I have been working with my therapist for 10 years.
For 10 years, I have sought solace in Billieâs office once weekly, shielded from the daunting outside world for a blissful 60 minutes. I arrive prepared, poised to unshackle the skeletons buried in my closet and come eye to eye with the ghosts of my past once more. Shifting, the cushy seat sinks under my weight â I am restless as always. I glance down, notice a hangnail, and pull. There is pain â ouch â Â a prick of crimson blood appears.
âShall we get started?â Billie asks, thumbing through a thick folder of our work to date. She is never one to waste time.
For 10 years, I have reached to the right of the beige sofa, fumbling for a small bowl of knick-knacks Billie keeps tableside in my honor. I have never been one for idle hands. There it is, my favorite. Removing the small stone from the bowl, I caress its perfectly smooth sides, instantly soothed by the familiar coolness. Years ago, Billie had returned home from a trip to France and offered me the pebble as a token of positive energy during a particularly challenging session. Touched by the gesture, I have since kept the stone near â I will take all the good luck I can get.
For 10 years, I have driven several towns over to meet with my devoted therapist, basking in the warm glow of a tangerine sunset. I drive fast as nostalgic music blares and wind from the perpetually cracked car window sends my tresses of thick, dark hair flying. Struggles of the past week lie heavily on my chest, piling up, restricting precious air that is necessary to breathe. I am anxious, which is nothing new, and struck by a familiar queasy sensation. I have come to know this feeling well: anticipation of the hour to come, when I must finally confess to my often-shameful misdoings. Idling on this thought a beat too long, the knot in my chest grows tighter, tighter still. I step on the gas. If I do not arrive soon, I think I will die.
For 10 years, after each session, I have traveled the same winding roads home, now darkened and somber. I drive into the abyss. Reflecting upon painful truths uncovered in the past hour, I begin to compartmentalize once again and place the inflamed memories gently into a pocket-sized mental box, just as Billie had taught me to do. I seal the lid now, storing our sensitive work away until next time. Â I have contemplated whether it is appropriate to laugh or cry in these moments, knowing that while I may be a step closer to internal freedom one day, for now, I am raw to the core. Apparently, my body has decided on a combination of both as tears spring to my eyes, followed by short bursts of laughter. Because of Billie, her compassion and candor, I will make it through to see another day.
Taking a deep breath, I clutch my little stone harder, venturing to summon consciousness back to the room. Two feet flat on the floor, back straight. What do you smell? Hints of spicy orange, an essential oil Billie often uses. What do you feel? The pillow in my handâs fluffy outer layer, soft, warming. Hear? Muffled whirs of white noise, a comforting reminder of our confidentiality. Taste? Traces of a black cherry cough drop I had been sucking on before entering the room. For this hour, and this hour alone, I am determined to exist within these four walls.
Stone in hand: I am here. I am safe. âReady,â I finally reply.
Although 10 long years have passed, it may as well have been yesterday that my journey began. Yet, when I look in the mirror, there is someone different staring back at me now. She is older, yes; wiser even, maybe. But still, there is a sadness to her, an unmistakable void. The mirror mocks me, asks, âWhy are you still here? Why do you deserve to be on this earth, when so many others are not?â I have no answers, turn away. Although I have pondered this very thought a hundred times, lost countless nights of sleep to it, tossing, turning, I remain perplexed. Despite everything, here I stand all these years later, a soldier still fighting a war with myself.
*Â *Â *
Billie enters my life when I am 14 years old. At this tender age, I am already lifeless, grossly overmedicated, and barely able to communicate. Personal hygiene is long gone, after I begin to fall asleep brushing my teeth or slump to the ground of the shower in an exhausted stupor. I watch this lethargic, decrepit body as if from above, the girlâs feet shuffling slowly, slowly through a pair of dingy doors in a group home, pointed in the direction of a nearby sofa. There are other people in the scene, my mother and father, people speaking pointedly in hushed murmurs.
The sense of viewing myself from above continues. A voice hisses, âYouâre already dead, see? Look at that disgusting creature, youâre a waste, a monster.â I wince. Prisoner to a defunct brain, I long to crack this head of mine wide open, to pluck the demons out one by one, to finally reclaim the ravaged mind I once called mine. A room is assigned, and a top bunk given to me. Now it is time to say goodbye. There are tears in my parentsâ eyes as they tell me once more, âYou cannot come home right now; it is not safe. You need help, Annie.â Suddenly I am aware, cognizant for the first time of what is happening, and I am a wild animal, thrashing, trapped. Take me home, I want to go home.
