Inner World

I’m not feeling great today.  I haven’t been sleeping well because of nightmares and just being afraid of sleep.

The reason for today’s post is because I think I broke my mind Tuesday.  I was replaying a conversation I had with my therapist Charon because I was feeling a bit gaslit by something and wanted to see where I could have heard wrong and also bring it up to her how I was feeling.  (For those wondering, I thought she said something that she says she didn’t say, so I probably just misheard her.  I’m going to clarify with her Monday.)  As I was thinking about the situation and stuff, I started to panic.

I did some breathing and went inside my head to check out how my mental space is.  Now, to get an idea of what I mean, I have an inner world I go to.  There’s a small pond/lake that I have that I drop rocks in to watch the ripples and waves when I’m feeling overly anxious or mad or upset about something.  it’s very calming.  There’s a filing room where I organise my thoughts and feelings.  And there’s this Tower of Forgotten Memories.  They’re not really ‘forgotten’, they’re just things I don’t want to think about, so i locked them into this tower that goes underground.  There’s a circular, winding staircase that goes down clockwise.  I have put doors in there and behind each door is a memory of something I don’t want to remember.  There are different locks and different doors.  The further I go down, the more intense the locks and the more sturdy the door.  I’ve unlocked and opened the door to the rape and left it open, and over time the doorway has faded and looking into that room doesn’t give me as much anxiety as it used to.

I freaked out when I saw the doors and the locks Tuesday.  I’ve always known they were there, I mean, I created them.  It’s just.. There just seems to be so many and I’m not sure I can ever open them all or if I even want to.  Some of the doors are labelled, helpfully, with things like “Dad” or “Dirt” or “School”.  I think most aren’t, though.  Anyway, I freaked out because there’s a lot and I don’t want to deal with them.  And because I stopped trying to remember things and decided I didn’t want to.  So these doors pose a threat, to me, especially since I’ve been remembering some stuff that I don’t want to be remembering.

Last night I had a flashback.  It was the worst one in a while.  I put in my earbuds and blasted music, struggled not to completely get sucked in, and was just repeating “it’s not real, you’re okay, it didn’t happen, it’s not real”.  The pain in my abdomen has gotten worse again, too.  I’m starting to think that part of my chronic pain issues could be me holding trauma physically.

I’m not sure how to discuss this all with Charon.  I feel like she won’t believe me.  I feel broken and I want to quit therapy, which is a feeling I hadn’t had in a long while.  At least not this strong.

Thanks for letting me vent.  I’ve been holding this inside for a while.  I’m going to go make some pie since it’s Pi Day.

-The Sarcastic Autist