My muddle is super hurting my brain at the moment. I know the isssue of Fred has massively flared this week because of the uncomfortable parallels between what happened with (A) on Tuesday and the Fred muddle. Just to be clear, there is nothing abusive about (A), but there are strong similarities between that dilemma and the Fred muddle. It's SO HARD and I am SO confused.
I don't know why we keep landing in the same muddles @Zoe7. I know exactly what I need. I clearly state exactly what I need. I have very good insight. I have a very solid understanding of the issues involved in treating BPD. I simply can't find someone who I connect with and who is genuinely interested in helping me sort out my muddle. (K) was that person. I miss her so so SO much. (K) and I could have worked this all out if I could have kept seeing her after I graduated.
There is a line in a song from Joseph and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat which says:
I do not matter, I'm only one person, destroy me completely, then throw me away.
For two decades I have believed that that line sums up my life. I don't matter, anybody can do anything to me, I am invisible, I am worthless.
There's all that CBT stuff about challenging "negative beliefs" and "faulty cognitions." However, no one talks about what to do if those beliefs are actually true. I truely genuinely do not matter to anyone here in the real world. If I end my life tonight, no one in the real world will know until I fail to show up at an appointment with (A) or my GP. I AM alone. I AM invisible. I AM worthless. These are not faulty cognitions, these are objective realities. The objective reality is that if I was involved in an accident or anything, there isn't a person on this planet who would come to the hospital.
Do you want to know how alone I am? When I signed up for the yoga class, I had to list an emergency contact. It was an online form and it wouldn't let me leave the field blank. So you know what I did? I put in a fake name and phone number. If I do happen to fall on my head in the class or something, some random stranger is going to get a phone call. THAT is how alone I am in this world. So you tell me, how can I have any sense of value or worth!
All of the chaos of this week is due to my session with (A). I felt crappy on Monday and I figured out that that was due to hormones. I was right - my period started Monday night. I was fine when I went into that session on Tuesday morning. So how is it that when I came out I was on the phone to @Former-Member in absolute despair before I had even left (A)'s carpark!!!! How can this possibly possibly be!!!!!!
This is exactly what it was like with Fred after most sessions in our latter years. At that time my friend (N) was the one to take those post-session crisis calls. (N) walked out of my world last December. (N) is the last friend I will ever have. I will never ever EVER do the friend thing again after being hurt yet again. That is why CheerBear is my not-friend. Friends promise the world...and then they leave. Nope, I'm never doing THAT again!
It is all such a muddle. I know that Fred said and did some really bad stuff...and yet when @Zoe7 called him a narcisist, I could feel myself jump to his defence. I'm so confused.
I know that if you were to ask him about it all, he would say that he lost his temper sometimes and that he regrets that. He would own the fact that it wasn't ok for him to become so verbally abusive and aggressive during sessions. However, he would then go on to say that at least he stayed, and that no-one else would stay. And he is right. Whichever way you look at it, the past two years have shown that he was right.
And then there is all the good stuff he did. One night he picked me up when I was planning to suicide. He took me home and waited in the loungeroom while I put my PJs on. Then he sat beside my bed until I fell asleep and then let himself out of my unit.
He took me to a super fancy restaurant for my 30th birthday. He came to my uni graduation. He came to the vet with me when my dog crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
And the phone calls! Thousands of phonecalls over that sixteen year period. Thousands of them. Often late at night, often while he was driving home at the end of his day.
So...is he some awful controlling narcissist? Or is he an intensely caring psychologist who lost his way? Did I escape an abusive therapist, or did I walk away from the most intimate and caring relationship I will ever have?
Was I in a romantic relationship with my psychologist without even knowing it? I know we didn't have sex. Does that make it ok? The single strangest thing that Fred ever said to me was that he was my asexual lover. He just came out with it, out of nowhere.
I'm so terribly horribly muddled.
My ex-friend (N) made the observation once that she thought I had gone into therapy with Fred, with very little understanding of boundaries, and now after all that happened in that relationship, the whole concept of boundaries is so totally scrambled, I don't know which way is up. I think that is probably an astute observation.
I don't mean to be bad. I don't mean to be demanding and manipulative and utterly selfish and difficult and annoying and exhausting to be with and scary. I don't understand. I simply do not understand. I seem to spend a lot of my life asking "but what does that MEAN." There are lines that I've heard over and over and over again...but when I try to unpack what they MEAN, I hit a wall. It truly seems to me that people say these one-liners without themselves being able to explain what they actually MEAN.
Is this my aspieness? Is this the until-three-years-ago-undiagnosed aspieness? Is it a conflation of the aspieness with the Fred muddle...which came on top of the (E) muddle...which came on top of the original abuse muddle...which came on top of the my-mum-used-me-as-a-surrogate-partner muddle. I don't know. I DON'T KNOW!!!!! What I DO know is that I don't mean to be bad. Please believe that I don't mean to be bad.
I so very very badly want to unmuddle my muddle. Am I really mentally ill? Or is my current chaos a perfectly normal reaction to a seriously abnormal situation? Can that REALLY be called an illness???
Super big thank you for listening. @NikNik can you please just let me know you have heard me? I feel better for having got that all out.
I super love the shell cover that @Former-Member gave me. I am going to snuggle into that and cuddle up to Squishy, Mr Seahorse and Dr. Havetodo here in the underwater cave. I think the sea is a microscopically bit calmer today than yesterday, and there is a chance it will be microscopically calmer again tomorrow. I am so very VERY grateful that I found Forum Land @NikNik. I'm not sure that you guys can ever truly know the awesomeness of what you do. Super big thank you from the bottom of my heart.
