Before you left on vacation I asked if I could paint a picture of how I see you. Of course that took you by surprise. We talk about how I try to keep you as unreal as possible so as not to ever see you as a threat but I’m sure you never expected me to want to paint a picture of it. The truth is, I don’t want to. I think I said it because I’m having a hard time with the idea of you going away right now. I wanted to hold onto something solid so I figured if I could at least paint you it would be like you weren’t really gone. There are huge losses right now. When you said you were going on vacation it felt like another loss. I wanted to grab on tightly.
I am sorry that I keep reminding you that I don’t see you as real. It’s just that if I begin to see you as a whole person then I will not tell you half of what I want and need you to know. If I think of you as human, as real, as a body with a mind and breath then I’ll begin to give you characteristics of the humans I’ve come to know in my life. I will not trust you. I will see you as a threat the same as I see most other human beings. Not looking at you, keeping you at a distance means I can keep talking and do so without fearing that you’ll become cruel, judgmental and eventually violent.
If someone told me they refuse to see me as human I’d be crushed. As a matter of fact a few years ago a man at a store I frequent got irritated with me when I refused a hug and yelled to me, “That’s okay, you’re trash anyway.” I cried like a 5 year old little girl because he said I was nothing, that I was trash. That’s just one time that someone has decided I’m nothing. I don’t see you as nothing but what I’m saying is, if someone told me they can’t put me in the shoes of another human being I’d be devastated, just like that day in the store I’d be devastated.
I understand it is offensive for me to need you to be faceless. It is my hope that if this ever becomes an issue that you will speak to me about it. I don’t want to make you feel bad. I also don’t want to fear you like I fear most people. I’m kind of confused as to how to not be offensive but still have a therapist I can work with.
As an added note, there has only been one therapist whose face I could remember once I left the office. Through all these years of sitting in front of a professional I can not remember but one office arrangement nor the face of the therapist I sat in front of. Once I walked out of the office I didn’t recall their facial features nor did I remember one single item in the office. Everything about the therapist simply disappeared. The same thing goes for my home. Once I leave this house I don’t recall the placement of anything nor can I name the details or contents inside. Once I walk away I have no ability to recall my surroundings. All of that is to say, I wouldn’t have had a source to pull from to paint your picture in the first place.
Austin
Faceless Yet Significant-Saturday, September 06, 2008-10:25PM EST
This post hit a nerve with me. I think I understand what you mean by not wanting to think of your therapist as real. I always thought I refused eye contact so they couldn’t see the demon inside of me, but after reading your post, I think maybe it’s so I can’t see the human in them. My current therapist is faceless to me. I couldn’t tell you what she looks like other than I know she’s shorter than me with brown hair. So far she hasn’t mentioned anything about the lack of eye contact that previous therapists seemed too overly concerned with. I hope she continues to remain quiet about it.
OMG, Austin! I so get this! I talk to mine on the phone, but when I saw him in person it was extremely upsetting in some ways. I had a hard time even looking at him and I felt like I could just suddenly jump up and run away. You know why? Because he had a body. Ew. That made him too real. A person, like you say, and people have not been good to me. Still, his vacations eat my heart out. I get scared, you know? Last time I had to keep his photo while he was gone. I had a weird dream about my therapist yesterday. I always dream that he is someone else other than himself. I bet if I read this post a few times when my mind is fully ‘on’, I might figure out why that is. Maybe it is just that I don’t want him to be the therapist. Therapists have historically been bad news, too. I wrote him an email about that a while back. I think I’m going to post the dream. Maybe I should post the email, too. There is a paragraph near the end that I think you could relate to.
Okay. I thought about it, and I went ahead and posted both of those things anyway. They are disturbing to me, especially the dream, but not posting it won’t make it less disturbing. FYI for the dream – Everyone in the dream, except for the therapist, is me. To bottom line the thing — he used to be my ‘mother’, but not anymore. My mother is a bitch and my therapist screwed up and did something that reminded me of her. Even during that, my ‘inner child’ clung to him because he saved us and was nice to us when the flashbacks came. I don’t see him as my mother anymore. Jenny (also me) took his place. She’s gone right now. I still don’t want any mother. Fine by me, but the dream says he has my kids (me). And now he tells me he’s going on vacation for three weeks in October. Fabulous.
And I am also the house in that dream. I dream about myself as a building quite often.
One more little thing. I guess I’m not everyone in the dream. I am not the husbands in the last paragraph.