Friday, May 4, 2012

False Truths

I had a psychiatrist's appointment yesterday morning, and now I'm feeling paranoid and nervous and highly uncomfortable and terribly anxious.  I fear I have made a huge, glaring mistake.  I am afraid that my words have tarnished the professional relationship that I have with my doctor and that she will never trust me again.  I'm scared that I've planted a seed, a seed which will sprout into a full-grown disaster.  I can't believe that after all the progress which has been made, I had to go and fuck everything up like this.  Or, at least I think so... It seems like we were advancing before then...  I mean, it's easier for me to talk to her now; isn't that an improvement?  So it seems that I've been coming along-after 2 years I was finally able to talk to her openly.  And then I go and do something like what happened yesterday.

First, I told her how some people feel about my illness. I told her that I'm not taken seriously, that I am thought to be pretending, that I am believed to be a spoiled brat who just doesn't want to work.  That's completely outrageous. How could I possibly, as a little girl, have thought out this elaborate plot to fool everyone into thinking that I'm mentally ill over a span of decades?  More importantly, what could I possibly hope to gain from that?  Why would anyone want people to think they're nuts? It's done nothing but make my life harder.  It just doesn't make any sense.  K was so actively involved with life when she was younger, (plays, choir, soccer, Girl Scouts, Art Club, gifted class, etc) I guess it's just hard to believe that she could be living with all these symptoms for all these years and have only a couple of people ever figure out what's really going on.  Only a couple of people ever "got it"; just 2 in my lifetime, only 2 people outside of a couple of my doctor(s) recognized that I switched and became different K's.  Both of the people who figured out my secret were men who lived with me for a year or more.



So it would seem that I really am a good actress.  I fooled everyone all right, I fooled everyone into thinking that I'm just one of them. That I'm stable, that I'm existing in the same reality as everyone else is. We certainly can't let on that we are on a different plane of reality; that might upset people or create problems for us, so we must hide that from the world.  And that's just what we've done, for all these years.  We've been pretending to be emotionally mature, to be a regular person, to think clearly and rationally. It's not true.  It's all make believe.  The part where I'm "sane" that is.  That is all just make believe. Then, as if that weren't bad enough, I suggested to my shrink that the memories I have could possibly be false memories, or that they might only be true in my head, not in the real world.  I said this as an outside observer of K, watching from the sidelines. (I wrote it down; that's how I remember) So I basically admitted to my shrink that there's a chance the bad stuff I remember is all fairy tales, that it's not true.  That I've somehow twisted the facts around in my memory and created things out of misconceptions.  I'd like to call these memories "false truths", memories which I completely believe to be true, but which are actually just distorted partial recollections. I can't remember now where I got that idea or how I started thinking stuff along those lines.

Maybe I was reading something from out of the diary...  I remember taking it into the session. In fact, I'd left home and forgotten to bring it, and I actually turned around and went back home to get it before my session.  So it seems there was some stuff in the diary that I wanted to talk to her about.  Yes... yes, I remember talking about 3 different males in my life who would have had both the opportunity as well as the reputation to suggest that they might have done something wrong, and that it involved me.  I just don't get it.  I am struggling with myself to accept that these things from my childhood are not my fault and to forgive myself.  I suffer from guilt like you wouldn't believe.  I feel perpetually guilty, about things I can't even remember properly.  It's completely ridiculous. And now I've gone and implanted the thought in my psychiatrist's head that I might be a fraud.  What the hell were we thinking?!  Now the paranoia has me, and it's squeezing the breath out of me.

I'm also worried that perhaps I am faking it and just don't know it.  But that doesn't seem to make any sense.  I mean, if I don't know I'm doing it, then it's a subconscious thing, which means it's real.  Fuck. I'm so confused.  Am I doing all this on purpose?  Have I taken so many pills that my brain is fried and I'm unable to be like other people?  Have I forgotten what normal means? Yes, there's a good chance I have forgotten the meaning of normal.  I haven't felt like a regular person since, roughly, age 10.  That's tough to admit.  But it's true.  I've felt like an outsider, like a visitor or something, not like a real person existing in the here and now.

I'm so paranoid that I'm thinking of doing something crazy, like stalk my shrink. I need to find out if she's still on my side, or if she's the enemy now.  Because I honestly don't know anymore.  I don't know if she's with me, or against me.  I can't stand not knowing.  I MUST find out what she thinks.  I can't live with this feeling.  I can't tolerate being disbelieved, being thought to be dishonest.  I strive so hard in my life to be truthful...  I even hurt people's feelings sometimes as a result of my brutal honesty (I hate when that happens though).  I believe lying is bad karma. I just won't do it.  I may withhold information, but I cannot lie. I'm just beside myself with worry about all of this.  What if Dr. H doesn't believe me anymore??  What if she's crossed the line into enemy territory?  I'll have to get a new doctor...  Damn!!! And I was just getting to feel really comfortable with her.  Now it's all weird between us, even though she doesn't know that.

1 comment:

  1. I can tell you that your therapist is still on your side. Years ago, when I was seeing a therapist, she walked out of the room. I wanted to know what she thought of me, and if I was really ill, but she was keeping it from me, only to reveal it very slowly, over a long period of time, so I stole my file, and her notes. Let me tell you, it was boring. She thought very highly of me. Believed me to be an intelligent person with anxiety, and slight depression. The end. I was mildly disappointed.

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