalism is ‘Back’

 Christine, CPN, Medications, Moods, Triggers  14 Responses »
Aug 242011
 

Didn’t I sound so positive on Friday?

All that positivity about The Book, the proposed voluntary position, blah de blah. Although I seemed like (and am) a work in progress – a person notoriously uncompleted, perhaps – my apparent optimism last week did not seem to represent the words of a person in regression. It didn’t seem to be the commentary of someone whose outward skins of positivity were being painfully sliced off, little by little.

But that’s the truth of the matter.

I didn’t mean to lie. I wasn’t even truly aware at the time that I was lying. I mean, when I wrote “I might be slightly depressed…but given all that has been going on, that’s actually quite good”, I did sort of raise an eye-brow in self-referential suspicion, but I think the crux here is that if I was trying to fool anyone, it was primarily myself.

Things are not continuing to get better, as they had been for some months – and I’ve been very firmly in denial about this. The signs have been very strongly, and at times starkly acutely, in evidence for a couple of weeks now, but until Monday I was in complete denial about them. I ignored them: not consciously, but nevertheless, I believe, deliberately. When they couldn’t be ignored, I attempted to dismiss them as circumstantially appropriate, or nominally sane in some other respect, rather than doing the fucking adult thing and recognising them for what they are – clear, indubitable, glaringly-obvious-with-hindsight signs of an impending serious depression. It isn’t fully that yet, but without action and intervention now, that’s what it will become. I know (and should have known) from bitter experience that that is how this hand plays out.

Why the denial? The short answer is that I don’t really know; in the past, I’ve recognised and accepted going mental when I’ve seen it coming, so it’s hard to determine exactly why I deviated from that pattern this time around. I would hypothesise that, having tasted the pseudo-heady heights of pseudo-recovery, I didn’t want to ‘fail’ myself, to go back on all that I had seemed to have ‘achieved’, by knowing I was slowly becoming ill again. Also, and I know this is hatefully egotistical, but I often feel a sense of responsibility to others, mainly because of the relative success of this blog. I got better – -ish – and wrote about it to the world. It doesn’t look good to suddenly come back one day and say, “sorry, folks, scratch that,” does it?

Also, in this case, the problem is very likely to be attributable to my own stupid decisions. I’ll come back to that later.

I only realised how fucked I was when I spoke to Christine, my CPN, on Monday. I really can’t be bothered going into this in any detail, but essentially I told her I was experiencing the following symptoms:

  • the usual paranoia (still convinced I have schizoaffective disorder, but now also of the view that I have schizoid and/or schizotypal personality disorder, on top of the clinical depression and complex PTSD) – no better nor worse than it was the last time I saw her;
  • agoraphobia – won’t leave the house alone, don’t really want to leave it at all during the day anyway, not always at night, either (though at least then I have A to join me);
  • hideous insomnia;
  • ergo, hideous fatigue – but the levels of it are even greater than I’d expect to correlate with the level of insomnia I’m currently experiencing. I mean, I’m not exactly unused to insomnia;
  • complete and utter apathy and malaise;
  • probably some old other bollocks that I’ve forgotten.

I said to her initially that things hadn’t really changed since our last session together, and I really didn’t think that they had. The above ‘symptoms’ strike me as being part and parcel of everyday existence (to a greater or lesser extent, anyway), and it was not thinking about nor discussing them out loud that made me realise that a major depressive episode is a-callin’. It was Christine’s response to me – to what I detailed, certainly, but mostly towards me specifically.

I seemed different, apparently. I seemed ‘flat’ and disinterested. She said that the absolute confirmation of that assessment came when she asked me about writing; apparently, I spoke of this blog, and even some of my other writing ventures, with complete impassivity and detachment. In the past, she claims, there has always been a ‘spark’ about me when I’ve conversed on these matters, but in this case, I just didn’t care.

I hadn’t realised that I’d previously spoken about the blog with such enthusiasm to Christine, but what I did notice when she asked about it was how much I felt that I just didn’t care. This makes me feel guilty; there are hundreds of thousands (possibly millions?) of words chronicling a huge and important chunk of my life here. There are thousands of (mostly!) supportive and interesting comments. There are dozens of links in the blogroll to the writings of others that I really appreciate. It’s a big deal. I cannot reasonably be apathetic about this, yet I am. That was not the case a few weeks ago.

