The past week or 2 have been pretty rough for me, trying to deal with Galen's behavioral and educational issues. I had a meeting with his assistant principal and him yesterday, and he is going to be helping me by checking that Galen is doing his schoolwork and having Galen spend his lunch hours with him instead of hanging out with his wonderful "friends." I am very grateful that this man is offering his time and attention to help out, because honestly, I feel like I am at the end of my rope with him. It seems I have tried everything, and nothing has worked. I am ready to just throw in the towel and sneak away to Mexico in the middle of the night or something.
At times like this in the past, I have sought refuge in the program, in the meetings of AA or CA, especially the ones I frequent. But over the last few weeks, I have grown disillusioned and dissatisifed with those meetings and the people in them. I went to the Friday night meeting last week, and was attempting to share, but it seemed that almost everyone was completely ignoring me. As has happened so often in the past, Kurt found it more important to visit with Jim about something, and that of course distracted a number of the other people. I paused, to give them time to finish, and as if to say, "Ok, I am going to share now." But Jim, Kurt, and a couple of others didn't really seem to care, and kept ignoring me. So, I simply passed, thinking that I really didn't need to share with all of them anyway, as I had already seen Diana on Wednesday that week and shared with her. Perhaps they are tired of hearing my talk about my problems with my kids, and they are justified in their actions. But the disrespect - and even more so, apparent lack of caring or compassion - really stung, and I don't think I will be going back to that meeting for some time, if ever.
Yesterday, after meeting with Mr. Nievez (the asst. principal) I was very upset; upset that it had come to this, and upset to think that nothing I did seemed to work, and that it seemed like Galen didn't care about me one lick. So when I got home, I was on a short fuse, and all it took was me lecturing Tessi about the cat litter and feeding, and her being a smarty pants and replying "Ok, ok, ok" to everything I said to set me off. I stormed out at about 5pm and thought I would go to my homegroup meeting at Crossroads (not the actual monthly meeting, just the regular Tuesday night meeting) and that I would probably see my sponsor there, and I could talk to him about how I was feeling. But when I got there, and shared with him a little bit, it was as if either he didn't care, he didn't know what to say, or he couldn't see how upset I really was. I ended up leaving shortly after the meeting began, as I was having a VERY strong urge to cut myself - to just lay my throat open and end it all. And it was much stronger that it has ever been before - I would call it more of a compulsion.
And it wasn't so much a "Bleh heh! I'll show you!" It was just a very real compulsion to commit the physical act, to put the knife to the skin, to feel the cut, to see the blood go out, to experience the loss of consciousness, and then death. I went to a parking lot, and considered calling a suicide hotline. I considered just heading north in my truck and never coming back. I considered driving 80 miles an hour into a telephone pole with no seatbelt. But more that all that, I was just craving the feeling of that knife on my skin. So I did the only other thing I knew to do, and I called my therapist, Diana, and left a message telling her what was going on. God bless her, she called me back shortly after and said I could go in to see her at 8:30. In the time between (about 2 hours) I basically drove from parking lot to parking lot fighting the urge to slit my throat.
I had the appt. with, and even though I initially didn't want to do EMDR, that's what we did for the entire time, albeit in a different manner, one in which I was able to speak the whole time. And I think it did help. I felt more calm after I left, and somewhat more hopeful. But I was still rather despondent, and after getting home and telling the kids that they were driving me to the looney bin, I went to bed - but still, the urge to cut was there, and as strong as ever. And so, I did something I have never done before : I got my knife out, and made several cuts across my left leg. At first, I made about 8 cuts, none of them too deep, but enough to draw a tiny amount of blood. But that was not satisfying, so I made a few more that were a little deeper, and actually tried to make one that was very deep, cutting across a cut that I had already made. It still didn't go as deep as I wanted, and didn't bleed all that much, but it seemed to finally relieve the compulsion, and I was able to go to sleep.
Today, I am still not in the best of moods, but I am here at work, and I really like my job. I think I am needed, wanted, and appreciated here, and for me, that is very important. I think that I am good at what I do and successful, which is more than I can say for any other area of my life, including parenting, romantic or other relationships, bowling, anything really. And so I am thankful to have this job. It, along with my therapist (thank GOD for her) have become my refuge. The program, I think I am going to walk away from it for awhile - at least as I have been experiencing it. Perhaps I will do some Al Anon, or maybe CMA meetings, but I am done with the meetings I have been doing for awhile. They just aren't working for me, and I don't want what the people in those meetings have, at least not most of them.
As far as the cutting goes - well, I'm not sure what to think about it. I know that it relieved my compulsion to do something worse, so perhaps that is a good thing. Will I do it again? Who knows. I know some mystics and ascetics practice mortification of the flesh, and perhaps this is my own incarnation of that practice. I don't really know. It is interesting though, as is life itself. I just keep pluggin' away, doing whatever it takes to stay sober and alive. And if that means cutting myself up a little bit, then so be it. Whatever works.
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