Working through some stuff re: therapy, writing and a dream
"There's maple in my chest. It's growing. Maple and vinyl. Soft, holds impression, inscriptions. Sweet and smooth. Greasy-sticky."
I wrote that in my journal six years ago, while I was drunk. I don't drink very often anymore, and never enough to get drunk, but creative and poetic language only seems to come out of me if I'm in some sort of altered state. It's never really me, it's something in me that isn't me. Something that has a name but doesn't like being named. I don't like having a name anyway. I've said it before, names are a curse.
I quit seeing my therapist a few weeks ago. I'm not sure the reasons were entirely rational. She said she uses her own emotions to guide her. I'd been complaining for months that it felt like she wasn't talking to me or understanding me, just kind of saying things and making stuff up, and this admission came when I finally got seriously upset with her about it.
So, I guess she was responding to whatever comes up for her when I talk to her, rather than actually communicating with me. Or maybe I misinterpreted it. Either way, since I quit, my nightmares have stopped, I've been sleeping more, and I've been feeling better in general, despite some bad days.
I've been having trouble writing, though. Thoughts are hard to organize. I think talking to someone two hours every week helped put me into the right mindset for creativity (exhausted and dissociated), and brought stuff to the surface I could try and express. I keep to myself so much, I think that's the most I've ever talked to someone on a regular basis.
There's maple in my chest, and all around me. I dreamt about a planet, with aliens like humans but with heads like fingernails; they kept growing. And, if left too long, they would grow structures that looked more and more like plastic trees. Maple/vinyl, pushing outwards, piercing flesh. Keep it trimmed and managed, or it gets conspicuous. They can see, you're struggling. It's visible. And yet, without your head, you're safe from harm. Better cut it off before they notice.
In the dream, I wasn't one of them, but they threatened to decapitate me anyway. I was unruly, topped by wild growth. It was hard to run away. Like many dreams, it felt like everything was in the way. Momentum didn't work, my legs would hover just above the ground. I had a grappling hook, but I was there with someone who said it wasn't safe. I used it only once, slipping towards a cliff, and almost died.
The dream, from what I can remember, both began and ended with a trip through space. It was oddly vivid, crowded in a tiny space ship, arguing about which button was the one to activate autopilot. Didn't want to crash into an asteroid. And for some reason there wasn't any way to see ahead, only out the sides. Traveling is scary, but without it I could never see my partner. I suppose there's no one else I'd travel for. Except the sibling that was also in the dream, telling me that I had made mistakes. We needed to go home.
My head could use some trimming, there is way too much inscribed along its surfaces, impressions smooth and greasy. If I could, I would forget the things that I can say in words and only know what can't be spoken. I feel dead inside, perhaps I'd feel alive again if I could just get rid of this thing on my shoulders that remembers. What's the point of living when my body doesn't have a way to make known what has happened anymore, except by language? And it's not like there will ever be another way. It's over, damage irreversible. There's nothing left except to rage at everything.