Thanks a lot. (said dripping with sarcasm)

Well, its just after 1am down here in the Southern Hemisphere and as usual I can't sleep.  The last two weeks or so, even though I had trouble sleeping, I didn't really have the crazy, racing thoughts burning a track through my mind. Nope, really I have spent the last two weeks in a state of deliberate disconnection. And frankly, it was kinda nice. But tonight (this morning?) we are fastly approaching that abysmal territory I was in a fortnight ago, before my brain took its little hiatus to the world of "I don't give a f*ck and I'm just not gonna think about anything". So what brought on this change, you ask? Well, 50 minutes in therapy of course. I tried to resist... I deflected, I put up solid walls to keep her up, she got a good combination of "Game Face" and her new friend "I could really give a flying f*ck". But in the end, with her questions and her wanting me to answer and think and sh*te, eventually she starts breaking through... Goddamn her.

We started off talking about X'mas, which we had both recognised as a potentially stressful time for me, but I informed her that I had found the secret weapon to surviving a family Christmas... just get really sick, so you don't care and everybody else leaves you the hell alone. She noticed my nicotine patch...(as an aside: you are supposed to rotate the damn thing to various parts of your body, but anytime I put it anywhere but on my upper arm, I get a massive raised welt that takes a day or so to go away...wtf? How can one part of your body have a reaction and another part not? Sheesh!) So she asked me about that, and why I had decided now would be a good time to quit. Reasonable question, I'm sure given my emotional state over previous few months, she was probably thinking now was not such a good time to attempt this. I explained my feelings about how the stress of not having some 'buffer' money in the bank, for me, far outweighed the stress of giving up cigarettes. I think she got this, as my emotional issues around money have cropped up before. (Another post to be written here) She did however question how I was dealing with the process. I use smoking as a distraction when I am stressed, upset, anxious (insert emotion here), so what was I doing to help me get through. My answer..nothing. Sure, the nicotine patches are helping with that side of the addiction as is the gum, but am I really putting in place any other techniques to deal with my irregulated emotions? Nope... because I'm not really having any. That's the bliss of disconnection... I'm not upset, stressed, anxious.... because I don't give a f*ck.

At this point, I guess she started to realise the extent to which I was deflecting and disconnected. Did she look at me and think...hmm, well that is better than wanting to off yourself because you can't deal with the constant, never ending flood of horrible, shitey emotional states? No, of course not. She decided this was a good time to keep digging away, and attempting to eviscerate me. At one point she asked me a question, I can't remember what exactly, but it was something that required me to reflect and examine my emotions. And I could just feel the agitation rise and rise. No. I don't wan't to go back there. I like it here, where people can say hurtful things and I just go "meh, what do I care", where I can hallucinate from the fatigue and go "meh, gives the world an extra dimension", where I can struggle to think straight long enough to do my uni work or overdue assessment and think "meh, no point in worrying about it, I don't give a f*ck". It's an easier way to be, its not as dangerous and it doesn't hurt so much. So I decided to take the honest road with her, and basically said "the thing that I am really struggling with is that I understand I need to examine this stuff, name the unnameable, think the unthinkable, if I want to move forward and progress. I know this pretending I don't care (and it is pretending, I'm just lying to myself) does not lead to any form of peace or happiness, I am back to existing not living.  However, if I get back into all of this, if I choose to open the gate even a little to let it back in, it will all come flooding in, and I will be back, overwhelmed and on the edge... and this scares me."

She looked at me for a minute, taking this in. And then as my internal agitation grew, I rubbed my forehead and muttered "But in even thinking this through, in even analysing my current thought process and sharing it with you, I'm already departing the land of "I don't give a f*ck" and so, I am well and truly screwed!". She commented that she didn't like to think of things in such all or nothing, black or white terms. I replied that some things are indeed a matter of two options and two options only, somethings just can't be halfway. She asked for examples to back up my point. Agitation turned to sarcasm as I replied "Well, you can't be half pregnant, can you?". (I can be a snarky biatch sometimes) She reflected back that whilst she could appreciate for me it felt black and white, that she refused to get pulled into the helplessness of such a dichotomy.

She then went on to talk about my appointment with BossPsychDoc this coming Thursday. More agitation welling..damn, I had pushed that one out of my mind completely, I don't even want to think about that. She has enough of a rapport and history with me to understand that when you get this snarky, disconnected, blase Ophelia sitting across from you, it generally is a good sign that things aren't actually fine, but she observed that should I turn up to the appointment and be this unauthentic (lie through my teeth and say everything is fine) that BossDoc is likely to take it at facevalue, and fasttrack my discharge from the Public Service. Rationally, I know this would probably be a bad thing, but I am having trouble summoning up the effort to care.

Anyways... she got her wish, fissures are beginning to show in the wall, I am thinking, I am feeling, things are beginning to crack, I am beginning to care... and thoughts are racing around my head a million miles an hour. So, yeah, great! thanks! Meanwhile, ironically, coming out of therapy appointment resulted in my first fall off the nicotine wagon, though it was just one, and made me feel pretty sick, what with the patch and all. I am really hanging for another, but as yet, successfully avoiding it. Climb back on the wagon I guess. Also... lil sis, lil sis's (ex?) bf and his bro are all back...no more home alone...no major screaming match yet, but I'm sure its coming, they have two weeks of hostility stored up ready to unleash on each other.

In the spirit of the angsty, whingey teenager feelings I am having right now "WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO DAMNED HARD?" Argh!