“When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.” ~Victor Hugo~ (Les Misérables)
University | 3:10 a.m. | May. 27, 2012 | By Marina Keegan
KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness
Marina Keegan Yale Class of 2012 – died at age 22
Marina Keegan ’12. Photo by Facebook.
The piece below was written by Marina Keegan ’12 for a special edition of the News distributed at the class of 2012′s commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.
We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.
It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.
Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.
This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.
But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves…” “if I’d…” “wish I’d…”
Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.
But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.
We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.
When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.
For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…
What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.
In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.
We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.
We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.
i remember you grandma emily with love in my heart written by the survivors
i read someone’s post just a few moments ago. the person had written a letter to her mother to express just how she felt about her. it was honest and a well deserved mother’s day card and letter. my response is as follows:
happy grandmother’s day emily i love you always
you are so right in expressing these feelings toward a mother who was horribly abusive. if my mother were still alive my letter to her, if i even wrote one, it would be filled with the same kind of sentiment. i would want to send to her a letter that would force her to face the truth about what she did to me and how it has effected my entire life.
happy grandmother’s day emily i love you always
she knew while she was alive how i felt and she showed me in her will just what she thought of that by leaving me and my siblings exactly $1.00 a piece from an over $650,000 estate. she said in her will that the lawyer sent to each of us in a certified letter with the $1.00 check enclosed: “that they each know why they are getting this.” a raving bitch to the end. she was every kind of abusive to me. you think of an abuse and she did it. do you remember the film “Sybil” with Joanne Woodward and Sally Fields and also, do you remember the film “Carrie” with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie? Well, those two mothers combined made up my mother.
happy grandmother’s day emily i love you always
so i do understand. even the “m” word is something that i have a hard time using or saying out loud. and when she was alive, whenever i would recieve any of her weird snail mail, i would dread opening it. i would take it to my therapist’s office and have her open it. then i wasn’t even sure if i wanted to know what was in it. as i said it was always so f-ing off the wall certifiably weird. she was either trying to convert me or accusing me of making my younger brother crazy or go off on some tangent about my sexual abusers and apologize for my father. She would say he wanted my forgiveness but he didn’t understand what he had done.
happy grandmother’s day emily i love you always
now that she is dead, she isn’t gone. she haunts me in my dreams on a regular basis. i think she died maybe 5 years ago. i don’t do well with time. so, i hope you get that i am trying to give you support even though i have obviously been triggered into going off on my rant on my own letter “m.” i revised this after i decided it would become a post dedicated to my mother’s day gift to my own mother.
happy grandmother’s day emily i love you always
if i want to honor mother’s day, i would thank my grandmother emily for loving me so much and being a safe place when i was staying with her. she showed me what love was and she gave me the best hugs and taught me music and how to write. we even created a special alphabet to secretly write to each other so no one could decipher our secret messages. we talked on the phone every day after school. i love her with all my heart.
happy grandmother’s day emily i love you always
she always protected me from my mother when our family would visit her home for dinner. when it was time to leave i would throw my arms around my grandmother and lock my hands together so that when they tried to pull me away from her, i wouldn’t let go. i told her: “i didn’t want to go back to that bad place. please don’t make me.” i begged really hard and tried holding on. i was never strong enough to hold on tight enough. they always broke my grip and took me back to hell.
