[er, yeah. I haven't disappeared. it's just - frequenting lj along with diaryland, I occasionally forget to cross-post. so the entries from the past few days have been added now. squee.]
so, it's been a day. but you probably could have guessed *that much.*
friday, I had a session, as I often do. things went rather poorly. actually, the first hour (yes, there was more than one hour, and no, that was not planned) went perfectly fine; he drew more graphs, we continued our discussion of what effects my anxiety levels, and the only real problem was staving off the anxiety that came with discussing those situations which make me anxious. (because see, it's scary to even discuss them. *sigh*) anyway, when we had basically finished that, and I knew we were coming to the end of the hour, I asked if I could just tell him a couple of other things ... and he said something sweet like, "Please." so I told him what I figured was important about last week: number one, Sara was discharged (I haven't talked to her yet, and I'm wishing to) and number two, when I called her Monday, she told me another former Rogers resident died. I don't really know how to explain what followed... bringing it up, I started to feel it all over again; so I just told him that, told him how it makes me think of Dixie and Tracy... raged about the fact that Dixie was doing well ...and cried a lot about Sara and how much I want her to stay at Rogers, in bubblewrap, even though I know how different things are this time... how I just want everyone to be ok, Sara and Jenna and... he wanted to know how Jenna had come into it. how Sara had come into it, even. because, you know, Sara and Jenna are not Dixie and Tracy. so I talked about how the last time Jenna and I spoke she was saying she feels like she is her eating disorder, and she doesn't understand why everyone's trying to make her be something else. (I felt ridiculous even saying it... as if a girl that brilliant could actually believe-) but he cut me off; he said, "do you really believe her?" and I said, "no." I started bawling. "no, she's lying, and she won't stop!" then I told him that even if Sara goes into the world and does really well, we still only *lessen* the possibility of losing her. as in, she doesn't have to be sick to die. she only has to have been sick. he started pushing me with all these questions about her state of health, trying to make it clear that if I don't know, if I'm just deciding her heart could give out because they're doing routine, important things like watching it and because she's had trouble in the past... then I'm obsessing unnecessarily... I really wasn't interested in hearing that. I understand it, but come on... I'm just trying to deal with the fact that my friends are dying, and I'm really, really scared it will happen again. he said something ridiculous like, "you could go outside and get hit by a bus" and I was positively furious. because *he's told me* before that this *isn't* the same... that I have real reason to be scared, that it's more legitimate than a random phobia. it went on and on; I said twice, "I want to leave" but I didn't because I wanted to resolve it first. it never was resolved. he kept pushing at me, and every time I talked it seemed like he was arguing with me. he even asked me at one point if my anxiety was ready to say "uncle." I told him he hadn't been fighting with my anxiety for a good ten minutes, that it had given out long ago. he asked what he was fighting with. "Me," I said. "And my frustration." he even had the gall to say that my getting upset over the idea of losing my friends, and my getting upset over the session with him, was another way of keeping myself from relaxing so that I wouldn't have to feel sick. and this is the point where it doesn't matter if he's right. because I was a total wreck, and he didn't show any sign that he fucking cared. he just kept explaining and arguing and waiting for me to say, "uncle. you truly are the wise one, oh great doctor man." he told me we'd get through this. he asked how we got through it in the past, and I said, "usually, I leave. I get home, I flip out, and I leave you a million messages." he asked what was wrong with that. it's not exactly my favorite way to spend my weekend, among other things. and I still - even now, when I can see that there are points in what he was saying, and my doubt is still strong enough to make me wonder if he isn't just right about everything - don't understand why we have to work this way, or if we don't have to - why we are. does anyone else remember when miscommunication was *so rare?* as in, every six or nine months? as opposed to every two or three weeks? I'm so tired of leaving that office furious and hurt... I don't know how to explain it to him; I don't understand it enough to explain. it's the same thing I tried to explain to him when we went through the goal/committment bullshit. feeling like I did with Dave. like I could scream and scream and still never be heard. like I have no say, nothing to offer - like I'm the threat to my own recovery. instead of the best weapon on our side.
