Song for today: Psycho Killer by Talking Heads.

I am not doing too well today. Or last night. Other than that, things have been pretty good. I mean, they’re still insanely busy and I am still living a super-duper stressful life, but in general…I am ok. I don’t have that sort of vibrating energy that I used to have. That is gone. I didn’t know it was there until it had gone. The underlying current of Not Being Ok. It all started off the night I had the breakthrough, the very first one, I can’t remember what tipped it over the edge but I think it was the last episode of the second series of My Mad Fat Diary. Really powerful stuff. I really relate to it for lots of reasons (mainly, fat, previously hospitalised, self-loathing teenager who cuts a lot, binge eats and lashes out – that was my adolescence) but something about that series was so powerful. I did a lot of grieving that night, was triggered into this hugely powerful experience. And that was the first moment in my life that I had ever experienced such great, intense sorrow with knowing that it was ok. That I was, that I would be. I had never felt so calm. I felt like the sea when it is still and reflective and just there. It was the first moment that I realised what my therapist had talked about, when she said that I’d know when I was done with therapy, because she would “become defunct”. I laughed at it before. I didn’t get it. And that night, for a smidgen, I did.

And life since then has followed on in the same vein. More breakthroughs, each one seeming to release more calm in me, until I am almost all calm now. Aside from the mad moments obviously, but even then I deal with them well and move on rather than get bogged down in them. I have been feeling really sad recently because I can feel therapy coming to an end (not NOW. Not even in the near future. But I know it has an end whereas before I couldn’t envisage it at all). And also because I know that despite the mostly-being-calm thing, there is still the Core. The bad bit. I haven’t been pushing it away as such, but it hasn’t been triggered properly in a long time, because my level of tolerance has gone up so much. And it really has. I never really understood ‘integration’ before but I totally do now. Like so much before it, it was a concept, and now it’s real. But this part of me (or parts, maybe, because it feels like there are more than one) are really deep down. So whereas before they would have just emerged for any old reason, like a comment or a look or whatever, I have to be really triggered for it to come out. And actually, this triggering has been made up of lots of small moments like comments or moments when I realise just how unfair things have been/are. Alone, I was able to tolerate them. Together, they feel unbearable and I cannot carry the weight of them any longer.

So I have gone from feeling normal to completely mental again. I spent my last session saying things like, “Actually,I don’t care what you think. Not in a bad way. I just don’t” (seriously! after thinking that I wanted to know what she thought and then backtracking. I meant it – I didn’t need her opinion, I could deal with it myself), and her commenting that I was talking about some really big things, like growing up and the change and loss that it brings. I felt secure and valued and valuing and just…fine. And now, I feel like a tiny child who is also beating herself with a massive iron rod. I am so, so vulnerable, and so, so punishing. I just don’t know how to be anything else in these moments. I asked her to call me even though I felt so ashamed for doing so, because I’ve been doing ‘well’, because I ‘shouldn’t’ need her when I have been making progress. But also because I realise, I realise now that she can’t take it away, she can’t take any of it away and so I also feel stupid for reaching out when nothing will ever get better. But just because she can’t take it away it doesn’t mean that she can’t help in the moment. And she did, she mostly always does, I still don’t get how all this stuff can just fall out of her mouth. I love how her brain works, she’s amazing, even if she’s also really annoying because sometimes I don’t want to hear it.

We talked about this song a while ago, back in one of my sessions. I think it was just under a year ago, now. Or maybe at the beginning of the year. Anyway. I had it going round and round my head after a particularly insane bit of attempted self-sabotage (possible psychosis, at least that’s what it felt like to me). Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better/Run run run run run run run away. It was yet another song that took on a different meaning when looked through a different lens, after having a different experience. Far better to run away than have to deal with something. Far better to kill it off rather than face up to it. It reminded me of all those many, many conversations we’ve had about cutting off parts of myself and it not working and not being able to tolerate them when they pop back up and are all like OH HAI! I’M STILL HERE! YOU CAN’T GET RID OF ME!

And there are less parts cut off now. I’m less cut off. But there are still these moments, these moments where it’s too painful or I get too angry and hate myself so much. And I just don’t know what to do. How to feel. I feel as though I have learned nothing and then it comes back to – it will always be like this. I will. I don’t deserve to live, deserve good things. Etc etc. And there is a small part of me that is fighting back but when I’m in it, like I am now, the force is too big and it’s overwhelming. I know it will pass but right now it is excruciating. I was wimpering like a wounded animal last night because I couldn’t make noises properly because my throat had been cut off (that happens when I’m really distressed, I lost my voice) and it was the only sound I could make. I couldn’t even cry properly. Silent tears streaming down my face with the odd squeal escaping. Those moments where pain is all you are and you can’t remember anything else ever existing.

I am so tired. I just want it to go back to normal. I’m trying just to feel everything as it comes but when it is this painful of course I want it gone. It is pretty unbearable.

 I can’t seem to face up to the facts/I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax…