If I think the latter then who I was then and who I am now? In psychoanalyst babble: how does that make me feel?
I don't know I don't know I don't know. And I don't much care. There is no answer to that pathetic question. To the ones before it there might be but I don't know it.
What makes me the genuine article and what makes me fake? Er, it's er, like this...yes?..Er, well, you see...yes? Said with kind sympathetic (and a little bit curious) eyes and bent head. No, sorry, I can't explain it. Let that be your homework then.
I won't be coming again. Goodbye.
A scenario, imagined. Though I know what it feels like to be in a room sitting across from one person, squirming in my chair and trying to be earnest. I know I said I prefer one-on-one but not this type of one-on-one. I don't want to be the one talking; I want to be the one listening and making notes. Or do I? No. I don't. It's intrusive and unhelpful. Why should I have to explain how my mind thinks to a stranger? It makes me sound cuckoo. And I know I'm not.
No one can't understand your mind like you do, and if you're not good with the spoken word you'll never be able to make yourself heard. The words you say won't be right. The words you say will be construed differently; a different emphasis put on them. You will leave each time frustrated, without any insight, and with your mind nettled rather than settled.
How does that make you feel? In turmoil. I wasn't before.
The cooperative self is not my authentic self. That much I do know. The cooperative self has to, well, you know, cooperate, against its will, but still, it does.
The authentic self wants what it always wants: to be left alone. To be left to its pondering without answers. There just aren't enough classic thinkers.
What do you have to say about that? Nothing. Silence is employed so that you fill in it. Silence will be met with silence then.
How does that...? Oh God!
Perhaps I should have a meltdown....? A breakthrough (they'll think) for them; an embarrassment for me. I try not to do PDE (Public Displays of Emotion). No, I couldn't engineer one. I struggle to control myself as it is. Empty supermarket shelves tipped me over the edge last time; I actually had to be consoled. And I did have an outburst over my temperature once, for it being too low: what was I doing to make it so? How should I know?!
The hackles raised. I will come out and fight if pushed. And when I do it takes everyone by surprise so then I apologise, profusely, as if I'm not entitled to rage.
Yes, so no PDE if it can be helped; it very often can't. I'm so damn sensitive. I take the little things personally, not the big, and will think about something that's been said, or that I've said for days. Years? Well, I might return to it.
But I know this about myself. I don't need to analyse it, talk it over, with a well-meaning stranger, assigned to me, not chosen by me.
I know exactly what I need, just not always how to go about it. I'm not, as you probably by now appreciate, the run-of-the-mill client. Is anyone?
Talking to paper for me is a positive thing. It doesn't reply. It doesn't always make sense, when I read over it. But then it doesn't desire further clarification. It just accepts. Sense will come. If it needs to, maybe it doesn't. That's not really the point of it. Whereas a person you speak to has expectations. Your journey is being plotted, week by week. They say you have time, yet each week there needs to be progress as otherwise they'll ask: why?
So the cooperative self appears, only for the authentic self to leap out at unexpected moments and leave you all a-flutter and them agog at your reaction. And when you've both calmed: how did that make you...? Aargh!!!
Picture credit: Chair near the stove, 1890, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).
Written June 2020.