the other life i dream: through the veil by jen kiley
the other life i dream – timothy crane
she betrayed me. i trusted her and believed in her kindness and charm. what a therapist who made me feel so loved and cared for that i trusted her with my deepest feelings and secrets. i opened up to her more than to anyone else in my life. before this week and before today i felt she was the best therapist i ever had and i have gone through more than 15 maybe less than 20. some threw me out because i wouldn’t comply with their commands like leaving a family that i was living with while in college. they were radical in their lifestyle and my therapist felt they were harming me by exposing me to something different then i was use to like abuse and more abuse. this family loved me. they had a son that i cared for while his parents were always busy with teaching college and managing at ibm. i was not going to give up what was mostly a productive situation in my life that gave me the love i had never experienced from anyone in my childhood except my grandmother but she died when i was a young teenager then there was no one to escape to. she didn’t know what the abusers were doing to me. when i was with her that other world did not exist and even if i wanted to tell her when i was with her i did not remember the other places. that was probably the did/mpd protecting me. but tonight i need to think about my therapist who 2 days before thanksgiving of 2010 abandoned me for more money and a better job. two weeks before our last session she told me she was leaving and the next day i saw her for 1/2 hour session then she went on vacation to a concert. the following week was to be our last two sessions but during the first of those sessions she told me she was cancelling the next day for family reasons and that she didn’t want to put me through any more “torture” than she had already done. for the past 6 plus months i have been in torture. there is an APA Ethics Code rule that does not allow contact between ex-therapist and client for two years. which i feel is a barbaric form of punishment since there was no sexual relationship possible between us and there was no potential of that ever happening. my feelings for her were love but not of a sexual nature. i think though because i was a lesbian she got hung up on that idea and kept bringing it up when ever i would talk about my feelings for her that they might be inappropiate. she was my bloody therapist. we had an intimate relationship. which is not unusual in the therapeutic relationship. the client (me) (us) were trying to be vulnerable to her by letting our barriers down so that we could learn to express our feelings. the word inappropriate always seemed to be stuck in her mind. she should have read the book “in sessions” (which i read after our relationship had been terminated abruptly), it talks about how intense the feelings can be between a therapist and their client. i was so confused back then during our work together. if she had only realized it was normal for me to have strong feelings of attachment, she would have understood what i was going through and would have stopped the hell and my guilt for feeling so dependent and close to her. i mistakenly thought she felt something for me, some sort of closeness. she acted and spoke that way with me. but so cavalier she was when she left me abandoned. when i asked her how she felt, her answer was that she felt great. her new life was before her and what did i matter when all that new money and prestige was going to be hers.
i accidentally ran into her outside of my therapy building in march 2011. (she worked in the building next door and parked her vehicle three car lengths away from mine so i would see it there every time i would go to see my new therapist). i called it serendipity, she called it accidental. she seemed pleased to see me. i asked for a hug. we would always do that at the end of our sessions. i felt distant from her. my guard was up. she asked me if seeing her made me feel grounded. my answer was no that it made me have a realization of reality. meaning i could see the real her. but the moments after she disappeared again from my life, all the hurt feelings rushed back in that i had successfully started to come to deal with. then i felt guilty because i felt like i had hurt her feelings. so for three weeks i sat on how upset meeting her that way made me feel until i finally wrote her a letter and a poem. (she had given permission to my new therapist that i could communicate with her once and awhile so i did that two times, once with a card and the second a letter to tell her how it made me feel her leaving me so suddenly). anyway, when i emailed the attachment of the letter and poem to my new therapist to send to the one who had abandoned us, i asked if she would please forward the attachment. while out chauffeuring my partner around to shop (she had broken her leg and ankle and i am an agoraphobic so this all freaked me out) i called my therapist to ask if she had received the email. she told me yes. i asked if she had sent it out. she said “NO!” and that she wasn’t going to forward it ever. well, my suicidal alter came out and my depressive side of manic-depression reared its head and i spun into the deepest state of depression and suicidal feelings that totally shocked me into silence. i tried to ask why she was doing this to me, that it was an important letter. it didn’t matter what i said she was not going to send the letter and poem forward. i was devastated and almost fired my therapist the next day, instead i just sat in her office during our session and didn’t speak. when i left she said it was up to me if i wanted to continue therapy with her. at that time, NO I DID NOT WANT TO CONTINUE!!! from that moment until this most recent tuesday i pined for my former therapist. i missed her. i went against the rules and sent her a message which i sent to all my friends because my best friend had just died and she was in her thirties. it was sudden and unexpected. once again i was devastated by a loss. a short time later one of my alters wrote a secret identity email to our former therapist trying to tell her that no one was letting us contact her and that it wasn’t because we didn’t care and we told her that “You do ground us __________.” we felt we were being secretive but trying at the same time to protect her by not letting her know who we were, that way she wouldn’t get into trouble. well, this past tuesday at the very beginning of my therapy session the supervisor to her (my new therapist) came in and shut the