Women, Wardrobes and men who Just Don't get it | Shrink Tales

I just read the status message in which inji had tagged me. It said, 

‘I was lying. Fiercely independent is a mask to cover up lack of support system.’

Why are there so many broken souls in this place and why do they find each other? 

Reminded me of a series that i had started. ‘Broken Heart Babies’. I tend to think of myself as someone who was born with a broken heart. 

This was the first picture from the series that never saw a second picture. 

The Broken Heart Baby and Other Stories

On the day of therapy, i got up in the morning to fill water in the tank. Slept again only to be woken up by Deep. He is staying here for some time and threatens to stay for a long time every now and then. 

I had poha that he had ordered and was so happy with myself that i was being able to go for therapy even after working on the Saturday before. 
 

On train, around 1.30 p.m, i got a call from Ish and she asked me what had happened. Yes, i had one more point on my absent mindedness score sheet. I had thought that therapy was scheduled at 2 p.m. I don’t know how i managed to do that when Ish had messaged me that it was going to be at 1 and after me setting alarms based on it before going to bed the previous night.

I immediately felt defeated and angry. Defeated – I always consider it a battle. Everything. My body and mind. While i battle with my body on weight, subjecting it to strange eating habits, i battle with my mind who is forgetful and absent. The to-do lists and Google calendars are my tools. Spreadsheets for managing money and accounts. To defeat my mind that can’t remember directions, i often circle around my destination for more than an hour without asking people for directions.

When i reached my therapist with just ten minutes left of my session that i missed because my mind got the better of me, the first thing i did was to ask her if she thought i was lying. Lying that i had made a mistake in remembering or reading the time she had texted. That i was just running late and was pretending to have made a mistake so that i wouldn’t get reprimanded for it. She said ‘no’ so quickly that i felt it was true. She was even apologetic and asked me if she had made me feel that way. 'It's not you, it's me,' i said. That’s how my mind thought in such situations. I don’t know, why do i always think that people will disbelieve me?

Options:

• Because everyone disbelieved me when i said that i was raped or abused.
• Mother always thought i was lying about everything and i was lying most of the time too, i guess. So that she wouldn’t get angry with the truth. Truth being things like i was sleeping with a forty year old at 17 etc. 

Ish said a lot of things to make me feel better. About how i was doing very well till then and how people were people because they made mistakes etc. It calmed me down a bit. I don’t think it was because i believed her. Rather it was because i felt glad that she had taken the trouble to make me feel better. 

She asked me what i wanted to do with the ten or twenty minutes she could give me before the next person came. I said that i would read the ‘aftermath.’

We laughed a bit about my partner thinking that we both - my therapist and i were planning things that would affect him, me breaking up with him, for instance. ‘Why does he think so?’ she asked. I said that it could be because i did make a lot of decisions after talking to Inji and of late i had been talking very highly about Ish too. At night when he and i spoke over phone, he completely refuted my theory.

When i described my talks with my partner regarding sex, Ish asked if i thought that me missing the appointment in a bizarre manner was in any way related to the strain associated with the nature of our recent sessions. I was sure it wasn’t that. I always felt good before going to therapy. When i finish off the ‘aftermath’ for the next day, i feel like someone who is wrapping a gift for someone really special. I wonder how therapists live, with getting so many such gifts that are just nicely packed worries about our identities and existence and what not.

Ish said that it looked as if i was too much in love with my partner that she didn’t think i was anywhere near a thought of breaking up with him. She said i could be there for him. Just like how he was there for me. I felt cared for and loved by him so much so that i was willing to be vulnerable in front of him. Then it struck me that that was really something. My eating habits were probably the only vulnerability that i hadn’t exposed in front of him. It eventually became evident, but in so many other ways, i opened up my trunk of ghosts and despair in front of him in spite of having been abused and taken advantage of for the same reason by many other people.

In other words, he had helped me find my kind of love. I had to try to do the same thing for him.

I think i should try to be his mother because when he feels that i let him down, or that i might not want to be with him, that was where he planned to escape to.

I liked it when Ish said that i could leave the talks about sex with my partner there for him to go to when he felt like it, like how i had done with my wanting him to buy me new clothes.
[Note to self: people relate fast and better to metaphors made of their own experiences, speech or writing. Oh i take notes on how to change the world from all possible sources.]

I am now confused if i should drop more hints about those clothes or about renovating our sex life.

I didn’t talk about it the entire period and a day before therapy, he tried to initiate a conversation regarding that. I didn’t engage much.

The Goa trip was just weird. All those celebrities and free flowing money. Things that are capable of making me feel bad. Vai Vow being with me and Han joining us in Goa definitely helped. I shopped – bought a dress, a top and two anklets – after months of putting away my shopping needs.

Oh yeah, i blurted about the dropping of hints regarding Vai Vow buying me clothes to realize that everyone thought i had enough clothes because my cupboard was full of them. Deep joined in to make fun of women-clothes-shopping-what-do-i-wear stuff. I have no idea what men think of clothes. Apparently they don’t think enough.

I still haven’t found a job. Surprisingly, i have not got any panic attacks so far. Maybe because i have enough money to survive for another month. But i am worried that i am not worried about what is going to happen after a month. So one of the days when Mother got angry with me, i just imagined asking her for money like how it used to be till i got a job and that scared me. She would immediately take control over my life with money, i felt.

I should remind myself to write about the incident at the therapist’s during one session when i didn’t notice the woman who was cleaning up went in and out.

Sometimes i feel tired and useless and frustrated when i realize that for me to remember things is a battle. Not fair.