at one point, I was so tired of him challenging me without even taking in what I said - or without giving any sign that he had - that I said, "you know, not *everything* I think is wrong." to which he replied (I could not believe this), "not everything you think is right either."
wha-a? can we fucking rewind that tape? has he been around for the past three years??? when have I ever, ever trusted my perception to the point I thought it infallible? I have fought to be able to say the sky is blue when it looks that way to me. *he taught me that.* and now he's telling me not everything I think is right. my brain is fucking with me. fine. let me be mad at my brain; help me fix the mis-firing neurons and the change the delinquent thought patterns. but in the process, do me a favor, and don't force me to be mad at you, unnecessarily. don't say that you don't care if I'm pissed off at you. because I do care. because we didn't work this way for well over two years, and I don't see why it's suddenly the only way to make progress. because I'm tired of wanting to bolt everytime I leave, and feeling awful about myself from carrying all the guilt of not yet being well. because I have so few people here... when he goes away... it's amazing how everything closes in... (sick.)
I was still reeling from it last night when I went out shopping with my mom. I was in no shape to leave the apartment (so going out, into a store, with lots of people, was pretty much the worst course for me to choose), but I didn't want to stay here. I had this semi-defiant response to Friday, meaning I haven't left him a single fucking message, and I've tried to avoid my instinctive desire to curl up in bed and sleep the weekend away. (although I did do some of that, truth told.) anyway, over an hour before we were back, I was spinning and reeling from everything ... I remembered from the discussion with the diagrams that I needed to look farther back into my recent past to figure out what was going on, and I understood that I was probably suffering even more from what happened Friday than from the decision to go out Saturday. I did survive, but the trip was pretty costly. all I wanted when I got back was to have a good three or four days of rest. three or four days where I wouldn't have to leave the apartment, or see anyone but my mom, where I could sleep and read and be safe, entirely. that sounds a little too much like the Olden Days... but I really did intend to do that with today; I spent a good portion of it resting. then I went out to dinner (fuck yeah) with my mom, her friend Robyn, and my brother John. I was under the impression that the three of us were going to go see a movie. specifically a second viewing of Harry Potter. but John bailed, then hung around to talk, and we ended up going to get food, which meant that we were later than we thought we'd be... we missed the earlier shows... and by the time we finished dinner, Robyn was too anxious about family stuff to go see the movie. I was more than a little moody to hear all this. Mom said something about how she'd go see the movie with me, and I said something about how she'd already seen it... then we piled into the cab of John's truck and drove 'home.' whee. I unlocked the front door, but I couldn't bear to go up into the apartment. I told her I'd be around, and I went for a walk, sat by the fountain and cried some more...
basically? it just sort of hit me that I've gotten to a point where I'm so desperate to have proximal relationships - which, between everyone I know living away and my having PhobiaFuck, the anxiety antichrist... just gets to be impossible - that I'm now disappointed to the point of tears when a friend of my mom's whom I can't even relax around bails on a plan. I had a fight with my doctor, my mom's friend changed her plan, and I felt like scuz because that's all I have. I love my mom with everything, but I just wanted someone else for awhile - someone, too. and when it didn't happen, it just opened the flood-gates of self-pity. and all of the "alternate histories" with which I torture myself. imagine, if I'd never gotten sick. if I'd been able to stay in school. if I was in college right now, if I had a "normal" life... I hate this, it isn't fair, I want to trade - but how can I trade when I know that I would lose so many of the people I love so much if I gave up the past (and parts of the present) that I hate? and, of course, how can I trade when it's not possible to do so?
so. yeah. I don't know what I'm going to do with tomorrow. with the session, I mean. I hate that I always calm down within a couple of days; I don't know how to explain to him what I was feeling, now that I see so much sense in what he was saying. but I don't think he understands everything that goes through me when he acts that way - and I don't think he'd be happy to hear it. (I'm remembering how upset and surprised he sounded when I told him I'd felt like I was somehow sabotaging my recovery after the run-in around commitments.) confusion.