door. the three of us exchanged pleasantries then the bomb dropped: i was told, “it was against the APA Ethics Code for a therapist and a client to exchange emails.” well, i’d been doing it for over 10 years with three therapists and suddenly it was against the Ethics Code. i told her i had read the Ethics Code and it never mentioned anything about emails and my therapist had given me their email addresses. she said it was a matter of confidentiality. i told her i didn’t care who read my emails that i was a writer and was under an expectation that people i didn’t know would be reading what i write. she still didn’t get it. my therapist agreed with her that the emails must stop, she told me later she wasn’t going to loss her job over this. i told her supervisor in the coarsest language possible that this was b@ll sh@t and i felt that they were living in the dark ages and that this was the days of emails and text messages and networking and that the psychiatric times had just had a virtual seminar discussing as one of its topics using email to communicate better with their clients and/or patients. i told her it was the only way sometimes that i could get out my thoughts and feelings that i needed to discuss in therapy. it didn’t matter to her. i also said i felt i was being singled out and it felt like a conspiracy and that i was not being paranoid. too many weird things had been happening for a while at my counseling center. she finally left and my therapist kept up the lie and it was a lie. she told me i was the only client that was sending email to their therapist. LIE!!! when i got home i called Washington, DC APA and spoke with someone in the Ethics Dept. they told me there was no such rule in their code. she tried to be helpful but said there was nothing that she could do to help me and referred me back to my counseling center. i also called a former co-group therapy friend to ask if she had ever or was still sending emails to her therapists. she said, of course, they gave me their email addresses. next day, i had my partner cancel my therapy appointment. i was way too angry to see my therapist plus my back was in really bad shape and i hadn’t been sleeping very much and i could barely walk. my partner did as i asked and left a message on her voicemail wishing my therapist a great vacation for the next week and if she wanted she could call me before she left for her vacation. in the meantime i ranted and raved and talked to many different people about the insanity of the situation. friday, the phone rang and caller id only said incoming call,(which i hate answering), i said hello but the music was loud on my computer so i couldn’t hear the voice until i turned it down. i repeated my hello and when the other person spoke i realized it was my therapist at the other end of the line. her calls always come in as private caller so was not expecting it at all to be her on the line. she asked how it went at the doctors. i told her i was to get a great deal of rest, take certain extra meds and ice my back. after that it was up to me to speak my mind. i told her i was still angry. (just earlier that day i was calling to find a new therapist, i even spoke to my doctor’s office the day before and that day also). i told her i knew that i was being lied to. somehow we managed to work through some of the anger and then she told me who was behind the ban on emails. it was none other than MY FORMER THERAPIST. it had to do with the emails i sent her. to this very moment i have no idea why that bothered her but it made me come to the realization that i have been living an illusion about her. she is not at all the person i thought and felt she was. i deleted her from my speed dial to my counseling center and put my new therapist’s name where her name once was and i definitely have to change the dedication page of my manuscript and rethink the whole approach to my book based on my relationship to her. how could i be so blind. i even told my partner before i found out it was her. that i had suspected she was behind all of what was happening but i didn’t want to believe it. how could she? she cared about me. why would she want to shut me out totally from her life forever. there’s no going back. it is over. totally over. and i should be devastated but all i feel is anger and contempt for her actions. i just lost my best friend and she had abandoned me in our therapy together so abruptly. it was so easy for her i think now. maybe she never was this gentle and kind and sweet compassionate person i thought she was. it was all a figment of my imagination. i learned to trust her and love her and she BETRAYED ME. how could she do that to me. is she satisfied with herself that she tried to crush all the spirit out of me. my partner made a good point in all our discussions about this matter: that maybe now i can turn all my trust over to my new therapist and really start to connect with her and to forget and leave behind the past and what my former therapist meant to me and see it for the illusion that it really was: a pretend relationship but she was doing the pretending not me. it was real for me. it gave me back my ability to write again and to create again. so pain is at the bottom of some artists souls. i know it feeds mine. i see my new therapist again in 11 days from this moment i am writing this. my first gift to her for her birthday in february was a copy of the song by lady antebellum: “NEED YOU NOW.” the irony is that i sent the present through email.
my psychiatrist is spying on me and i’m not paranoid
but if i was, and i am definitely not, paranoid
it doesn’t mean my psychiatrist is not spying on me
by jen kiley
a new addition to this post. i found out someone is spying on my posts and informed my former former therapist, the one who emotionally and psychologically used their position and their words to tortuously manipulate me into doubting my sense of reality and intuitive judgments. this informant and former former therapist passed this information along to the psychiatrist i was writing about in this post. she informed my current therapist that she knows what i have been writing in my blog posts. since i am an identity who on paper does not exist it is pretty pretty interesting that someone i do not know nor who should have no clue to who i am feels that they actually know who i am. i feel like capt. yossarian in the joseph heller novel ‘catch-22′ i exist therefore i am but i do not exist therefore who the hell thinks they know me. i can’t fly if i am crazy but i am crazy if i want to fly; and not wanting to fly proves that i am sane.
