Catching you up (11)

(Selections from March, 2009)

I've tried writing, several times. It just hasn't worked.

Nothing has changed. Except, therapy is ending now, my grandparents are dead, and I like myself a lot less than I did this time last year.

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It's still a struggle to write.

6 And I say, ‘O that I had wings like a dove!
   I would fly away and be at rest;
7 truly, I would flee far away;
   I would lodge in the wilderness;
Psalm 55:6-7

Is there a name for someone who can't stay?
This is more than wanderlust. This is desperation.
It does not matter how good things are; I always need to go.

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Well, a finale. First round of therapy over. First year over. What have I done?

A necessary and controlled deconstruction:

I am not withdrawn, numb, cold, and emotionless. I only develop the emptiness to hide and protect myself. Rather, I am acutely sensitive and empathetic. Yesterday, I walked in the grounds of an abandoned church amidst the freshly attended graves of strangers, and I cried for them. I know when the wind changes. I can tell all the subtle ingredients in a dish. I can smell the perfume of a woman who used the office earlier that day. I notice that half-second pause before you answer and the flick of your eyes down, left, up.

I need time to process my day. I am overwhelmed. I am aching, I am lonely, I am filled. I no longer blame, but I am still scared. I cannot unlearn a lifetime in a year. I tense when teased. I fight when I fail. I doubt you. I question you. I challenge you.

I forget myself. I am suggestible.

But I am not yet lost.


Read on the NHS Choices blog.