In talking to her, I also realised how ridiculously irritable I’ve become of late. Don’t worry – I didn’t fly off the handle at her (although when she kept looking at her watch I silently seethed), but she did ask a lot of questions and when I thought about the answers, I realised how narky I have actually been over the last few weeks. I’ve kept that to myself pretty well, but the feeling has certainly been there. I’ve been internally going completely batshit barmy over every single little bloody thing, and though I’ve always been easily irritated to some extent, the sheer intensity and frequency recently experienced is something that is only every present when I’m clinically doolally.

Other things I noticed in the course of the discussion were that I was even more hypervigilant than normal and that I’d behaved really strangely this weekend past. Christine asked me if I was getting out at all, and I said that A and I had gone out on Friday and Saturday night (though of course I advised her that I refuse to go out alone and am still petrified of crowds, and thus spend all day sitting in the house, cowering from the outside world. This concerned her because at points I had been trying to go some places, such as shops, by myself. I haven’t done that for ages). She was pleased that I’d gone out at all, but the weird thing is, on Saturday night when A went to bed, I sat up until 5am watching YouTube videos and smoking.

That might seem like a normal thing to anyone else in the world, but it’s odd behaviour for me. There are occasions when I stay up later than A, but they’re usually to write because in a cruel twist of fate, most of my ‘inspiration’ seems to come around the witching hour. This was different – I don’t know why it’s so odd that I would remain up whilst he went to bed, I don’t know why it’s so odd to listen to music videos whilst alone…but it is. It’s just not me at all.

She asked me if I had even enjoyed my late night pursuit. I laughed, and said that I’d taken no pleasure from it at all, but that I couldn’t seem to tear myself away from it. I said I was taking pleasure from almost nothing (save for writing the first chapter of The Book, not that I told her about that), all over again. A different tact, then; what about motivation for anything? Don’t be daft, Christine love, it simply doesn’t exist. Have I any social contact? Meh, occasionally I check Twitter. No, no, she meant in real life. Of course – A is there. But A is only there in the evenings, is he not? Well…yeah. What about my mother? Yes, my mother is there, I can go up to her house again now that AoE and The Everythinger are gone. Good, right?

But…I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to use my vocal chords at all: it is so much effort. Whilst I can get away with this in A’s company, it’s not possible in Mum’s; A can entertain himself quite easily with computer games or whatever, whereas my mother, at least when I’m with her, seems to need verbal social interaction in order to even breathe. Yet I’m too tired to speak. Speaking a few words seems akin to remastering the theory of relativity right now, so I dread the idea of having an entire conversation.

So, Christine mused, if I don’t want to (or literally can’t, at times) talk to anyone, am I willing to even see anyone? Well, Mum and A, yes – despite the communication problems inherent in seeing anybody. But beyond that, no. I’d rather gouge out my eyeballs with a rusty fork and stick them so far up my anus they come out in next year’s vomit than see anyone right now. I did force myself to have lunch with my oldest friend Brian about a fortnight ago, because I’d essentially ignored his text messages and Facebastard comments and so forth for ages, and knew I was being a shit friend. However, if I could have gotten out of it with any ounce of integrity left intact, I would have done so in a heartbeat. The meeting was awful; Brian is a lovely bloke, and we’ve known each other for so long that there will always be something to say, but I couldn’t feel anything other than selfish frustration that I had to be out of the house (fortunately, as ever, I think I hid it well).

And that brings me to another point. I felt hideously guilty for not enjoying lunch with Brian; I feel hideously guilty for not wanting to speak, especially to Mum because she’s so nice and she’s so lonely oftentimes; I felt guilty for complaining to Christine about not wanting to speak, because in doing so I was speaking, so she probably thought I was angry with her for ‘making’ me engage in that; I felt guilty for being irritable; I felt guilty for not being more respectful and appreciative of this blog; I then felt guilty for being narcissistic enough to think that people actually care about it; I felt guilty for thinking that almost everyone is out to get me; I felt guilty for my general issues of anhedonia and avolition, because when you think about it, life hasn’t really been too cruel to me, and I should be bloody grateful for what I have.

Christine cocked her head, and lifted her eyes to me. “Excessive guilt,” she said simply. An explanation of the term was not necessary. I am well aware that it is a symptom of a major depressive episode. Not that I felt or feel that the guilt is excessive, but she apparently did.

