It got better

Today is better. Thank you all for the support yesterday. I think the heat was initially triggering, and then going from being around a great group of people nearly every waking hour for a week to being essentially alone was a bit much for the system, the peeps.

A special shout out to K for the unexpected reach out from yesterday’s post. Thanks for helping me get grounded again. It’s what I needed.

There was a bit of dissociative sleeping last night, but it was fairly tolerable.

I got to Doc’s office, and the moment I saw him I knew that something was awry. I barely sat down when he informed me that my insurance company was requesting documentation for all of my May sessions for payment consideration. Apparently, the last time this happened with a different client the company did not pay for the sessions. He looked very concerned.

Then I was gone. Just gone. The world started to narrow on me. Doc started to sound like he was far, far away. The fear of having to find the money to pay him for those sessions, and the fear of no longer having the insurance company pay for the bulk of the sessions terrified me. It was like the floor dropped out from under me.

I could hear Doc calling my name, but it was like he was calling me softly from the next room, instead of right in front of me. I knew he was trying to reach me, but I could not respond. I wanted to respond, but was unable to do so. Then this voice I did not quite recognize came out of me, and started crying, crying and talking about not wanting to be here.

The voice was somewhere between belonging to Belle or Ronnie, I’m not sure which. Doc asked me, ” Who is this?” I did not know, and Belle/Ronnie said so. This voice somewhere around 8 – 9 years old was freaked out about being alone, as she often was as a child. She talked about being alone in the dark. She did not like the dark. Even writing this is making me feel anxious.

Doc then reassured us that we would work something out regardless of the insurance company, that he wasn’t going anywhere. He then asked if he could speak with me, and the voice said sure, and I was back. I was there the whole time, just aside during the interaction.

Doc asked me who came out. I told him I did not know. I could not tell if it was Belle or Ronnie, specifically because the darkness reminded me of Belle, but the age reminded me of Ronnie. I got the impression he either did not believe me, or was confused by what I said. Hell, I’m often confused by the whole thing myself. Even tonight I’m still not sure who was out this morning during the session. The rest of the day I had that feeling that one has when they had themselves a good cry, tired and embarrassed.

The day improved after that.

The a/c in the car

The air conditioning in the car is the only thing keeping me remotely present at the moment. The heat outside makes my body want to float away, and it takes on the quality of cotton dancing in the breeze.

I can’t be home because I will certainly lose time, especially feeling this way. I should drive to the coffee shop, but all I can do at the moment is place my face near the air conditioning vents so that I don’t completely float away.

At times like this I ask, Have things really improved for me? Am I getting better, or is that belief just a delusion?

I just looked at my gas gauge. I need to take myself some place because I am going to run out of gas just sitting here if I don’t.

Being available

This week I am on vacation at a writing workshop. I came to this workshop because I learned this particular writing technique in the past, and it served my writing well. I want to get back in the saddle of doing it regularly. Unfortunately, I think I discovered why this technique is such an issue for me.

The technique is relatively straight-forward, and I’m going to over simplify it here for the sake of explanation. Number your paper from 1-25 first. Then you meditate for at least two minutes. You take a topic, any topic really, but in my case it was churches, and you start listing images that come to you from age 6 to the present day, one image per line. You have 7 minutes to do your listing. My head immediately began to hurt as I started this exercise. I felt a flood of peeps and selves start to tweak out simultaneously. I fought it because I wanted to do the exercise, and the more I fought it the more tired and floaty I became. The room started to take on a haze for me.

“By meditating you are making yourself available to the images. The memories are there, and they will come if you make yourself available to them.” This was one of the takeaways from the exercise.

I’m struck by what she said because it was very similar to what Doc often tells me about being open to the extrinsic memories when odd things happen to me that make no immediate sense.

It looks like the universe is sending me a message, be available to the memories. I’m afraid to know what lies ahead.