Her therapist spent an awful lot of time trying to convince her that she wasn't magic.
The therapist was wrong.
Her mind was a constant whirr, looking at the people around her almost like an anthropologist would examine members of a new exotic tribe found in the Amazon. Picking up on unspoken signals between members of that tribe. Analysing what these signals meant. Interpreting them through her own cultural lenses.
This was all her mind focused on. That or planning what she was going to do for the rest of the day, the week, the year. Anything but focusing on the now. The present was as exotic to her as other people were.
She could not remember if it had always been this way or part of the new way of living she was becoming accustomed to.
The way it started was she fell in love, then the person she had fallen in love with had died. Suddenly and without warning. One day there, the next day not. One night she had been wrapped around him, the next night she had been in a bed with her best friend and had pretended to be asleep but hadn't been (she was trying to be as little nuisance as she could; aware of all the drama she had wrought on everyone's life from the 'being in love and then having him die' thing).
Time continued ticking on even though it felt liked everything should have stopped. She felt empty and numb. She felt worried because she wasn't feeling anything. The paradoxical nature of this fact made her spin around and around in her own head till she felt dizzy.
Three months after the event there was a birthday party that she was invited to. She put on make up and a dress that, now, fit her beautifully given her disinterest in the consumption of anything, including food. Later she would reflect that the best she had ever looked had been when she was the saddest she had ever been. She drove to the party so she wouldn't be forced to drink. She knew if she drank she would have to stop feeling worried about not feeling anything and start having to feel everything all at once. She wanted to remain composed. People spoke to her and she smiled and nodded and made appropriate noises back. Everyone said she looked different (but not 'better' even though she thought she looked better, not merely 'different'). The smiling and the nodding and the making appropriate noises: It made her exhausted.
'It's exhausting having to pretend and it's exhausting having a lot of feelings and you are doing both' said her therapist many months later.
She nodded in agreement and let that idea swirl around her for a while. It made a lot of sense. But she wasn't sure how to stop pretending and she wasn't sure how to let herself feel what she needed to feel.
The thoughts of analysing other people and thoughts of planning her time out were joined by new thoughts: how to hurt herself. Lying on her bed, for lying on her bed was all she could do in that moment given how exhausted she was, she knew that had she a gun in her hands at that moment she would shoot herself in her own head. She wanted the thoughts to stop. She wanted everything to stop. Nothing would stop. So she would have to stop everything herself.
Well, she would have done were she not so exhausted. She didn't have a gun but even if she did, getting up and walking and holding a gun: She was too exhausted for any of that. So instead she lay there and waited for that feeling to go away. Eventually she stood up even though the feeling had not gone away) and walked into the bit of the house where her parents were and she lay down on the sofa and she cried very quietly. When she was finished with that she started paying attention to the television that had been just a buzzing whirr in her peripheral vision up until now and laughed at a story a large lady on the television told about farting in her yoga class. She then regaled her parents with her own yoga class farting story ('it was like a whale's blowhole!') and they had all laughed. She felt the feeling go away but didn't know how that had happened as she hadn't even been trying and yet it still felt like a conscious choice: I want to be engaged with the world again.
And this was how it continued. She would be driving and thoughts of swerving her car into oncoming traffic would begin to plague her but then she would finish her car journey and there meet a child in the supermarket queue and be able to make him laugh with a silly face and the feeling of wanting to be turned into dust and sucked up off the planet would be replaced by thoughts of belonging, of engaging, of happiness.
Inch by inch she crawled to a place where she started to actually feel alive and not like one of the living dead. She felt sadness and anger and this was, in it's own way, good: it meant she was alive again. It meant she could feel the good things too. Soon she understood how not to pretend and how to feel. It was something that still required practice and, she suspected, would require practice until the day she did die properly. Mind, body, and soul die. Not just mind and soul die like before.
That's why her therapist was wrong. She was magic. She had transformed. Anyone can do it. Not everyone does. That was what made her magical.
