The good news, the bad news, and the music.

The title has nothing to do with anything. Morrigan told me she was going to listen to the radio, “the good news, the bad news, and the music.” It sounded like it ought to be a title, so now it is.

It seems I’m not the only blogger around who’s having trouble writing today. It’s a strange place to be, as I am rarely at a loss for words. Of course, that’s not really the problem. I do not lack for words so much as motivation.

I’m working on several things at once, the least of which is a project I started that is far more time consuming than I had originally presumed it would be. I don’t regret this, but, really, I should have known better. I think I may have fooled myself into thinking otherwise just so I wouldn’t give up before I began. Which reminds me…

My therapist gave me homework that I haven’t done yet. It’s a questionnaire designed to measure the extent to which one regularly dissociates. I think I’m a little afraid of the insights it might provide (even if I was the one to bring the subject up). The fact that I’m afraid, I think, is already quite telling.

Therapy in and of itself is a little unsettling to me. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. I suppose it would be fair to say that I harbor a certain level of paranoia about the whole thing.

I want therapy. I know I need therapy. It’s just that there’s this nagging little voice in the back of my mind. I wonder if the interaction is authentic or if I am being subjected to some sort of benevolent mindfuck. Or maybe I’m just seeing the wrong therapist? I don’t know.

An example:

Every time I go to see my therapist I end up babbling for almost a full hour with little or no direct guidance from her. It’s just one big, long stream-of-consciousness monologue interrupted occasionally by a request for clarification. It’s weird sometimes, by which I mean that I feel weird: awkward, uncomfortable, not myself.

At least once a session I am asked to define a word I used in the course of my monologue. Last time, the word was “guile”. Now, I know that I sometimes use words that other people find odd. I say (not just write) words and phrases like “whilst” and “for the nonce”. When people ask me how I’m doing, I say, “I’m well. How are you?” rather than “Good.” I have a good vocabulary and grasp of grammar, and I use it. When I don’t, it’s because I’m going for effect (an “effectation”?) But… “guile”?

My therapist is a person with multiple advanced degrees. I’m having a hard time believing that she needs me to define “guile” for her. It flusters me. I feel self-conscious. I got so flustered that I couldn’t find the words necessary to define it. My head knew that guile referred to craftiness, slyness, but the words refused to travel from my brain to my lips. She looked it up on the computer and then nodded in satisfaction once she’d read the definition.

In my head I wondered, “What is she trying to achieve by putting me on the spot about my choice of words?” Sometimes I feel a little defensive, as if the implication is that someone like me (a person who holds no degree) shouldn’t be using such high-falutin’ words and that I probably don’t even know what they mean. At other times, I feel like she’s trying to get at something with me, but I don’t know what, and I wish she would just stop the mindfuck and ask. Is there some reason the mindfuck is necessary? Is she talking to someone who isn’t ME? And if she is, then why was I the one to bring up my feelings of weirdness, of feeling like I’m not myself in certain situations? Was she waiting for me to do so? What exactly is going on here?

Or maybe she really was unfamiliar with the word, and there is no mindfuckery involved.

I don’t know. Sounds fishy to me.

I think it would be unreasonable to suggest that I suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). I’ve never experienced anything like lost time or blackouts. There are, however, times when I feel the way I sometimes do during a session: I feel weird, uncomfortable, slightly foggy, not myself. Perhaps there is a continuum, and I fall somewhere in the middle. (If this was a session she would ask me to define continuum.)

There are times when I jump to conclusions or feel paranoid or whatever, and then I have to tread very carefully lest I say or do something I know I will later regret. When I have one too many instances of nearly crossing the line, I disappear. I am afraid, and I am unable to explain to people who wonder what the hell is going on with me. I am unfit for human companionship.

And then there are days like today. Days when I feel like I just don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to hide in my metaphorical cave, busying myself with my projects. It’s like I swing between my usual gregarious self and an introvert who would rather be alone with her computer. I’m not sure what it all means, but I would like to find out. I would like to do so in a manner that makes me feel like I’m a partner with my therapist rather than a… funny… I’m not sure what word to use here. The ones that come to mind sound so melodramatic: victim, plaything, lab rat…

I’m going to let this stand as the “explanation” I alluded to previously, the one I feel I’ve been owing any number of people. It’s not much of one, I know. If and when I have more answers, I will share them with you, but for now, this is all I have.

And if you don’t see me around much, well, it’s because right now I am a self-centered, selfish person. I am grappling with something–I don’t even really know what it is–that takes up an awful lot of my mental energy. Whatever I have left over I give to my family, ’cause, you know, they actually have to LIVE with me. But that other me will come along any day now: the gregarious, happy, commenting me who loves company. Whichever me I am on any given day, I do hope you know this: I wouldn’t be here trying to explain the unexplainable if I didn’t care about you.