“OK,” she finally continued. “Your mood, your general demeanour, has definitely changed since I saw you last.” As noted, I’m not sure how, but then I can only observe myself from within. “You’re just…” …she searched for the correct terminology… “…not yourself, not the person I’m used to meeting.”

I thought about this for a moment. How can she know what ‘myself’ truly is? I see her for an hour every fortnight or three weeks, for Christ’s sake! But I forced myself to try to see things from her perspective, and realised that if my demeanour had indeed changed, then in fact surely it is her of all people that would notice. A sees me every day, Mum once a week. Any changes to them would be subtle, and only clearly observable retrospectively. An analogy would be when we got our cats as kittens. We didn’t notice them aging day to day, but when my sister-in-law – who was with us the day we took them home – saw them several months later, she very clearly noticed how much they’d grown. I suppose observable shifts in mood are a bit like that.

Indeed, I remember when I got my accursed medical notes (yes, those things that I didn’t bother doing anything useful with – fail fail fail fail fail), the letters from Psychiatry to Lovely GP would detail my mood self-reports and then their ‘objective’ assessments. Now don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t always (or even often) agree with their alleged ‘objectivity’; however, unlike many within this discipline, Christine is a no-bullshitter, and the more we talked about how things were, the more I grew to see that she was right. Things are Heading South.

So, then. What caused it?

I tried to blame it on insomnia. If I can’t sleep, then it’s inevitable that my mood is going to drop. She accepted that, to a point, but asked if I was still feeling so apathetic and (sometimes willfully) disconnected from the world when I had taken Zopiclone and ergo had had at least some sleep. I was forced to admit that I was. In all honesty, sleeping hadn’t really affected that at all.

“Ah well,” I sighed. “These things do go in circles, don’t they? I’ve never been stupid enough to believe that I wouldn’t go through another major depression. It’s always going to be a part of my life in some fashion.”

“Hmm,” she replied, uncertainly. “Maybe. But I’m just wondering…how long has it been since you sliced your Seroquel dosage in half?”

“About five weeks…” I began.

“And how long has this…this downward slide been going on? About three?”

“Um…yes, I suppose so. But it can’t be anything to do with the Seroquel, can it? I mean, I know it’s used as an anti-depressant, but I thought that was at lower doses. [NewVCB] told me that the maintenance dosage of it for depressive features is 300mg.”

“As a general rule, it is,” Christine replied. “But it doesn’t mean that the mood stabilising and anti-depressant properties aren’t applicable in higher doses – and anyhow, you seem to have a high tolerance to medication to begin with. Everyone responds differently to different doses of medication, as you know.”

I had to concede those points to her, and after debating it in my head for a couple of minutes, I was forced to recognise that the timing of my apparent descent back into madness relative to my idiotic decision to reduce my daily intake of Seroquel was highly coincidental.

“And I don’t believe in coincidences,” I added softly.

She nodded. “Neither do I. I don’t know if you know this, but in the XR version of Seroquel [the one I take], the anti-depressant properties are more potent than in the standard version [no, I didn't know this. I thought extended release was just that - so why does that have an impact on mood more so than getting the hit all at once?], so I think that further evidences the fact that there’s a connection here.”

“But,” I protested, “I have had no hallucinations at all since I reduced the dose, and that day of heightened paranoia last month was when I was still taking 600mg.”

“Even so,” she shrugged. “The depressive and anhedonic symptoms still strike me as being related.”

Maybe the psychosis remits. Maybe it only occurs in times of stress (so maybe I don’t have schizoaffective disorder, as I posited at the beginning of this post. Though I still think I do). Maybe it simply can’t be bothered right now, and will return down the line a bit along with some other nefarious attacks on my psyche, such as the hateful mental prison that is the psychiatric mixed state. Maybe it only comes at all when I’m in the midst of a full-blown mood episode (therefore, again, possibly ruling out schizoaffective disorder, and suggesting psychotic depression or bipolar disorder). I mean, when you’re terrified by hallucinations, it isn’t your first priority to start assessing what your general mood state has been at the time, so I really don’t know.

Who cares. Whatever the case, psychosis or no psychosis, I was forced to agree that it looked very likely that the reduction in Seroquel had dramatically affected my psychological well-being.

“If I were you, I’d very seriously consider going back on to the 600mg,” Christine told me.

“What, tonight?” I checked.

“Yes. And if you find that you still want to reduce it after that, discuss it with [NewVCB] in your appointment on 7th September, and she can maybe consider tapering it down or something. But for now, I really think you should go back on it until you see her. I know it’s only a fortnight, but…”

“…that’s a long time when you’re going mental,” I finished despondently, and she nodded her agreement.

“What do you think about that?” she asked.

“I reduced the Seroquel because I was sick of not being able to get up in the mornings. and then experiencing this repulsive, zombified hangover when I did. But I’d rather both of those than be mental – particularly ‘mental’ in the form of ‘depressed’. I’m just worried about the weight gain. It makes me need chocolate, which is contrary to my nature. I’ve never really had a sweet tooth, but as soon as I started taking 600mg of this stuff, I developed one that is surely unparalleled across space and time.”

“We can discuss that, if it continues,” she said. “If you can get back your interest in things, then maybe you can start taking occasional trips to the swimming pool, for example, and build it up from there. If your mood is better to begin with, things like that will seem less daunting.”

I inhaled deeply. “OK. I’ll increase it again. If this is the start of a black treacle of depression, I want to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand. If I can. Maybe it’s already too late?”

“Possibly, but by no means definitely,” Christine replied. “You may well be able to stop this before it becomes significantly worse. And at least you have a psychiatric appointment soon, and that will help guide us from there.”

I have been back on the 600mg of Seroquel for two nights now. Obviously two nights isn’t going to make a difference, but let’s just see where we are with the depression thing. I don’t feel depressed as such – Christine, when I said that to her, once again used the adjective ‘flat’ to describe my disposition – but the curious thing about depressive episodes is that they’re not always characterised by raw despair itself; many other things can mould themselves into that horrible, amorphous shape. So, as I did in February, I’m going to use those amazingly accurate, wonderfully telling and obviously entirely diagnostically valid depression scales to see what the craic is.

Goldberg – 68
Beck – 53
Hamilton – 37
Burns – 89

Look at the fucking score on the Beck Inventory! All the others are slightly better than February, but it is a fuckload worse. By fucking miles! Either I inaccurately recorded my Beck scores when I previously did this test, or things have really fucked up, because I think I’ve been honest in my answers today. Perhaps the thing with it is that it places a lot more emphasis on behaviour and thoughts, rather than depressed feelings alone, than some of the other assessments do. But whatever the case, that isn’t good.

Perhaps one of the biggest indicators that things are not good is the fact that I collapsed on Monday night. I just blanked out – presumably I fainted – and fell, with the next thing I knew being my lying on the floor. Mum, who is trying to buy a new car, kept asking me to stand behind her at the computer as she looked up endless reams of automotive specifications, and I was so fucking exhausted that even that was an effort akin to climbing Mount Kiliman-fucking-jaro. So I apparently responded somatically, and passed out. Don’t worry; I wasn’t hurt or anything. But I do think that all factors, when detailed here together, suggest that until things start to demonstrably improve, I have to be very, very careful.

My concentration isn’t as bad as it normally is when I’m off my head, so maybe I can seek some solace in writing The Book. Yet even that seems like it has to be treated with kid-gloves, because writing can very quickly wear even the sanest person out (I’ve been writing this fucking post on and off since Monday afternoon!). Take it easy, The Eagles once sang. Good advice, that.

Those of you that read TWIM will know that on Saturday I featured, as one of the wildcards, a blog denouncing the inappropriate use of quotation marks. You might very well attempt to protest at my use of said marks in the title of this blog post, but you can’t put me on trial for hypocritical punctuation abuse just yet (at least, not for that. I’m sure there’s a multitude of errors within this post, but I’m typing on my mother’s netbook which makes things difficult and, furthermore, I’m a bit mental and can’t be arsed to proof-read this. So suck it). I put the word ‘back’ in quotes because it isn’t back; it can’t be, because it was never away. It was, and is, always there – just to greater or lesser extents that can or can’t be easily managed. ‘Back’ seemed like the most appropriate word given the apparent change in intensity, however, so there you go.

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I’m really, really not a fan of BBC3 in the least, but BBC1 happened to repeat this programme originally broadcast on the former last night. It’s a surprisingly sensitive and interesting look at how caring for a parent with mental illness can affect a young person. If your country allows you access to the BBC iPlayer, do check it out :)

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