Days later, a small woman beckons me into her office. Her hair is a frizzy mop of curls, not unlike my own when I was young. She gently tells me her name is Billie, that we will be working together during my time here. I am tired, so tired, but she is nice and in here I am safe. I sit for a while, silent, and Billie does not push, but sits quietly too. Finally, a voice speaks, slow, barely loud enough to be heard, and I am surprised to find it is my own, pleading, and unfamiliar.
âI want to go home.â
Billie sighs deeply, and I register genuine sadness in her eyes as she responds, âI know, sweetheart, I know.â
My time spent in the group home is nightmarish, lonely. The few moments of light to shine through exist only within Billieâs office, where I am comforted by the love only a dog can give. Billie has a new puppy, Maggie, and the little King Charlesâ snores have come to be a calming lullaby to our sessions, muffled and rhythmic, constant, unchanging. Time after time I sink into Billieâs familiar couch, still comatose from all the medication, but finding temporary solace in stroking Maggieâs long, silky fur. As I pet Maggie, I am often reminded of my own animals back home, and quickly notice hot tears begin to accumulate, threatening to spill over with one false move. Donât think about it, donât think about it. I fight to stay awake, speak until the words will not come anymore, the three of us together twice a week before I must leave, return to the hellish outside I came from, and fight to survive another day.
*Â *Â *
Sitting with Billie today, I am 24 years old, resting on the same couch, but in a different scene. Her latest office is in a small building, almost cottage-like, vastly different from the ratty group home where we first met. Today, we are taking time to honor my first successful experience with community college. I have acquired 30 credits and, for the first time, though it was my third attempt, I have made it through a full year of classes. This would be a minor accomplishment for many, but for me, these were 30 credits of blood, sweat, and tears. They were 30 more credits than I had when I began my college journey, and 30 credits more than I had ever thought possible. They could also very likely be the last 30 credits I ever attain, as having finally danced with higher education, I ultimately decided it was not for me. But that is OK: completed on a timeline entirely of my own and seen all the way through, victory was in the journey: a beginning, middle, and end. I will guard these 30 credits with my life.
When I am sitting in this office, I am still 13 years old and bitter anger saturates every inch of my body. When I am sitting in this office, I am 14 years old, walking through group-home doors again for the first time. Here in this office, I am 15 years old, hopeless and high, and I am 16 years old, nearly a high-school dropout. At 17, the closure of life as a child draws near, and at 18, I am new again, reborn. Nineteen through 22 whacks me from a fragile equilibrium, knocks the wind from my chest with the magnitude of a hurricane, forceful and violent. I am sinking deeper into quicksand by the second, unable to gain any stable footing in the âreal world.â I am 23, sobbing on Billieâs couch, gasping that I cannot do it anymore, that I do not want to. I am 24, celebrating my first successful year of college.
I am all of these people and I am none of these people.
Most importantly, I am seven years old, innocent, and bursting with life. Carelessly, I bound across the fluffy, green grass and jump into the arms of my cherished grandfather. I am alive and free. Suddenly, the world goes black. There is no longer joy, but only fear and guilt, the sudden understanding that my existence as I know it is one of sin. What else is a child supposed to believe, when someone in a position of powerâ a well-regarded nun, who also happens to be your second-grade teacherâ tells you just this? Now enlightened about my damnable soul and where, one day, it will eternally rest, everything has changed. A servant of God herself has personally delivered the message â I will burn in hell.
Billie is what connects me to my past, proof of a lifetime I cannot erase.
She watches me evolve before her eyes in 10 yearsâ time, sometimes pausing to take it all in. âLook at what youâre doing, Annie. Living a life of independence, setting goals, achieving them⌠who would have ever thought?â
I squirm, uncomfortable with the compliment, as always. âFraud!â my 16-year-old self snarls from the shadows. âDonât believe that praise! You are nothing. Rotten, a waste of space.â As abruptly as she appeared, the 16-year-old slinks backward into the dark of my subconscious. I twitch.
