'Why don't you tell your therapist what you're REALLY like?!?' my mother shrieks, like an excessively gritty character in a kitchen sink drama. This implies, I suppose, that my therapist, if I told her what I am 'REALLY' like, would throw up her hands in horror and declare me beyond redemption. I consider the question with as much level-head-ed-ness as I can manage. (This is how I have always tried to stream my mother's outbursts into manageable channels.) What am I 'REALLY' like? I think to myself. It is possible for me to know what I am 'REALLY' like? This leads me to think about how only a transcendent God could be omniscient - the picture of God looking at circular time from the top of a mountain... A picture from a long-ago lecture at a long-ago college... Then a scuffle breaks out. And I leave.
Therapy becomes ever more demanding.I cling to the arms of the chair as though I could fling myself into the vertiginous abyss of the dark carpet. I give the therapist the information I think she wants and she examines it and clears it away. I feel like an actor in a transparent costume which I attempt to pull round myself, only for, like a nymph with a satyr, it to be pulled off. I stand on the stage and attempt to behave as though this tug-of-war is not occurring. My laughter sounds like bullets.
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to become less war-like. I consider this a highly dangerous plan. I need to exist. The world needs me. I need to prevent the world from destroying me - for its own good as well as for mine. Destruction comes in many forms. I could be dissolved in the crowd. I could be subsumed. I could be altered, made less than I am, impoverished. (I am reminded here of my present "relationships" - of one dying friendship in particular. How foolish women are to cling to sinking ships! It s valiant of us, but it does us no good... We are drowned.) So what am I to do? Enact a farewell to arms and watch the other, non-farewell-to-arms people smile and stalk me through the invisible grass of post-modernity - smile with sharp, sharp teeth... For, as has been pointed out, I am a wounded animal.
The people around me - how I wish sometimes that there weren't ANY people around me! - are being ... unhelpful. He-Who-Will-Remain-Nameless is (or was) bombarding me with criticism. While I keep up a constant and futile refrain of 'Shut up! Shut up!' - to drown him out if nothing else. It has been - unbearable. So - I have fled. To my mother's. Where I have been received in a sort of condemnatory silence. What have I done? Answers on a postcard... Solitude = Happiness. Happiness = Solitude. I refuse to be made unhappy by other people. It is absurd. So - I will reacquaint myself with books. (Reacquaint myself with books? I read, don't I? Yes - but I used to read a great deal more than I do now.) Books are wonderful. Obvious, I know, but worth highlighting. They are always available. when one wants them to be. They will always go away when one wants them to. They do not enter into endless and futile arguments. They do not shout at one. (Note the barely suppressed note of really quite distasteful righteous indignation. Yes - I am piqued. But I refuse to be. I won' be. I will forsake mine enemies. I will, in the words of Walt Whitman, dismiss whatever offends my own soul.) Replacements are required. The Trichotillomania-related point is, as I attempted to point out to He-Who-Will-Remain-Nameless, that it is terribly terribly difficult for me to get well soon while I am being unremittingly buffeted by the spleen of the melodramatic. People don't recover brilliantly when surrounded by ill-wishers who openly wish them dead. However much I may try to transcend all this enmity, it would be a great deal easier for me if there were less enmity for me to transcend. The only possible way to bring this about seems to be escape. But that seems a little extreme. So I have been spending a lot of time in my darling room, my sanctum, and outside. But there is always the moment I have to go out - into the hallway, into the rest of the flat - or come in from outside - into ... what reminds me of those of illustrations of The Mouth of Hell. Cannons to the left of her. Cannons to the right of her. Volleyed and thundered. I cannot help but imagine myself with cannon-holes polka-dotting me. And for why? I'm not sure I care for why. I couldn't possibly have done anything sufficient. So I simply don't care.
Therapy becomes ever more demanding.I cling to the arms of the chair as though I could fling myself into the vertiginous abyss of the dark carpet. I give the therapist the information I think she wants and she examines it and clears it away. I feel like an actor in a transparent costume which I attempt to pull round myself, only for, like a nymph with a satyr, it to be pulled off. I stand on the stage and attempt to behave as though this tug-of-war is not occurring. My laughter sounds like bullets.
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to become less war-like. I consider this a highly dangerous plan. I need to exist. The world needs me. I need to prevent the world from destroying me - for its own good as well as for mine. Destruction comes in many forms. I could be dissolved in the crowd. I could be subsumed. I could be altered, made less than I am, impoverished. (I am reminded here of my present "relationships" - of one dying friendship in particular. How foolish women are to cling to sinking ships! It s valiant of us, but it does us no good... We are drowned.) So what am I to do? Enact a farewell to arms and watch the other, non-farewell-to-arms people smile and stalk me through the invisible grass of post-modernity - smile with sharp, sharp teeth... For, as has been pointed out, I am a wounded animal.
The people around me - how I wish sometimes that there weren't ANY people around me! - are being ... unhelpful. He-Who-Will-Remain-Nameless is (or was) bombarding me with criticism. While I keep up a constant and futile refrain of 'Shut up! Shut up!' - to drown him out if nothing else. It has been - unbearable. So - I have fled. To my mother's. Where I have been received in a sort of condemnatory silence. What have I done? Answers on a postcard... Solitude = Happiness. Happiness = Solitude. I refuse to be made unhappy by other people. It is absurd. So - I will reacquaint myself with books. (Reacquaint myself with books? I read, don't I? Yes - but I used to read a great deal more than I do now.) Books are wonderful. Obvious, I know, but worth highlighting. They are always available. when one wants them to be. They will always go away when one wants them to. They do not enter into endless and futile arguments. They do not shout at one. (Note the barely suppressed note of really quite distasteful righteous indignation. Yes - I am piqued. But I refuse to be. I won' be. I will forsake mine enemies. I will, in the words of Walt Whitman, dismiss whatever offends my own soul.) Replacements are required. The Trichotillomania-related point is, as I attempted to point out to He-Who-Will-Remain-Nameless, that it is terribly terribly difficult for me to get well soon while I am being unremittingly buffeted by the spleen of the melodramatic. People don't recover brilliantly when surrounded by ill-wishers who openly wish them dead. However much I may try to transcend all this enmity, it would be a great deal easier for me if there were less enmity for me to transcend. The only possible way to bring this about seems to be escape. But that seems a little extreme. So I have been spending a lot of time in my darling room, my sanctum, and outside. But there is always the moment I have to go out - into the hallway, into the rest of the flat - or come in from outside - into ... what reminds me of those of illustrations of The Mouth of Hell. Cannons to the left of her. Cannons to the right of her. Volleyed and thundered. I cannot help but imagine myself with cannon-holes polka-dotting me. And for why? I'm not sure I care for why. I couldn't possibly have done anything sufficient. So I simply don't care.
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