Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Start Again Tomorrow

I start therapy tomorrow. Again.

I honestly don't know how to feel about it. 

The first time I was sent to see someone, I broke my therapist. Granted, this was back when insipid questions like "I see your mother just left your abusive father with everything she could pack in a Datsun 210 and two kids.... andddd how does that make you feel?"

Being 12 and not horribly kind, I tore into the well-intentioned, but very, very green psychologist. The first volley: "Well, it doesn't really matter how I feel about it, does it? It's not my name on the reports to be filled out, nor does my opinion have weight. I'm 12, and won't be seen as an adult for a minimum of 6 more years. Perhaps a better, more accurate question would be, how do you feel about it?"

It went downhill from there. At the end of the session (20 minutes later), she cried messily as she told her director she quit. I rolled my eyes and asked to go home.

The next attempt fared about the same. Mom, desperate for some sort of consistent, healthy role model, had my brother and me tested by an organization which paired young kids with adult mentors. The tests were fun, easy, and felt like a simpler version of my private school placement exams. 

They contacted my mother with the appropriately weighted and considered results, requesting she come in with "the child." I remember they asked her into a room, and she told me to sit just outside the open door so she could keep an ear out for me. Some vague professional sat behind the desk, and oh so empathetically shared the tests, saying I was too damaged, due to sexual and physical abuse, to be accepted in the program. Also, the professional shared, there wasn't really anyone they could recommend to help, as the damage was too extensive.

My mom was pale when we left, and I remember thinking the expression "shell shocked" could be a paint color descriptor of her skin.


The next time I tried talking about anything in my past, a christian mystic found me. He was wonderful and open, but, like most mystics, tended to be more of the Type B hippie at heart. When the Spirit moved him (or the stars aligned or however the message was received), he followed, off to the next opportunity to talk about God and healing and possibilities.

And I was left with my freshly re-opened, rather gaping wound. 

Dan the counselor stepped up to bat next. He had kind eyes and treated me like a child, offering games to play with while we talked. It helped so much to have busy hands. But Dan's patients couldn't pay his bills, and R&D could. He had a family to think of; and left less than a year after we met.

Tired and frustrated, I tried to start piecemealing together what I had learned. I tried to self-care as much as I could, and did passably well until high school. When I was 17, a junior in high school, I was diagnosed with a genetic heart disorder.

To be fair, I was obese, with a BMI of 61%. I lied when we all shared results and said it was 16%, and isn't that bizarre?!? Obviously can't trust those results. Making it up a set of stairs wore me out. I started having seizures so often, I could plan them.

Up the stairs, and stop. Catch my breath. Turn, take the next set. Check my watch, late for class. Wait, why does the floor look so much closer than it did a.... Come to. Another watch face smashed. Gather up books and hope I can reorganize that report. Ignore the cramps and aches. Get to class. Squeeze into the weird high school desk-chairs. Don't pass out; people are watching. Breathe. Breathe. Ignore the dark dots around the edges of my vision. Just gotta make it through class.

Mom knew something was wrong. One morning, I had a killer headache. She told me to walk into the kitchen, a straight line from the hallway where we were standing. I made it - after hitting the edge of two walls. And almost falling over. Three times.

She took me to the ER. The doctor thought I was faking. On the way back to my school, we passed another doctor's office. We went there, and I was tested. For everything. EKG'ed, MRI'ed, bodily fluids were collected for two weeks. Everything looked like it was supposed to. Until it didn't. 

Yet another professional sat behind the desk, and oh so empathetically shared the tests. He said my heart told my blood to make too many triglycerides, which were collecting saturated fats into little piles (like they were supposed to). The little piles had begun choking my heart.

If you want to see 18, he said, change absolutely everything.

It worked, sort of. I changed my diet, became more aware of the seizures and their warning signs. Everything else going on in my head got boxed and put on the to-handle-later list.

It worked until I decided to major in psych in college. I made flying colors in human sexuality, struggled a bit with the chemical side of Psych 101 (my prof was a psychiatrist and former nurse). 

Abnormal psych clobbered me. The chapters on bipolar depression, schizoaffective disorders, researching psychotic breaks felt like someone had recorded my father's story. And I was being told I had to relive it. So many triggers; far more than I could process, and I... drowned in my head.

I can say that now and see it, but then, dark oily waves of depression and despair overpowered and swallowed. I remember my mom seeing me and trying to pierce the unseen Jell-O-like bubble. And I remember wishing I could figure out how to help her.

It took little and big steps, all hard, all terrifying when I could gather the energy to care. But it got better. I even got to the place where I thought I'd processed enough to be in the normal range of the insanity spectrum.

And then a friend made a comment about how she checks in with a counselor every year. It made sense, she said, since she went for annual physicals, to have annual mentals, too. It rambled around in the house of my consciousness, echoing at the least convenient moments. Like when I least want it to, and most need it.

The resonance has been steady since Labor Day, like a drip of water or a still, small voice with all the time in the world.

And now... I start therapy tomorrow. Again.

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