just what every stalked child who suffered child sexual abuse wants to feel.
the rest is the original post in which i have made some modifications.
where to begin: i have multiple diagnoses and recently found out that one of them is manic depression/bipolar (which was recorded many years ago on my psych chart but no one told me). I also have the following diagnoses: DID/MPD; Panic Disorder; Agoraphobia; C-PTSD; Major Depressive Illness plus Anxiety Disorder. The problem that i am dealing with right now is i lost my therapist, “to lose one’s therapist may be regarded as misfortune to lose two is carelessness.” (paraphrasing oscar wilde.) which is causing me extreme levels of pain and sadness which is driving me mad. i started seeing a new therapist who i asked to check out my psych records and she discovered the Bipolar Diagnosis. She wasn’t surprised because during our sessions i would go into a manic state and it is like a roller coaster ride. Since i found out about this new/old diagnosis i have been doing research. in the past I’ve seen several psychiatrists and psychotherapists and not until now did anyone tell me this was what was causing my deep depressions and suicidal ideations and just as magically i would go into a manic episode and not sleep; suffering from sleep deprivation; forgetting to eat; talking rapidly; so many thoughts needing to be expressed; sudden high energies of creativity [i am a writer and a poet.] forgetting to take my meds; mixing them up; in the past wild spending; what i am trying to say is all the symptoms are there but i have a psychiatrist who (one) told my medical provider that i am imagining my DID (was diagnosed by a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist earlier on in my life and have all the signs of DID/MPD) and now when i asked her to alter my meds to help deal with my manic depression she told me that i did not have bipolar disorder. that it was the trauma i suffered in my life that was causing all these symptoms. Her reasoning is that i have never exhibited my symptoms in her office. well my therapist told me today that i am bipolar and my partner has witnessed all of this behavior including the DID. she’s met my alters over the years. they would switch out all the time around her without any awareness by me. i wasn’t told i had DID/MPD until several years ago. she has also witnessed the bipolar. my new therapist sees me twice a week and i am manic as hell. she told me that my psychiatrist never witnessed this behavior because for such a long time i have been totally unemotional after having a major mental and emotional breakdown. so except for the deep depressions and feelings of suicide and thinking about how i would do it to the point that my partner would hide the knives i felt nothing. but when i started seeing the therapist before her, she was working with me and she was starting to bring to the surface my emotions. we worked together to break through the barriers i had built up to protect myself from feeling pain and now after she abandoned me my emotions are in full release mode. when i get depressed it is so severe that i want to kill myself. this occurs several times a week and sometimes several times a day. i never know how i will feel or what will trigger my mood changes. i have a difficult time remembering what i have even done during the times of my manic episodes which lead to high levels of creativity and euphoria and i become so engaged in my projects. on any given day i never know what it is i will be doing but i cannot stop once i get started, unless my body just gives out and i find that i have lost consciousness because i am so exhausted. now to the question: what do i do with a psychiatrist who does not acknowledge my diagnoses and just tells me to set alarms and just go to bed on time. i do not feel i have any control over that. i’m not crazy about the idea of taking anymore meds than i do and i take a great many psych and medical medications 6 times a day and over 20 pills a day, one of which is an anti-depressant. from what i have read taking an anti-depressant without a mood stabilizer acerbates the manic states. i see my psychiatrist soon. she will not do anything for me until we meet ftf (face to face) but the last several times we have met we have just argued and the last time we met i was in a suicidal state which she caused to make more severe. i use to trust her but i am feeling she just doesn’t get me and is unaware of how she most recently effected me. i am suicidal quite a bit and depressed but i am on an anti-depressant and have been on different ones over the past many years. before that i use to self medicate with marijuana from the time i was a teenager and alcohol and other mind altering drugs. there is bipolar in my family. my younger brother has been diagnosed with it and with paranoid schizophrenia and my uncle committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, just like ernest hemingway. he may have been a fan, i really don’t know, my aunt died in a mental institution in her late 40s and my mother was completely off the f@#king wall emotionally and extremely abusive and emotionally unpredictable. I am at a loss. My therapist will be seeing my psychiatrist at an all group meeting for the counseling center i go to and plans on speaking with her. my new therapist said that i am starting to have emotions and i am expressing them. the dam has broken.