The therapist was wrong.
Her mind was a constant whirr, looking at the people around her almost like an anthropologist would examine members of a new exotic tribe found in the Amazon. Picking up on unspoken signals between members of that tribe. Analysing what these signals meant. Interpreting them through her own cultural lenses.
This was all her mind focused on. That or planning what she was going to do for the rest of the day, the week, the year. Anything but focusing on the now. The present was as exotic to her as other people were.
She could not remember if it had always been this way or part of the new way of living she was becoming accustomed to.
The way it started was she fell in love, then the person she had fallen in love with had died. Suddenly and without warning. One day there, the next day not. One night she had been wrapped around him, the next night she had been in a bed with her best friend and had pretended to be asleep but hadn't been (she was trying to be as little nuisance as she could; aware of all the drama she had wrought on everyone's life from the 'being in love and then having him die' thing).
Time continued ticking on even though it felt liked everything should have stopped. She felt empty and numb. She felt worried because she wasn't feeling anything. The paradoxical nature of this fact made her spin around and around in her own head till she felt dizzy.
Three months after the event there was a birthday party that she was invited to. She put on make up and a dress that, now, fit her beautifully given her disinterest in the consumption of anything, including food. Later she would reflect that the best she had ever looked had been when she was the saddest she had ever been. She drove to the party so she wouldn't be forced to drink. She knew if she drank she would have to stop feeling worried about not feeling anything and start having to feel everything all at once. She wanted to remain composed. People spoke to her and she smiled and nodded and made appropriate noises back. Everyone said she looked different (but not 'better' even though she thought she looked better, not merely 'different'). The smiling and the nodding and the making appropriate noises: It made her exhausted.
'It's exhausting having to pretend and it's exhausting having a lot of feelings and you are doing both' said her therapist many months later.
She nodded in agreement and let that idea swirl around her for a while. It made a lot of sense. But she wasn't sure how to stop pretending and she wasn't sure how to let herself feel what she needed to feel.
The thoughts of analysing other people and thoughts of planning her time out were joined by new thoughts: how to hurt herself. Lying on her bed, for lying on her bed was all she could do in that moment given how exhausted she was, she knew that had she a gun in her hands at that moment she would shoot herself in her own head. She wanted the thoughts to stop. She wanted everything to stop. Nothing would stop. So she would have to stop everything herself.
Well, she would have done were she not so exhausted. She didn't have a gun but even if she did, getting up and walking and holding a gun: She was too exhausted for any of that. So instead she lay there and waited for that feeling to go away. Eventually she stood up even though the feeling had not gone away) and walked into the bit of the house where her parents were and she lay down on the sofa and she cried very quietly. When she was finished with that she started paying attention to the television that had been just a buzzing whirr in her peripheral vision up until now and laughed at a story a large lady on the television told about farting in her yoga class. She then regaled her parents with her own yoga class farting story ('it was like a whale's blowhole!') and they had all laughed. She felt the feeling go away but didn't know how that had happened as she hadn't even been trying and yet it still felt like a conscious choice: I want to be engaged with the world again.
And this was how it continued. She would be driving and thoughts of swerving her car into oncoming traffic would begin to plague her but then she would finish her car journey and there meet a child in the supermarket queue and be able to make him laugh with a silly face and the feeling of wanting to be turned into dust and sucked up off the planet would be replaced by thoughts of belonging, of engaging, of happiness.
Inch by inch she crawled to a place where she started to actually feel alive and not like one of the living dead. She felt sadness and anger and this was, in it's own way, good: it meant she was alive again. It meant she could feel the good things too. Soon she understood how not to pretend and how to feel. It was something that still required practice and, she suspected, would require practice until the day she did die properly. Mind, body, and soul die. Not just mind and soul die like before.
That's why her therapist was wrong. She was magic. She had transformed. Anyone can do it. Not everyone does. That was what made her magical.
