To Cut or Knit or Med-Up

It had been a good week, followed by a good weekend. I was not oppressively exhausted. I was enjoying my time knitting. A few parts of me collaboratively engage in knitting and it’s a most excellent activity to pass the time and allow us to be doing something that feels good while being restful. I love the feel of the yarn, love to look at the colors. Rae loves to process the previous day, week, whatever while we knit. Amanda loves to create and feel productive. Prowler finds it relaxing, and Ray joins in with Rae in the processing. Of course, being such an addict, I knit at the expense of grooming and eating. But as Luke says, it’s better than sitting around perseverating on cutting my arm off or jumping off the bridge. So it had been a good week.

Monday came and school was tiresome and I had my weekly appointment with Craig. I’m afraid that the whole session could be boiled down into a few words: let’s work on co-consciousness, integration is the next step, and by the way – we should think of having a therapy vacation sometime. Trigger, trigger, TRIGGER. I translated that into: let’s work on the most terrifying issues you have, and then I’m going to leave you. My head was full of static Monday night, and by Tuesday morning I was able only to think of cutting my arm off. I was so pissed. “Therapy vacation” to me means “I’m leaving you and therefore you will have to deal with all those feelings of abandonment and loss and grief and you’ll be alone and too bad for you.” The backlash made my stomach sick. I questioned myself on why I turned to arm amputation immediately, and why that thought provided a shred of comfort to me. I don’t really understand… just know that it did. I wondered if somehow I thought that cutting off my arm would get me the attention I feel I need, would delay “therapy vacation.” Such a dumb answer to excessive emotional reactions to normal therapeutic processes gave me a reason to beat myself up. And the pit in my stomach grew with the anxiety and fear over the therapy session and the disgust over my reactions to the anxiety and fear grew and suicide seemed like the only way to make it stop.

Tuesday was all about chaos. I hated Craig and I hated myself. I hated the process. I hated the feelings. But then I heard a little voice, Craig’s voice, say “I won’t make you do anything. We’ll only take a vacation if you’re okay with it. It won’t be forever, it will be for weeks, or however long seems okay. If you need to talk to me, we can arrange that.” I didn’t want to believe the voice, I didn’t want to even hear it, because it represented a kind of anchor that I could hold onto while I “felt” the abandonment and fear and anger. But I heard it anyway. And I felt those feelings, all bloated and ominous and out of proportion and stupid. But only in little bits and punctuated with arm amputation fantasies and lost time.

Wednesday morning I forgot to take my medicine, abilify. All day I was a little tired, but amazingly connected to the present. That night I slept better than I have for years. I woke Thursday morning rested and happy. I never wake up feeling rested. I took the abilify that morning, and I haven’t had a day so bright since I first went on the abilify. I repeated the experiment Friday morning, not taking the med, and I found myself HUMMING at the end of the day. Tired but connected and peaceful and fucking HUMMING.

It scares me to be so emotionally all over the place. Did I have a good end to the week because I successfully dealt with something? Did I have a good end of the week because I gave my brain and body a break from over-medication? Did I actually DEAL with the therapy session and my feelings or did I dissociate from them?