i want to add to my previous comment that i have seen a multitudinous number of psychotherapists since i was 19 and quite a large number of psychiatrists, one who actually had a nervous breakdown while treating me and prescribing the wrong medication which caused me to overdose. needed the emergency room on that one because after drinking my lunch and popping the pills he prescribed that were not relieving my anxiety which is what they were suppose to do i became more and more agitated so that when i got back to work one of my alters crawled under the desk and wouldn’t come out. this was long before we knew anything about the DID/MPD. Before and since then we have acted on 3 suicide attempts and have been in danger of doing physical harm to ourselves and have thoughts of suicide on a regular and continual basis.
to add to all this my best friend who died suddenly at a young age from unknown causes whom i met at the same time as the therapist i was seeing before my current one. together the three of us became very close and we had a continuing connection through texting and phone calls and i would always run into her at the counseling center where we both met our own therapists. she was the only person i trusted sharing my feelings with and she was helping me through the loss of my former therapist until she died. my new therapist had to break the news to me over the telephone after leaving me a cryptic message on my voicemail earlier on the same day: “there is something i want to talk to you about.” i immediately jumped to the conclusion that i had done something terribly wrong and she wanted to terminate therapy with me. when we finally connected she told me she had bad news to tell me. my mind went in every direction. first thought was that something terrible had happened to my former therapist that i loved so much and missed so much. my second thought was that she really was going to end our therapeutic relationship but the worse news was yet to come when she said the name of my friend and that she had died. it was like hearing an echo from a distance. i know i heard the name wrong and said oh no not her. i thought she said the name of my former therapist but then it came streaming into my consciousness that it was my friend who had died. there was no relief in any of this, just shock and disbelief. i couldn’t imagine my friend not being there. earlier that morning around 3am i was going to text her but then i remembered she had told me that her cell phone would wake her up so i put it off and told myself that i would text her or call her later in the day after i got some sleep. now i wish i had texted her. maybe i would have woken her up and she would not have died. whatever had killed her might have been chased away. i think it was an aneurysm. she had been having headaches for a very long time and no one seemed to be able to find out what was the problem. she is gone now. i never got to tell her about the bipolar but maybe she figured it out. my partner did before i ever told her. we did share an abusive childhood and DID/MPD. she lived a difficult life but she had two young girls that she really loved. they will also miss her. and she had many friends she made through the counseling center we both visited often. i’ll never see her face again. she was the only one any of us trusted there. everyone else scared us or made us feel uncomfortable.
so where do i go from here. i write my poems; collect my quotes; write my manuscript; work on my other writing projects with the help of all of us inside and i work with my new therapist to try to get help for all the madness that i have to work through.
i need to hear and feel this kind of song. this is so beautiful. it is painful to listen to. a sweet pain. it makes me feel sad. it holds so many memories of love and loss. to me it’s a fantasy but brings on such a longing for those i have lost so suddenly to death. the singing voice is so sweet and loving. i want to feel her touch again. but there are many who i feel this way about who were ripped from my life and my arms.
“where ever you go. whatever you do i will be right here waiting for you. what ever it takes or how my heart breaks i will be right here waiting for you…you’ve got me going crazy.”
i’ve lived an adventurous life with a great deal of of my alters doing what ever they wanted to do. i never knew who i was or who i am. the women that i have loved and the ones i still love overwhelm my emotions. many have disappeared from my life but the relationships did not end. they vanished or i vanished and the one i thought i would love forever was killed. i love the woman i am living with now and plan on spending the rest of my life with her but it is difficult for me not to love many woman but they seem to die on me. now i am learning i need to get to know myself and to love myself so that i can understand intimacy. the pain of loss seems to follow me throughout my life. now i have discovered something about myself that changes everything. i do not only have multiple personalities but i have manic depression with an artistic temperament that flairs up unexpectedly and my divine madness and my alters are never sure who is doing what or feeling what at given time.
