So, this post is one that is extremely personal to me
(‘cause, up to this point, the posts haven’t been??). I’ve known what I want to say for a while
now, but have not been able to bring myself to sit down and write it out. There are likely many reasons for this, but
they all end up in the same place – fear (or terror, which is the new word that
I’m supposed to be dealing with).
Terror that speaking up and out will be met with
criticism and alienation. I have spent
so much of my life building myself into the person that I want other people to
perceive me as that I have often hidden what I actually am: a broken and flawed
individual.
You might be saying, “but everyone is broken and flawed”,
and you are correct. But how often do
people come right out and say it. How
often do we let our cracks show? How
often do we stand up and say “LOOK AT ME!
I’M DAMAGED AND I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW IT!”? How often do we say, “I’m bleeding from scars
you can’t see but they hurt me in ways that I can never fully express”? From my experience, we don’t.
We live in a world where everyone is pretending to be
perfect (or giving the façade of perfection – or at least normalcy). We get so caught up in hiding ourselves to
make others happy without giving any consideration to what that does to
us. We use the word “crazy” to describe
any action that might be considered out of our perception of normal. We dismiss.
We don’t ask “why”. We say “they
were acting crazy”. Or “you’re being
irrational”. We don’t see where that
“crazy” is coming from. What is the root
of it? Usually, it comes from an
unresolved conflict within that person.
Sometimes, there might be greater psychological issues at play, I’m not
trying to dismiss that cause. But for
the most part, when we talk about someone acting “crazy”, they aren’t. If you take the time to look a little deeper,
you will see, it usually comes from a place of fear – terror.
Really, as I sit here and type this am I actually
absorbing the difference between fear and terror. I always thought they were synonymous, with
terror being slight more potent than fear, but in general,
interchangeable. But they are not. Fear can be useful. It can trigger survival instincts or raise
warnings that something may be dangerous or heighten your awareness in risky
situations. Fear can also make you
better. Fear of failure can push you to
do your best work, to focus harder – it can drive you. Terror – terror is paralyzing. Terror is a plague that attacks your insides
and eats away at parts of you that you can’t see. Terror is the void. It has no use. It doesn’t challenge you. It shuts you down. Fall victim to terror long enough and it will
consume you. It is that part that leaves
you motionless, weeping silently where no one can hear and no one can
reach. Terror stops your breath and brings
you as close to death as possible while still living. Fear can be overcome. Terror must be exhumed.
For a long time I have been attempting to overcome the
fear of success. I have been pushing and
pushing myself, but every time I pick up momentum or get presented with
exciting opportunities, I back away. I
can’t figure out why. I blame it on
being too busy. I make up excuses. I say “tomorrow I’ll do it” and then tomorrow
remains tomorrow until I run out of tomorrows and the opportunity has passed or
the momentum I had built is gone and I need to start from scratch. I have been looking for fear, but really, I
have been terrified. Terrified I would
be noticed.
This is where the root of my terror lies. I grew up as the invisible child. When my mom would have one of her rages, it
was always better to pretend like I wasn’t there. I would hide quietly in my room and hope she
would forget I was home. I would sit
motionless in fear that the slightest sound would draw the rage towards
me. As I grew, this became common
place. I didn’t know how to fit in at
school, so I kept to myself. It seemed
like any group of friends I had didn’t last long before I was once again ostracized. As I got older, I learned the rules of how to
fit in and by the time I got to university things had changed, but not before
the need to remain hidden was deeply ingrained.
Being seen became terrifying.
This manifested in my relationship. I had a desperate need for my partner to see
me, but could not express it and made myself a supplicant to him in order to
earn his approval (which never came). I
became resentful and the relationship dissolved. He was also not interested in seeing the
broken part of me. The rubble under
which my true self was hiding.
Now I’ve begun to pick up that rubble and reassemble
it. It’s hard and slow, but what is
being built is much more beautiful than what it had been when I was the mash of
fragments collected in the appearance of an organized fashion.
Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi) is the Japanese art of
repairing pottery with gold. For me,
this is therapy. In ancient times
(thanks for being specific!), the Japanese aristocracy (possibly the Emperor,
my internet is turned off to focus on my writing therefore I can’t look up the
facts, so I’m going from memory) would ship their broken pottery to China to be
repaired and would receive it back stapled together and looking pretty
ugly. The Emperor (I’m pretty sure this
time) commissioned a new style of pottery repair. What was created was kintsugi, where gold was
used to bond the broken pieces together creating veins running through the
piece. Pottery that had been Kintsugi-ed
(yup, just made that up! Now a verb!) was so beautiful that people started
breaking their pottery just to have it put back together in that fashion. It was thought that a piece was more
beautiful after the repair than before.
Eventually, I think the Emperor put a ban on doing this, or something…
it’s all on Wikipedia. You can look it
up!
Anyhoo, that’s what therapy is to me. It is my Kintsugi process – beautiful idea,
no? Except, I’m the pottery and now
someone is pouring molten gold into all my cracks and it burns like fire and
makes me want to scream!!!! (I love
metaphors!)
Therapy is hard.
It is brutally hard. It is ass
kicking, ball slapping, kick you in the teeth hard. It sucks about 90% of the time. Usually, when I leave therapy, I am in a
melancholy trance for the rest of the day – and that means it’s working. That means my therapist is doing a good
job. I’m PAYING to feel like this.
WHY?????
Because before I was put together with staples and now I
have veins of gold.
Therapy is one of those things often perceived as only
for the “crazy”. I try to talk openly
about therapy and my process because it has had a profound impact on my
life. I try to encourage my friends to
start going. I even brag about my
therapist on Facebook and encourage others to start seeing her (because she is
a genius!). Usually, I will get a couple
people who message me and ask that I not mention that they had inquired. I tell them all I can and hope they will
follow through (if not with my therapist, with any therapist). I know that they are worried about the
perceptions of other people if they ever found out they were thinking of
going. The questions and the
judgement. I know - I’ve been
there. “But why do you need to see a
therapist? You’re perfectly
normal.” “You don’t need that. Your life is amazing.” “Has something happened? Are you keeping something from me?”
The truth is everyone is keeping things from everyone
else. Everyone is fighting their own
personal battles. Everyone has something
that makes them unhappy. Even those
people who appear perfectly “normal” (actually, especially those people who
appear perfectly normal). The judgement
comes from a fear within the other person.
If you, who appears normal, needs to see a therapist, then maybe I have
to see a therapist and I don’t want to see a therapist because I’m afraid of
what I might find if I look beyond the surface of consciousness. The fact is facing your demons and seeking
help in the process is probably about the bravest thing a person
can do for themselves. It takes a lot of
guts to admit that you want to change and be willing to do the work to achieve
it. And the type of change you work
towards in therapy is something that you can’t (or shouldn’t have to) do
alone. It’s dangerous.
Therapy takes you into the darkest caverns of your soul
and you need someone there with a flashlight to lead you through otherwise you
run the risk of getting lost down there forever. Metaphor aside, it’s no joke. You toy with despair for long enough and bad
things can happen if you don’t have someone guiding you through and checking
in. A therapist will dole out the pain
in chunks, which is why the process takes so friggin’ long. It is no quick fix.
This week was another breakthrough week. YAY! Breakthrough!
Except we are doing so well that we have moved into an even deeper level
of the subconscious which means even more excruciatingly painful feelings are
dredged up. I cried so hard that I dry
heaved for 45 minutes and almost vomited while convulsing on the couch. Shiny happy fun times! I left the house in a haze and I still feel
half-drunk. It’s Tuesday, my appointment
was on Thursday. Thursday night I could
barely function. I had plans with a
friend and had to apologize the entire night because I could barely focus and I
just wanted to lay down and die. I spent
two of the next four days walled up inside my apartment, not even opening my
door to take out the garbage. I needed
to recover.
This breakthrough was unexpected too (I guess they all
kind of are, but this one especially). I
went in feeling on top of the world (which should have been a warning sign that
my body was ready [strong enough] to be open to a new issue). Things were wonderful, but on the subway to
the appointment (literally, 5 stops from her office) something triggered and I
couldn’t shake it. I walked in a said “I
think I saw a trigger on my way in.”
Within 3 minutes, I was destroyed.
I had seen a woman on stretcher at one of the stops and it triggered the
memory of my mother on a stretcher after her suicide attempt when I was 14
years old.
I had found my mother after school one day overdosed in
the washroom and had to call the ambulance.
When she was taken to the hospital, I had to sit with the admitting
nurse and give my mom’s details. I think
I took her purse, I know I grabbed her address book. After that, the nurse asked if there was
anyone I could call and directed me to the phone. I called my aunt, who came to the hospital. As well, I called my sister(s?). My oldest sister was in shock and couldn’t
process what I was saying right away and hung up without much comment. It wasn’t until later when my aunt called her
that she apologized for her reaction earlier.
It was just so… well, yeah. After
I had made the calls, I sat in the waiting room for a while until my aunt arrived. I was all alone. When my mother was finally conscious again,
we were allowed to go see her. The
doctor pulled my aunt aside to talk to her and I was alone with my mother. That’s when she said the words that are
burned into my memory forever “I thought this was what you wanted.”
I had gotten upset with her the night before because I
was tired of being poor. I was halfway
through my grade 9 year at a school of fairly middle to upper middle class
students. I had a good group of friends,
but they could afford to do things I couldn’t.
They wore the “cool” clothes and got stylish haircuts (my mom still cut
my hair – I can tell a hilarious story about when I tried to explain to my
mother what “layers” were and the cut that resulted). I saw my brief acceptance in jeopardy because
I was poor and I was sick of it. My
mother stopped working shortly after I was born. And yes, when I was in my teens she was
diagnosed with Parkinson’s, which she likely suffered from for a few years
before, but that does not explain the years before that. She quit on life. She became a recluse and I was a teenager and
I was angry that she didn’t plan for my care.
All legitimate concerns of a 14 year old girl.
My mother later denied ever having said those words or
blamed it on the drugs but that does not change the impact they have on an
impressionable child. That event was
probably the most scarring of my upbringing.
The last vestige of concern for my own well-being had been
extinguished.
I have recalled that event many times in the past 18
years. The significance was never lost
on me. I tried to play it off. Wear it as a badge of honour (look what I
survived and still turned out okay). But
it lived in me. The thing I had not
relived until Thursday was the abandonment by all the other people who were
supposed to take care of me.
I had taken care of my mother for as long as I could
remember. The sense of abandonment from
her had been brewing all my life. But
the other people – that’s what I had never considered. It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve come
to understand how young you really are at 14.
My niece turns 14 this year and the image of her in my place breaks my
heart. How could anyone let a little
girl sit alone in an emergency room after her mother almost died? Where was the help for me?!
We went to live with my aunt for about 6 months and then
my mom and I were on our own again. My
mom had to see a psychiatrist regularly, but not me. The system failed me and now I am living with
the repercussions of that.
That’s what I relived this week. It sucked.
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