âCome back to the room, Annie,â Billie says, recognizing a familiar look of vacancy in my eyes. âYou are right here, safe on this couch.â
Again, I have a visitor: a young child knocks at my chest, shaking and scared. I clutch the stone Billie once gifted me a little tighter and breathe slowly, outward. Four⌠three⌠twoâŚone⌠âIt is OK, little girl,â Billie says. âYou are safe now.â
It is delicate work Billie must balance to navigate my meddlesome âparts of self,â who extend their tentacles into all aspects of my life, our time spent in sessions together being no exception. Their arrivals are overwhelming, instantly transporting me back to years past, events so emotionally charged my numbed body cannot compute. I am no longer driving this car. Outside Billieâs office walls, when I dissociate, I feel powerless to my frenzied nervous system, in what she refers to as fight-or-flight taking over. But in here, I do not have to battle alone. In here I am safe, alongside a therapist who has also become an old friend in many ways, woven into the intricate seams of my life in a way no other human will ever recreate. And for over a decade now, Maggieâs melodic snores have served as the soundtrack to our session, her comforting little body still beside me all these years later.
Regardless of any progress I have managed to make in my life thus far, maintaining employment remains almost impossible. Unfortunately, bills do not stop and so I continue to attempt and immerse myself in honest, hard work. Before stepping out the door each day, I prepare for war. A shield of psychic armor weighs heavily on my chest, acting as a powerful barrier between delicate flesh and harsh surroundings. In this armor I am impenetrable, I cannot be hurt.
Maintaining work with mental illness continues to prove tricky. One moment, I am euphoric, overwhelmed with gratitude to be professionally valued, and still amazed to not only have a bank account with my name on it, but also to be equipped with money I have earned on my own. To be a useful member of society is not something I take for granted; I will never let this feeling go. The next minute, I am huddled in a corner during a shift, desperate for air and fighting to regain my composure, to somehow make it through the rest of the day. I hear a familiar voice, reminding me to be gentle to the little girl, to breathe. âYou are not trapped, Annie,â Billie reminds me, âyou have survived far more than this.â She is right. I will hold my head up high, rise tomorrow, and try again.
*Â *Â *
When I leave our last session together, I take an extra minute to gently stroke Maggieâs still silky coat, wholly absorbing the comfort of her presence. She has been in a weakened condition for some time, and for some reason, I have a feeling this is goodbye. She nuzzles her little head into me, tail wagging, the same as the first day we met. âGoodbye, Maggie,â I say, âIâll see you soon,â and leave.
At our next appointment, Maggieâs absence is deafening the second I enter the room. A knot has formed thick in the back of my throat, and I am finally able to choke out, âDid she leave us?â already sure of the answer.
âShe did, Annie,â Billie responds.
For the first time in our work together, tears gather in her eyes, a response only Maggie could elicit from Billie during a session. This is the marker I have dreaded for so long, the passing of Maggie, of time and history. It is finally upon us.
Suddenly I am back at the group home. Empty, broken, I sit on the couch in a little green office, meeting the houseâs psychologistâ Billieâfor the first time. Billie tells me she has just gotten a puppy, Maggie, who will be accompanying her to our sessions. The little dog immediately darts over to me, hops on the couch and into my lap. I am startled at first by the animalâs instant, affectionate acceptance of me, the way she curls herself into the crevice of my arm and begins to sleep. The psychologistâs voice is a distant whir in the background as I observe Maggieâs little snores, for the first time in years remembering what it feels like to be loved, wholly, in all of your faults. A tear rolls down my cheek, and then another one.
Thank you, Maggie. You showed me I am still here.
*Â *Â *
It is a crisp autumn day in the city in mid-October. There is a slight breeze in the air, and I stroll through a park, mittened hands cupped tightly around a steaming cup of coffee. The trees are ablaze with color, bursting with vibrant leaves, deep shades of red and orange. Every so often a stray leaf is carried in a puff of wind, floating weightlessly down, down⌠I stop to rest on a nearby bench and pull my knitted scarf close. Life is happening all around me but here I sit at peace, enjoying my autumn place. There is a sound and to the right, a little girl, legs swinging freely from the park bench, sits down. She is quiet and holds a book in her hands, turning to me and revealing a head of curly brown hair, her eyes a deep, deep chocolate brown, brimming with innocence. The child appears familiar, almost like someone I used to know. Someone I still am.
It is OK, little girl. It was not your fault, I think.
She glances upward, reaching for a loose yellow leaf cascading through the air. The little girl speaks softly, tells me she is scared, tells me not to leave her. Gently, I take her hand and we sit, quietly gazing off at the city skyline in the distance. âDonât be scared, little girl,â I say, Â âwe will try again tomorrow.â
I’m just a psychiatric mechanic and not really good at providing spiritual comfort, but I do wonder about her B12 levels.
Report comment
Wow, what a communication!