this is how i feel about my last therapist. i wish she were here to talk to. not being able to see her or hear her voice. not knowing whether i ever cross her mind. i want so badly to call her. the rules of the american psychological association forbid contact for two years. i feel like it’s an unfair punishment. i gave this song to my new therapist as a birthday present and she is great but i do not have the strong feelings for her that i had for “her” my last therapist. i love her and it goes way beyond transference. she is so gentle and understanding and had the kindest and softest voice i’ve ever heard. i have never trusted or cared about or loved someone the way i do her. it’s unbearable missing her. my new therapist makes me laugh and understands and is not overwhelmed by my manic states during our sessions. she goes with where ever my mind goes and keeps up. the emotional explosion happened after we started seeing each other. i was in a depressive episode when we met and unaware of my manic depression. all i could do is cry at the beginning then the mania hit full on. but now the depression is back and the lows are extremely low and suicidal. on tuesday i have to convince my psychiatrist that i am bipolar and she needs to rethink her medication plan for me. when your psychiatrist is in denial that’s when you are really in trouble. last four times i met with her we either argued or she put me into a deeper depression and made me feel more severely suicidal. what is that all about??? she told my therapist that she has never seen me manic so how could i possibly be manic depressive. answer: i have been an emotional zombie for the past number of years from having an emotional and mental breakdown and shut down and locked up every emotion that existed except anger and depression if you can call that an emotion. my therapist said when i did trauma group my emotions were so locked up into little compartments inside of me that there were chains for the chains to keep them from coming out. but now they have exploded when my last therapist left so abruptly. i had another mental and emotional breakdown but this time the chains melted too fast and pandora’s proverbial box was opened too quickly and everything spilled out from inside of me. too much to handle and full blown manic depression reoccurred. can’t sleep until my body shuts down on it’s own. don’t want to eat. have no appetite. forget to take the multiplicity of pills that i take or take them at the wrong time. like taking ambien cr and other sleep meds before dinner not noticing i was doing it. just plain f@#king up. talking a mile a second and interrupting everyone but not meaning to but can’t seem to help it. i read. i write. i listen to sad music. i try to watch films and tv but cannot concentrate. the only thing i can seem to do is start my laptop when i get up and stay on it until i go to bed. then when i am in bed i do more writing and reading then eventually put my head on the pillow after the sun has been up forever. but i won’t sleep past noon most days and on therapy days i get up around 10am with a wake up call at 9:30am. wear sunglasses to therapy and doctors appointments because my eyes are too sensitive to the light. my partner thinks i am manic depressive and have multiple personalities because she has seen everything close up for more years then i will mention. she understands the did and agoraphobia and panic and mania and depression and suicide attempts and the need to protect me. have two numbers on speed dial for suicide hotlines just in case. so why can’t my psychiatrist see any of this. is she crazy???
“the walls and the scars that won’t go away and opening up has always been the hardest thing. so lay here beside me and hold me and don’t let go. this feeling i’m feeling is something i’ve never known. i just can’t take my eyes off you.” this is the way i feel about my last therapist except replace “lay here beside me” with “just hold me and don’t let go.” she let go and i won’t ever get over that pain when we hugged and said goodbye.
a moment from my life. “a broken heart that is still beating. you got inside my head. i like to see your reflection inside of my eyes. i’m falling apart. i’m barely breathing. i’m holding on. i’m barely holding onto you. i’m hanging on. you say that i will be okay. broken lights on the freeway. i’m barely holding on to you.”
the feeling is coming on again. i can feel the emotions start washing into my body. my mind starts developing thoughts of what comes next. how do i fight feeling so depressed when moments ago i was commenting on how impressed i was that someone was able to speak out loud their feelings of fear. last night i wrote 2 emails to my therapist. the second one was so bizarre. i felt the spirit of a friend who just recently died unexpectedly. she was young. there was a sign. she loved butterflies. i received a notice last night in my email from someone’s blog i subscribe to who had the most beautiful photograph of blue butterflies and next to it was another photograph with a quote that felt so much like what my friend would feel like. it said: “pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” i was pulled down into such a deep depression after that. i missed my friend so much yet i felt like she were right beside me.
i wrote in the letter to my therapist: “…I am so angry I never got to tell her my secret that i was a manic depressive. that i had been diagnosed many years back but only found out from my new therapist a few weeks ago about the bipolar disorder. i wanted to share this with her but told her i want to talk to my doc c. first. she became upset and asked me if my cancer had returned. i reassured her it had not. that i never will be able to share with her all the things we talked about and how open we would be with each other. i trusted her so much. i need her now. i want her back. it wasn’t time for her to go. it makes absolutely no sense. why did she have to die? it just isn’t right. haunt me a. i am here for you. you are not alone. i’m so angry we never had that conversation. i wanted her to know. i wanted to be there for her. i wanted her to be there for me like we have been for a very long time. i always worried about her. i always felt so good inside whenever i would see her. we shared much emotional intimacy together. we got very close and knew a great deal about each other. she had that way that made me feel so close to her. so open. we were that way together.
