Back at square one

Do you need to be back in the hospital?

I often wonder when therapists ask this of me if they are actually concerned for my safety and welfare or if they are simply using it as an excuse to push me off onto someone else without having to come out and say there's nothing more they can do for me. Sometimes it's blatantly obvious which of the two applies, but today I was unsure what her motivation for asking was.

I did tell her about the serious cutting I've been engaging in lately, and with the few instances of self medicating in order to make myself sleep more hours than I'm awake so I don't have to be aware of my own existence. But I also told her that these actions could continue down one of two different paths. The rage that's overtaken me this past week could dissipate and those behaviours could stop, or things could get progressively worse until I actually am a danger to myself. There's no way to predict which will happen, but at this point I'm not really concerned.

The conversation then shifted to discussing the rage and again, trying to find some way to help me see there should be a grey area to my thoughts. When I explain how I've handled particular incidents that have come up, usually concerning my daughter or ex, she keeps telling me that the feelings I have are normal reactions. That I handle them very well. The way she says it though makes me feel like she's telling me there's nothing wrong with me.

Every time the word "normal" comes out of her mouth I think to myself, if I'm so normal, then why have I been branded with these mental illness diagnoses? Why am taking psychotropic meds? Why am I on disability? Why do I have psychotic breaks from reality? Why do I completely shut down when I face even the minor stresses of daily life? Why is everything all or nothing, black or white? Why do I have so much self-loathing that I physically and mentally abuse myself? Why do I fly into these blinding, uncontrollable rages?

I could sense her frustration again with how to make therapy beneficial for me. That's when I finally said I felt like I was wasting everyone's time and I should just give up. Go back to the Oscar worthy performance that fooled everyone into believing there was nothing wrong with me, that I was just a bit on the quiet side. Stuff my emotions until I'm unable to stuff any longer. Wait until it all caves in on me again and let whatever happens this time happen without putting up any resistance.

That's when the question of going into the hospital came up. I wanted to just walk out on her at that point, but where would that get me? Of course staying seems to get me nowhere either, so I'm completely lost right now. Back at square one. I am ready to give up therapy though, because for someone like me it is a lose/lose proposition.

The key is still missing, the one that will unlock the invisible chains that have me stuck in this place I've been in for far too long, and I don't think I'll ever find it.