witness

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this is what i have been doing:

i have been subjecting myself to the onslaught of memories and feelings that therapy has brought upon me. i have gone willingly to the slaughterhouse. i have fully cooperated in the torture. i have not shirked or hesitated. i have looked the enemy in the eye and smiled a craven smile. i have done everything it told me to do. it has been murder blood grit under the teeth blows to the solar plexus starvation agonizing thirst sleep deprivation. i am surviving only because the enemy needs me alive. i have, apparently, precious information yet to give. i am a valuable witness.

i’ve had therapy before but it’s never been like this. maybe i’m a different space. i am reacting with words rather than pushback. i am not shouting in my therapist’s face. i am not resisting saying NO saying go away saying YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. i’m not fighting her with all i’ve got. maybe i’m in a different space.

these last six months have been been like seeing a movie with me in it that is totally recognizable and entirely unrecognizable at the same. the protagonist, me, plays me very well, although she is an impostor. the events portrayed took place though they never happened. i know the soundtrack really well: i’ve never heard it before. I AM BEING LIED TO BY THE TRUTH.

STOP IT!

but i’m chained to the seat and my eyelids have been cut away. i cannot not see. sometimes the actress who plays me (who is me) looks at me squirming in my seat and laughs. i wish she didn’t do that. her uproarious laughs shake me to the core. IT’S NOT FUNNY, i want to say. but words flow one way only. she can’t hear me. she’s been hearing me all of her life. she’s done with me. she wants her own movie. she’s determined to finish it.

i stopped writing about this because this space — this very public space — is open to people who understand, people who care, but also to people who have it all figured out and do not care to learn from others. i read an appalling post the other day by an ER doctor about victims of attempted suicide. he could not have been more contemptuous of them — us. he thought these people, people like me, are a waste of everyone’s time, including their own. i thought, “what eyes see the things i write?” i thought, “if i describe what i am experiencing in therapy, will there be people who think they know me even as i am working like a dog at getting to know myself?” i felt horrified at the way other people’s gaze can violate and destroy. i felt horrified of other people’s contempt.

but there is a place for those who tell the truth and testify to anguish and pain in spite of the scorn of others. i will be a witness.

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Filed under chronicling therapy, memory, pain, suicide, the healthcare establishment, therapy, trauma, writing

Tags: contempt, scorn, silence, testifying, testimony