There are a lot of things I thought I was good at.
I thought I was good at getting to the point. I thought I was good at being aware and in touch
with my feelings. I thought I was aware
of just how much I was shoving everything down and away from myself.
And I didn’t think I had a great capacity for being numb or
non-committal.
All of this is being challenged, in a very real way. In therapy.
Yes, of course in therapy.
It makes me think of the song “What do you hear in these
sounds?” by Dar Williams.
“I don’t go to therapy
To find out if I’m a freak
I go and I find
The one only answer every week
And its just me
And all the memories to follow
Down any course that fits within a
Fifty minute hour”
Every time I think of all of the stereotypes of therapy, I
think of that song. It’s honest. And it cuts through a lot of the traps in
having those stereotypes in my mind.
Because Therapy is a quiet place. Its not a raucous conversation. Its more about what I’m bringing to it. And, more often than now, I don’t think I’m
keeping my end of things.
Last session, I left frustrated. And it’s a common frustration. I just can’t seem to get out what I want to
get out. An answer to a question
requires a digging deeper than I anticipate- and maybe that’s a trap in itself
too. Maybe I’m wrong. Yet, here it is. I’m doing it already.
It’s like I type the question into Google. And the answer comes up, for a split second,
before my computer screen is inundated with pop-ups:
- You’re thinking too hard
- That can’t be the right answer
- Wait, is it?
- Shouldn’t it be this?
- I mean, isn’t that the answer he wants to hear?
- Who the fuck cares what he thinks?
- Why are you doubting yourself?
- Why are you still talking?
Shut up!
- You’re wrong
- Right?
And then another question is asked, and the course is
repeated again. I start just talking,
and then going into useless explanation of what I just said, and then
explaining the explanation, until I start to physicalize, with hand gestures,
and then maybe a bit of comic routine, and then, at the climax, an explosive
moment which usually comes out as an overemphasis on something not important
at all. Then silence. On the outside. Inside, its still a hive of angry bees.
But of course, I get it into my head… fifty minutes… what
the hell can I accomplish in fifty minutes?
Damnit! I’m wasting time! Talk about something! Anything!
I can’t not say something.
Believe me. There have been
moments where we have tried that as an exercise. And all I get is frustrated. So uncomfortable. And anxious.
So anxious.
I feel like I’m caught up in that linear tidal wave that we
all have to work under. That rush hat we
feel like we
gottakeepgoingwithgottakeepgoingwithnotimetostopandprocessgottakeepgoingwith.
And you want to hear the most hilarious thing? That thought was originally given to me. By my therapist.
I love minimal things.
I love peace and solitude and being able to reflect. Yet my life is not set up for that, and
especially recently, my times are filled with noise, with work, with so many
people I’m afraid I’m wronging, so many things that aren’t going well, and an
overwhelming fatigue that is normalizing to the point that I have now an
entrenched anxiety that I’m making it all up.
I’d love to have those fifty minutes to be the respite, the
solace, the peace and tranquility that I am not finding outside. But there’s a clock on the wall, facing me,
and the whole GET RESULTS voice booms in my head. So I talkandtalkandtalkandtalk and don’t say
a goddamned thing.
Truth is, I’m still not trusting any purchase in this tidal
wave. Anything I hold on to for any sort
of relief doesn’t last, and I am carried away again. That’s why so much advice- good advice- is
falling to the wayside.
I am afraid to stop.
Ever since I was falling apart after the radiation, and the only parts
of me that I could pull together were the one-foot-after-the-other-just-make-it-work
parts. So if I stop now, what is left?
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