I am dismayed, really, at what was accomplished in those 10 years. But I am sure the writer feels a sense of accomplishment. She is obviously thankful for Billie, her therapist.
How could she have known that Billie, in her training and throughout her career, could have been exposed to all sorts of data that would have made her much more certain and effective as a therapist? She probably could have saved lives and restored abilities far beyond what she, mostly through her loving intention, expected and accomplished.
Love itself has tremendous healing powers. But today we do have access to material that can augment quite a bit our natural inclination to love and help each other. I certainly hope that some day the stories arising out of our experiences with the “mental health” system will be more stirring and miraculous than what we have read here.
Report comment
Very relatable story, Annie. And creatively expressed. You have a gift with words. I was wiping back tears when Maggie died. It must have been a very difficult day for you.
Congrats on finishing your first year of community college. I hope you will consider continuing on with your education. It is useful in its own right even if you donât end up taking the path you start out on. If your college has an honors program, you might find honors classes more stimulating and worth the effort. You certainly seem to have the aptitude for it, judging from your writing quality.
I hope you will submit more of your writing here. I could definitely identify with a lot of what you expressed, as it seemed very familiar to me with some of my experiences as a teen and young adult.
Report comment
Hi Annie.
I am sorry to hear you were psychiatrized as a child. Have you tried natural therapies such as a 6 week wilderness trip?
How about forming a group, get a guide and embark on a planned trip? And then embark on something else. How about a community garden?
Do something outrageous or out of comfort zone?
Being in therapy is all around us. Every day, we all experience it.
I think you do have it in you to focus on the variety of natural therapy all around you.
You are a great writer and thank you so much for this piece. It’s really awesome that you focused on getting an education. It will really serve you well.
Report comment
Thank you, Annie. Your story gives me life. I trust that you will live into many new chapters. I selfishly hope that you will share some of them with the world and me. If you don’t write more word stories, I trust that you will live into, dance into, kick into, sculpt into, paint into, sing into, craft into, your experience–discovery and expression in diverse ways. Silent and loud, fidgety and settled. You are a beautiful reflection of pain and meanings possible and emerging…breaking free and loving.
Report comment
I’m so sorry you had such a traumatic childhood, Annie. And covering up child abuse is the number one actual societal function of both the psychologists and psychiatrists, of which both industries should be highly ashamed.
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/01/23/18820633.php?fbclid=IwAR2-cgZPcEvbz7yFqMuUwneIuaqGleGiOzackY4N2sPeVXolwmEga5iKxdo
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/
You’re piece is so creatively written, it’s hard for me to innately understand where you are on your healing journey, but my best wishes for you on that journey. God bless.
Report comment
This story is well-written, but, I have a concern. As someone who spent way too many years with several different therapists, my concern is that these type of meetings can be addictive. I remember how I used to think that my appointments with my therapist every one or two weeks could solve all my problems. I also remember thinking that when I was scheduled weekly that I must be very sick and need special attention. All are lies and anytime I was “very sick” it was due to the drugs padded with the sick redundancy of the therapist re-enforcing how terribly mentally ill I was. I know that the author of this article had some difficult times as a child. However, it behooves each one of us to realize that we are not sick; we are not victims. We need to know and remember that we are worthwhile human beings. Therapy seemed to only have the ability of telling me otherwise. The greatest thing we can tell ourselves is that we want our lives back. There is no way to have a real life while in therapy. God created us as humans with a contribution to make to the world. Therapy is a trap to take all that away. Thank you.
Report comment
Annie, there’s this part of your beautiful blog that spoke,or rather resonated, with me.
“Yet, when I look in the mirror, there is someone different staring back at me now. She is older, yes; wiser even, maybe. But still, there is a sadness to her, an unmistakable void. The mirror mocks me, asks, âWhy are you still here? Why do you deserve to be on this earth, when so many others are not?â I have no answers, turn away. Although I have pondered this very thought a hundred times, lost countless nights of sleep to it, tossing, turning, I remain perplexed. Despite everything, here I stand all these years later, a soldier still fighting a war with myself.”