in happier news:
-tonight, I did see Harry Potter, for the second time, with my mom, at a theater I'd actually never been to before. it was way cool - small, and the walls had these awesome murals on them... I'm sort of guessing at my architecture here, but I think it was a Spanish town-scene. and it was funny to see the film on perhaps the smallest screen in the city after seeing it on the largest. plus, the crowd was way better. it was entirely folks my age and up, and it was pretty evident that most people knew the books and some had even seen the movie already. amusing anecdote (avoid this if you don't want a POA spoiler): right when Sirius was about to be kissed, when Dumbledore was explaining to Hermione that three turns should do it... the movie cut out. it just disappeared. no sound, no video... auih! I was devastated, of course. after a few minutes, someone came in and told us, it would hopefully be fixed in five minutes. a woman in the back said, "Hopefully?! I want to see the end!" people started talking and trying to laugh; I suggested that those of us who had seen it before stage the last few scenes for those who hadn't: ok, we're going to need a Dumbledore, an executioner, Hagrid, Buckbeak, two Hermiones, two Harrys, Sirius, Snape, and, erm, Lupin. ...after a few minutes, the sound came back just long enough for Dumbledore to say, "When it doubt ... gwmah" (thus fading into the most disturbing noise ever.) I laughed. a few seconds later, it happened again, only this time the growl lasted several beats longer, and I laughed and said, "I didn't know *Dumbledore* was an animagus!" still, we were getting nervous that they weren't going to be able to fix it. there was talk of invading the show that had started an hour after ours... but just then, Ron's voice came through loud and clear with, "What the bloody hell was that all about?" and the entire theater erupted into uproarious laughter. It was the *perfect* place to pick up...
and it did finish and yeay!
it's still an absolutely incredible film. Lupin and all the other darlings are *fine*, no harm done to them by Suzanne's comment... and it's still just an awesome experience. there's so much amazing innovation and cinematic wonder in the *film* ... things that make it cool as a movie, instead of just an adaptation of a great book. oh, I want to see it six more times! at least. I want to see it at every theater in the city.
-second, an Idiotic Quote of the Day from Friday morning: "We *can't* drown because we can't *swim!*" ...and yes, *I* said it. and it made sense, damnit. before I pointed out that it didn't.
-while in the pool, the morning that this quote was stated, my mom pointed out to me that *soon* I will be able to quote Finding Nemo (one of my favorite pastimes) with even greater meaning. I will be able to say, "yes, I'm a natural blue." it'll be a lie, of course - but it will still rock my socks off... which leads me to:
-I FINALLY got my "graduation photo" taken for my grandma... meaning I can FINALLY chop my hair off and dye it. I should know when it's going to happen by tomorrow or Tuesday. eeee! I swear it took more effort to get that photo than it did to actually graduate. no, really. oh, and the shot that we're using - the one that turned out... has a good story also. it was taken Thursday, and I was not happy at all, so I just sort of stared at the camera until my mom asked, "Do you want to be smiling in this picture?" and I, still without smiling said, "Yes." She said, "Oookay," and I expected her to follow it with something ridiculous, but instead she said, "What movie are we going to see tonight?" and instantly, involuntarily, we both grinned. fuck "cheese." that was brilliant.
and I'm tired and my session's early tomorrow, and I have to read part ii of "slammerkin" and nearly all of slaughterhouse-v before they're due on tuesday - so goodnight.
...oh, but one more thing! thursday night? I dreamed I was riding around on a big black dog. and when I got to the exit I needed, and went to dismount, I realized that the dog didn't belong to me. it belonged to this boy who was getting the entirely wrong impression about my intentions, who instantly appeared. I started to apologize, but he said, no, he'd wanted me to take the dog, so he'd know I'd make it safe. as if the big black dog were my guardian. right. and there was also an improv scene where we kept chanting, "something wicked this way comes!" ...it wasn't quite running around Hogwarts like those bestest dreams I miss so much... but not bad!
~me