we were connected in spirit. and now her spirit is trying to communicate with me telling me she is feeling good and she is alright and she isn’t going too far away. that i will see her again. someday. when i’m not so clear about. i can not believe i will not speak to her again or see her face look up at me. and our favorite goodbye: “i’ll talk to you later.” and she was so good about my texting her. she always had a hard time doing it at her end but she let me text her as often as i wanted to. i usually did many at a time so i could get the whole message across.
a. was the first person i told about my therapist not being there for me any longer that she was leaving suddenly. i did it in a really long texting session. she felt so bad for me and kept reassuring me and asking me if i was alright and how was i doing. she knew i was in so much pain. she understood that pain. my therapist is a great lose for me and still is. and now a.is joining in on my feelings of loss.
i really don’t understand why i am not completely and utterly mad. why haven’t i completely lost it. i think my partner thinks i have. i escape into my writing and my books and my mcp, a good companion and protector, and i have you my new therapist to help me in therapy, to hear me and make me laugh and enjoy that i enjoy “castle” and stana katic so much. she’s my present day j. a. i always told my former therapist that Stana Katic as Beckett was a lot like her and Stana herself is a lot like her also. They both have a gentle nature and care about those around them very deeply.
No one cared about me the way that she did before I met her. how do i let go of that when i never had it before her. and i never had a friend like a. before. why are they both being taken out of my life. and so close together. and c. my doc, is in pain. her husband died 4 days after a. i can’t bear to think she is feeling any of the kind of pain that i am feeling and have felt before now. i want to take it away or at least help her.
i am so f@cked up. when i was numb i was like a zombie but now i am such an emotional mess. one minute i’m depressed and without warning i am flying high into an euphoric mania driving my partner crazy when i am the one who should be crazy. well, actually i am…crazy that is. no hospitals. i just want some damn medication that works that doesn’t make me feel stupid and doesn’t take away the creativity and doesn’t make me gain weight or f@ck with my blood sugar.
i feel like i am drunk or numb but haven’t touched a thing. it’s becoming difficult to type. this is all $h@t.” this is what i wrote last night. i find after writing some of the depression gets lifted but not always. when i am manic i tend to write even more frantically. my emotional levels are compounded by having a psychiatrist who doesn’t understand what is wrong with me and if you check out a previous post she is in more denial than i am in. feeling a bit better then when i started writing. need to listen to some music that will bring on memories of those who are gone now.
i find it “who knows what manic depression is and what suicide is. It lives with me as a constant companion almost comforting at times. That is coming from my own thoughts. I’ve lived with feelings of suicide so often.” how i control my self from making any more attempts at killing myself when there is such a strong urge to do so. i’ve made so many promises to my self and to my close support circle that i will not do it and my mpc needs me plus my other animals and my partner, i thinks she wants me around even though at times she can be so damn grumpy, it’s her deadlines, they are driving her crazy and so is my mania. ~jen~
goodbye my friend. river phoenix died at 23 just as suddenly and unexpectedly. too many in my life seem to leave that way. when i listen to this song i feel the emotions that come with feeling love and missing the ones i love. my “almost lover” died on june 3rd. i will remember her always and forever.
That’s how I met her. She sat there across the room. The first time I saw her I knew she was someone special. I haunt her or she haunts me. She’s inside my mind. We were meant to be together in some way. So why has she gone away? When my mind needs her the most she has flown away out of my reach. I worked on my manuscript tonight. The pages were filled with memories of times spent with her. If she could only know what her absence is making me feel. I cannot believe she would want me to be tortured so. I listen to this song “Timing Is Everything” and all I feel is her arms around me holding me. Her eyes looking into mine and mine looking deeper into hers. I miss her so much and I will love her – always and forever. ~jen~ “come back to me”
“Cause you can be hurt by love. Or healed by the same. Timing is everything.”