I think we all have that, especially in this society, and if someone doesn’t have this voice asking “why are you still here when so many others are not?” there might be something wrong with them. Same goes for these silly depression screening questions: “Do you want to give up?,. “Do you feel hopeless?” The way society is, our society, with all its superficiality, there’s more maybe something wrong with people that don’t feel that way. Food is entertainment. A more enhanced form of communication bringing the globe together with one click becomes fodder to have pop up ads harass anyone moving through it, new and improved communication not making the communication any more fluid but the ability to harass people with ads when the computers from 10 or more years ago would be still able to otherwise be functional. The physical resources for the new computers punged out of Africa mostly, while they are put together in China which suffers another kind of suppression than all the wars in Africa to keep it’s products cheap and “marketable.” People that own houses are privileged to have the value of them in mortgage sold off and played games with to cause worldwide economic collapse. And to get from one place to the next one has to drive in vehicles that are causing global warming, something I don’t even want to get into, because the answer was there already when they discovered electricity (supposedly for the first time) and stuff too simple and amazing for people to care about was pushed to the side. And so here we go with an answer that no one is supposed to believe in, that was there before the gas tycoons got people addicted to has. What what was known about electricity when it was discovered. Just bear with me, because I canât push this to the side, although it would seem quite off topic, but isnât. Heaviside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside and others, including theories of Maxwell saw this. Electrons moving at a speed where time stops, being wave patterns that resonate with other wave patterns from other electrons â same as musical vibrations resonate and can cause anything with the same resonance to vibrate â but being from a matrix where (oh these silly scientists) where time has âstopped,â once the resonance has come into being it doesnât wear out, because time isnât there to stop it (how can time âstopâ by the way. If I can move from here to there but before that had to realize I was at one point before I got to the other, does that mean that âspaceâ stopped as well for me to realize there was one point I moved from and a point I moved to?). If potentials in time resonate with each other that doesnât mean it has stopped. You can look at black hole theories and see how all black holes resonate with each other, by the way. If time didnât have potential in order to come together in different resonating ways (like chords in music) then what!? except people have to think further and actually think rather than âperceiveâ what A Course in Miracles tries to teach. Unity, zero point energy, perpetual motion machine that people have made, displayed, some murdered others suppressed by various means. Recently they stopped killing such people that would âinterfere with world economy,â would one be able to make a machine that while it lasts gets âfreeâ electricity rather than having to pay a company that charges for the electricity, but the whole stop global warming movement doesnât even really acknowledge such machines. And if you donât believe all of that there still always were other form of getting energy that wouldnât damage the ozone layer.
Anyhow, what I was getting at was that all of us have such thoughts. Why are we still here. I do myself. Why some poor struggling family doesnât have the dwelling I have, why I have food when people are starving in Africa, why I can click on a computer and others have nowhere to call for help when bombed by the latest strategical purge of the militaries of the âcivilizedâ countries?
But I do go to somewhere deeper with my mind, it does resonate with time, I can let go of stuff and not cause it to repeat, and help all those people I might feel Iâm depriving of a life.
I do also contribute âmoneyâ to causes, thoughâŚâŚ.
Which brings another thing upâŚ..
I started donating to Save the Children, actually because when I got on disability I had extra money, wanting to help people, ended up lending it to who I didnât know was an alcoholic and thus a sociopath, never got the money back, and when I pointed out that the 750 dollars could have sponsored a child with Save the Children for two years I decided to do that, myself. I could feel the energy, at one point. Resonating with the act. One day I was at a church, outside of it which mostly could be safer, and there was a feather laying there, in the dirt. There was a phrase I had been playing with â who knows why â âfeathers in the dust creep sideways,â I would have picked it up but had just read that one could get mites from feathers, so I gave it a boost with my foot, and the wind took it up into the air, where it started twirling crazy. It was just too âcrazyâ for there not to be something else propelling it, the simple joy that it resonated with for me to see that there was something more there than just â?â and then it went and landed or perched in a bush. Within a few weeks or so I got in the mail the beginning here of this poem. It was on a card from Save the Children, Christmas cards they shared with those who were sponsors.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers â
That perches in the soul â
And sings the tune without the words â
And never stops â at all â
And sweetest â in the Gale â is heard â
And sore must be the storm â
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm â
I’ve heard it in the chillest land â
And on the strangest Sea â
Yet â never â in Extremity,
It asked a crumb â of me.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/%22Hope%22_is_the_thing_with_feathers_%E2%80%94
But you see, that also transcends the physical, the âperception,â of how things are or how they work, or why one would âdeserveâ something or notâŚ..
I did try mentioning this to a âPriest,â and although the bible talks about Elijah being taken up to Heaven by a chariot of fire, he tried to convince me: âit was probably just the windâŚ.â
As if the miracles that built the whole church were there to provide the safety to convince people such things donât happen, because they might have to actually think thoughts otherwise, not doctrinesâŚ..
Report comment