New Clothes are Definitely Coming. After Ten Years | Shrink Tales

I went to therapy thinking of my lethargy. Once a month comes a period of time when i know that i have a ton to do and yet all i want to and can do is sleep. Ish, my therapist, told me that i didn’t have to worry about that. Even though i didn’t have a job, there was something in my mind that told me that it was okay and that there would be a plan, eventually. It was true. There were thoughts lurking in the back of my mind regarding my career. No, not career, just ways of making money. 

When i told Ish that i had not started taking the medicines according to the new dosage prescribed by my psychiatrist, she tried her best to look angry and gave it to me. Yeah, now i will have to call the psychiatrist and get scolded by her too, probably, and start taking the new dosage but i felt that it was worth it when i saw Ish trying to put on an angry face. She told me that i was to message her after i spoke to the psychiatrist. She was ‘holding me accountable,’ she said. Like a lot of things, it sounded like a nice thing when she said it. Had it been Mother, i would probably have thrown a tantrum saying it was violation of my privacy or something such. 

[No, i did not call the psychiatrist. Started taking the new dosage.]

When i told her about Director of SRFTI, Debamitra Mitra’s letter to me congratulating me for the IFFI selection, she asked me if she (Debamitra) would have got what i meant through my reply. ‘No,’ i said, ‘because she is stupid.’ 

I just can’t stand that woman. Maybe i should write a postcard to her.

Later that week i did write to her again, when they sent the wrong disc for screening at Goa. It was not about what i wrote. I just wanted to let her know that i hated her, i guess. Here is the letter anyway. Even though she is a woman, i felt like humiliating her when i wrote that letter. In front of the Goa festival authorities – because everyone says it’s a big deal – like how she and many others had humiliated me. Below iss my letter.

This is outrageous.

Dear SRFTI,

First you make public my name, now everyone from my school, college etc can identify me as a 'rape victim' and now on top of that is this.

Please send the DCP. Copying HoD and Director, SRFTI to make a note of this. Also Vaibhav Hiwase, who faced a similar situation earlier. ICC Chairperson because of the nature of what you did.

Thanks! 

I wanted to scare her too, because that was all i had. But now after some days of writing the letter, and while writing it here for Ish to read, i kind of feel bad for her. I feel bad that i consider her stupid. Also that she is in love with or living with a complete abuser. 

I hope what LJ once told me about Jay (ex-lover) is true. When Ga told me that she was seeing Jay, i asked her to be careful. Extremely cautious about getting physical with him. When i told this to LJ, she got angry with me and asked me why i had said that. I told her that i was warning her, because of how Jay was with me. Then she said something that stuck in my head like how some of Ish’s statements do. She asked me how i knew that Jay would be abusive with everyone. He could be in love with Ga, they could be having a really good time. If it had been a mallu film, one could have easily added a bleaching of the screen to indicate an epiphany over there. LJ probably thought it was just sexual jealousy and not concern for Ga that made me say that. I no longer remember what it was. But yes, that was when i even started thinking of people who had hurt me having a completely normal life, being absolutely loving and caring to other people. 

Speaking of sexual jealousy, my partner and i again had talks. It kind of half-broke my heart. Whenever i talk to him about the problems in my sex life, i feel that he is a baby and that i am the only person who will pick him up when he is crying. Like a neglected child. I want to hold him close and smother him in an attempt to take all the sadness away. Yet, holding his cold hands, i spoke to him about us going to a doctor. 

His hands become cold whenever i talk about it. It happens when he is scared. 

I think problems in a woman's sex life, an abused woman's sex life have to be seen in the light of the social setting of the place. For most men, before they meet their first lover/wife etc. their biggest fear is if they will be able to 'perform'. It's after becoming physically intimate with respective partners that they are assuaged. Now if a woman one day tells this man, she is having problems in her sex life and she would like him to help her, the notion of maleness created by the society will make him doubt himself. That's the curse of patriarchy. It's shitty and useless.

And the woman, especially if it is one like me, waiting to feel guilty, will take it upon herself. She will feel guilty of having made the partner feel bad. I remembered how my partner had returned home upset one night after i had had the talk. Even when i asked repeatedly that day, he had just said that he had just felt like seeing his mother. 

In my paranoid mind the thought of going back to his mother probably rose from it being that one space where he wouldn’t be judged by his ‘manhood’. Rather that was the space where ‘manhood’ was to be removed at the entrance, like footwear, before entering. 

My partner asked me if my therapist had asked me to leave him if he didn't agree with us going to a doctor. I said no and buried him in my bosom, as much as i could. I then repeated the thing that brought tears to my eyes at the session. 

Ish had said that it showed that i loved him a lot because even when i feared that he would leave me once we went to a doctor, i wanted us to do it. For all the selfishness i have, i couldn’t bring myself to hide it from him that there was a solution or a possibility. True that i would also feel great if i could have a better sex life (i still don’t want to believe this). It could be selfish.

Not having a job is eating my brain in just small ways, i guess. Like i got angry thinking that i always bought Vai Vow clothes when i felt he needed some and even though he had started earning so much, he was not even thinking of buying me anything before going to Goa. Of course i am still waiting for him to figure it out himself. So i expect to get some new clothes from him after ten years. Men! 

When i pulled out a red pen to scribble something, i thought of the exercise that my earlier psychologist, Ms. Mullick had asked me to do. Scribble on pages with red ink pen when i felt like harming myself. I could also clench ice in my fist or take a cold shower. When Mother heard this, she bought me a red pen. I felt really bad thinking of Mother. She was always buying me things to get me out of my problems, i felt. Even when she gave me money to make films, she probably just saw it as a means in which her girl would be less sad.

I named her as the person who would come with me to Goa with free tickets. 

Vai Vow made fun of me saying that no one went to Goa with parents. That’s okay, she is not parents. She is Mother. She bought me pens. 

Thought for therapy today, will my partner be okay?