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Five years after psychosis.

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I think that what I wanted and needed most, when my son was panicking and hallucinating and the home visit team was sending him into a downward spiral, what I needed beyond all things - was to know that one day it would be OK. That one day he would be able to look back at the fear and pain and get some kind of overview, some distance from the power of it. Preferably without continuing with the Risperidone, Lorazepam, Zopiclone, Citalopram and Diazepam, Five years later and yes, it is OK. And no more R,L,Z,C and D.  How did that happen?  Well it happened despite my husband's best attempts to sabotage it - and the consequences of his attitude and actions remain as horrible, mouldering left overs. It happened because The Early Intervention team supported my son. There was no cajoling or threatening (Home visit Team - or rather the psychiatrist who literally led the home visit team specialised in bullying). They respected my son's wishes not to be medicated, and the guy who came r...
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Back home...

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OK, well, The Black Box blog   was a nice interlude! I'm being ironic .  I may have said this before - that I fell in love with my therapist?  And I tell the story of what happened here: LINK. Spoiler alert: Not a happy ending. But, it was an interesting experience, taught me lots. So, back home, back to the sense of my life as being me running rings around the moon, or ripples from a stone thrown into a pool, the image of the moon becomes rings that slowly, slowly calm back into a coherent picture. All in all it is OK, I've done good! I have done what I set out to do! In 2015 I picked up on an expression that passed over my son's face that gave me the heads-up that something was going very wrong, and I listened to that intuition. I followed the narrative to the coroners court and resolved to become the kind of therapist who isn't like 'your mom's friend'. I wanted to work with young men who are suicidal. I wanted to become someone who knows how to engage ...
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The curse.

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Just when I thought it was all over. I honestly don't know what to do about what is happening. But this madness has to stop. Psychosis is understandable, it is human, it's fierce and terrifying, but it is immediate and alive. This - the thing I'm trying to deal with here and now is way worse...and I don't know how to deal with it.  I fought one round with it (1988- 1990), and left my home burning (!) no, nothing was burning. I simply let him (my first husband) have everything, didn't ask for a penny. And I made sure that all blame could be levelled at me. This was important. I gave my first husband a narrative that side-stepped his lethal victimhood and inability to blame his abuser. I had to keep my daughters alive, I had to get out without causing him to blame himself. And I did it. I managed to create another life, and on we went. With my second husband, with our open doors, home-ed and kids everywhere, people were amazed at what a happy family we were. Three chi...
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Four years after...where is he?

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It has been four years and I don't know where he is. I know he works at the same place. I assume that he is living with her. I believe that he is playing happy families - again. Having shed his role of dad for his own son, to playing daddy for her younger (not yet psychotic)  kids. This is his tried and tested method for being a better person, better than the man he has replaced. And who has he replaced? Her husband and himself - by stepping into a different family - again. I have fantasies of following his car to find out. Perhaps I'm so wrong. Perhaps he is heartbroken and living alone, swigging whiskey and still reading Jack Reacher books. Or perhaps he has become someone I could respect? I have three friends who would love to help me to do this!  I'd wear a headscarf, and different glasses and sit in the passenger seat. Would he notice? As an unfamiliar car shadows his Golf? Does he still have the Golf? A blue Golf. He bought it just before leaving.  God damn!  W...
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Resonance cascade.

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I am mapping the land in which I live.  My home is a Jenga tower. I take half my husband's salary until he stops me is one way to look at this . So, every month it could be that he has shifted his salary to another account and therefore I'd have no money. The other way to see this is, he needs to divorce me.  And I need him to believe that I'm broken, because that is safer. I earn money as a therapist sometimes . I can't earn money from where I had my placement until I get my qualification paperwork sorted out. I am waiting for my college to send me my certificate, and then I will be waiting for my professional body to confirm my qualification - and then I need to do their viva. The other place I work has run out of funding, so last month I earnt £30. So, let's say January, perhaps!  And then I can apply for jobs?  Roof leaks, things need replacing.  And there is a whole load of moldy baggage I could delve into about how most counsellors are middle class women s...
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Courage.

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I am beginning to see the importance of keeping this blog. At the time, the process of writing was my security blanket, my game of let's pretend other people will recognize their feelings reflected within my words. My writing at those times was to say - this is survivable, I am surviving this. And now when I look back - I can remember how difficult things have been, but also how brave I was to dare put those awful experiences, and sometimes they were experiences of pure horror; into words. The belief that tragedy can be memorialized so that it may be celebrated, is my 'North Star', This is why I don't use a concept of past trauma as something to be understood to get to healing. A process of understanding  can be derailed by the power of recognition . And a  therapist who doesn't know how to go beyond this  absorption  - as experiences are suddenly reorganized around the new understanding - leaves his or her clients stuck with a polarized view. Because a po...
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Happy families.

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I've just found a description I wrote and left in my G.Docs of something that happened around the 30th August 2020. I don't think I posted it here? Just in the name of being complete, of saying it all, of describing reality as I see it, this is how one Friday night was for me.. He had moved out... In the name of being civilized people (which I am not) he had invited me into his dead parent's house. --- 30th august 2020. On Friday I was meant to be nice and normal and possibly grateful as I took the invite to eat fish and chips with him. I managed OK (not normal) and I was grateful enough until I found the courage to ask him a question to which I truly needed answers. His attitude of belligerent animosity, because I was too scared to speak, caused me to have to write the words out in shaky handwriting, as the only way to focus my thoughts enough to communicate.. I was unable to speak. He read my words. His reply to my question was "No". Nothing more, other than ...
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