5.10.11
Garrett Hedlund (country strong – lyrics)
Timing Is Everything
When the stars line up
And you catch a good break
People think you’re lucky
But you know its grace
It can happen so fast
Or a little bit late
Timing is everything
You know I’ve had close calls
When it could’ve been me
I was young when I learned just how fragile life can be
I lost friends of mine
I guess it wasn’t my time
Timing is everything
And I could’ve been a child that God took home,
And I would’ve been one more unfinished song
And when it seems a rhyme is hard to find
That’s when one comes along
Just in time
Well I remember that day
When our eyes first met
You ran into the building to get out of the rain
Cause you were soakin wet
And as I held the door
You wanted to know my name
Timing is everything
And I could’ve been another minute late
And you’d never would’ve crossed my path that day
And when it seems true love is hard to find
That’s when love comes along
Just in time
You can call it fate
Or destiny
Sometimes it really seems like it’s a mystery
Cause you can be hurt by love
Or healed by the same
Timing is everything
It can happen so fast
Or a little bit late
Timing is everything
"a reminder of what once was and now is just a fantasy"
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself
by jen kiley “the secret keeper”
This is an excerpt from a manuscript that I started writing while I was seeing M. who I felt was the best psychotherapist I ever worked with. She is my inspiration and muse. The stages that it is in now are more like a patchwork quilt of writings from notebooks and poems and letters and emails and role playing screenplays that I have written and continue to write everyday. I choose this blog site as a place where I can be open and honest with my thoughts and feelings and be the real person that I am in all the multiple facets of my psyche. I am hoping I will be able to post open and honest writings that help me develop and release what has and is happening in my life. Truth is what I am seeking and the revealing of secrets and recalling of memories are only some of what I want to express here on this blog. Hopefully, it will not all be serious. My new therapist wants me to laugh more and encourages me to watch shows and films that do just that, make me laugh. Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory are the best shows at creating that overwhelming feeling in me to feel hysterically silly and to laugh so hard I can barely catch my breath. I leave you to read what I am sharing. Be kind. I am new to this kind of truthful exposure.
9.20.10 – 2:15 am – monday
Reality…love…animals first…people…therapist before other people but S.O… my bird… my main kitties…fur…petting…loving…trusting…wanting love…wanting attention… petting…my bird sharing my meals…nothing better than that…sharing my juice… climbing all over me…getting up on my hand…sitting and resting on my shoulders or stomach for hours…nothing like it…sleeping with me while I write or work on the computer…hanging out together…my little buddy…my bird…my beautiful multi-colored protector…the most wonderful creature in the whole world…I feel that way about her …and I feel special ways about my special kitties too…snuggling with them…sleeping with them at night or when they sleep in my lap or draped over my arms in my chair …I love the feeling…I live for the moments…I live for those moments when M. smiles at me and tells me I am a good person and that I did good… when we looked into each others eyes when she was trying to get me to reach the child inside me…we both tried to get me there but it is a long distance inside to that place…
<3 Love <3
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself
But if your love and must needs have desires,
Let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook
That sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart
And give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer
For the beloved in your heart
And a song of praise upon your lips.
~ by Kahlil Gibran ~
the 9th – the day I found out that M. was leaving, no longer to be my therapist. I found out later during our last session we would not be able to have any contact at all with each other for two years.
I dedicate the first post on “all is one” to M. She taught me that we are all connected no matter where we are in our lives. She is gone now – left abruptly from my life. It has caused me a great deal of pain and continues to do so. I love this woman more than can ever be expressed in words. Even Kahlil Gibran only comes slightly close to how I feel. We did some intense work together unearthing some of the memories of the abuse from my childhood and we tried to confront the issues that I am going through today. I am now seeing a new therapist that M. chose for me. She is quite good but I miss M. terribly and my psychological issues are only compounded by the loss of her in my life and in our therapeutic relationship. I stay connected to her through my writing. She continues to be my inspiration and my muse and I write to her in my notebooks for my manuscript everyday and every night. She is there with me in those moments. It was because of her that I returned to my writing and she also brought me back to my roots in meditation. When she left I pulled back from meditating and certain music because it strongly reminded me of her and the level of pain and depression and suicidal thoughts I had were too difficult to experience in all of their intensity. She abandoned me. I miss her hugs; her voice; the way her eyes looked into mine; her gentleness; her understanding; her peacefulness and calmness and most of all her love. She is connected to my soul. I will love her always and forever.
This is just the beginning of writing here. If someone passes through and should happen to read any of what I have written I will tell you that there will be more and the depth I intend to fathom shall hopefully be expressive, thoughtful and revealing in honesty.
