My councilor wanted me to write about my leaving rehab, why I left, and what occurred while I was gone. It's a bit on the long side, but when have I ever been short-winded? Part 1 of 3 parts.RUNI think the internal process began when my new roommate up and left after just three days here, and in a major thinking error way I blamed myself (guilt #1).
Then I had to fill out piles of child support and paternity paperwork which dredged up a multitude of past resentments. I told my son's father that I would never do this to him, make him pay for his immature and irresponsible delivering of sperm. (guilt #2)
And then I did my internal dialogue assignment for Seeking Safety class. I was proud of it. Deciphering these different sides of myself, giving them names, personalities, a voice. And I was touched when others complimented it. But then it seemed to become a show; this painful, personal dialogue with myself was now just becoming a form of lively entertainment. I was excited at first, being the director, the attention, pleading orders to my "actors." But then I felt the point of the assignment had become twisted and exaggerated. It no longer felt like mine, but now, just plump inky words on a piece of paper to act out and satirize. And then I felt bad for thinking this way, after all the praise I had received. (guilt #3)
Then that same evening, just as I was beginning to soothe myself over my play, I walked past the Hub, where the office staff integrate, and was handed a letter. It was from my boyfriend. I was elated. I had needed his kind, thoughtful words at that time. I ran to my room, grinning like a toddler with a sucker, and tore the letter open. The first few paragraphs were a compilation of his complaints about certain staff members and how he is treated when he comes to visit me. I tried to empathize with him, but it just felt like bickering to me and I wasn't in the mood to read it. So I skimmed forward, and the feeling words got much more detailed and in depth and began to include me, and him, and us. I grew fearful. He said he felt useless and hopeless and cut out of my life and my recovery completely. He did not feel in a healthy place himself, and therefore, felt he was of no use to me right now. He said he needed to back away and I panicked at that sentence like it was written in his own blood. I could barely read the remainder of the letter, tears clouding up everything around me. Part of me knew that he was just venting and sharing his frustrations with me. Part of me knew he was not leaving me forever. But the little girl in me took the reins and spat abandonment and loneliness into me with a force I didn't realize she had. I began to grieve. I couldn't call him; I couldn't see him. There was nothing I could personally do at that moment to make him feel better, more secure, to tell him to hold on for just a little longer (guilt #4).
After thirty minutes of snotty, drooling, pathetic, poor-me sobbing, I couldn't bear one more tear. Impulsively, I wedged my body off my lumpy twin bed, slid on my socks to the bathroom, grabbed my scissors from my make-up bag, sat cross-legged on the cold, orange linoleum floor, and began cutting my shoulder blade. My sole concentration was on that now, the physical pain, and remarkably I had stopped crying. I felt both relieved and terrified. I had never thought I would cut myself in a sober state. It had always happened previously with at least a bottle of wine in me. I thought my clear rationale would stop me. But here it was, happening, trickles of blood in a clean, straight line, and once it started, I knew I couldn't merely stop. To cease the physical pain would coerce the emotional pain to return. But, miraculously, after about fifteen minutes of the blade moving from shoulder to the inner crease of the elbow, down to the veined fragility of my wrist, my own fear actually stopped me. I knew I didn't want to die. I just wanted to live without the pain. I wrenched myself off the floor, put the stained scissors back into their compartment, and walked outside to the smoking area.
Immediately, the girls flocked to me, like seagulls to breadcrumbs. They knew something was wrong. Those damn, intuitive women! I tried to play it off that I was "fine." Ever the failing actress, they called my bluff and poked and prodded until they got the information about the letter. As I relived his words to them, my sadness turned to anger, at him. I felt he was manipulating me, trying to control my emotions by making me focus more on him than myself. This change in emotion felt empowering, but also shameful for feeling such emotions for a man who has only shown me kindness and forgiveness since we met nine months ago (guilt #5).
As the girls and I were walking back inside, I somehow found the nerve to ask my good friend Dee if she would take my scissors from me. She agreed, looking confused. Then panic hit her face like a retractable paddle. Standing outside of my bedroom door, I handed them over to her. I hugged her, thanked her, and whispered in her ear that my arm hurt. She immediately backed a foot away from me.
"You already cut yourself, didn't you?" she asked, grabbing my face and forcing me to stare directly at her.
"Yes," I said, ashamed, my lashes glued to my cheeks. I couldn't look at her. Even though I knew in the past that she had done the same thing, this incomprehensible life of cutting, I felt her opinion of me was changing for the worse, right there in the hallway with other women slowing their gait to hear us or speeding up to distance themselves from the drama. I didn't want to lose her as a friend. I had lost so much already.
Of course, I didn't lose her. Dee and her roommate, Mia took over for the night, became my protectors, my female vigilantes intent on keeping depression from creeping back in on me like a diaper rash. They planned a sleep over in the Parenting TV room. We scooched all three couches into an L-shape, so head would touch a foot and so forth. I was grateful. The last thing I needed at that time was so be alone. Before we could settle in for the evening, a woman I didn't recognize from the Hub staff came into our girly dwelling and asked if she could see my wounds. I stared down Dee, angry that she would give out my secret so readily.
"I'm sorry," Dee said, "but I need to make sure you're okay. The cuts might be more serious than you think. I had to tell someone."
I stared in her chocolate eyes and saw only compassion. I couldn't be angry. Honestly, I would have done the same thing.
I was ashamed as the woman rolled up my shirt sleeves, rubbed ointment on the cuts, and bandaged me all up from wrists to shoulders. The wounds were not deep, an excess of cat scratches, really, but the staff member wanted to be on the safe side. Dee and Mia glued their attention to every mark along my arms. Dee bit the inside of her mouth and Mia had tears welling up.
Guilt again caught up with me like a lion at the feet of gazelles.
The staff member got up off the couch and readied herself to leave when I grabbed her wrist and pleaded for her not to tell anyone else. She smiled, awkwardly glancing back from Dee's face to my pink-stockinged feet.
"Oh course, Souza. Whatever you need."
She quietly closed the door behind us and I slunk back into the couch, relieved. Now all of this can be gone, just a bad, morose memory, I thought. It wasn't until I noticed Dee gnawing at her fingernails, silent as a barren tree, that I now knew the woman had been lying. This wasn't over. Everyone would know. Tomorrow, I would be the tabloid headline of Rehab, Incorporated.
I sighed, frustrated and scared, and lied down on the couch, covering myself up from toe to neck with my comforter. Mia tried too jump start some humor, telling dirty jokes that got us giggling like pre-teens whenever an anatomically-correct body part was mentioned. We watched a bit of television, old sitcom reruns and a new episode of CSI. Then Dee asked if I would read the letter that my boyfriend had sent me, obvious in her mind, that this was the cause of all my current distress. I agreed. I actually wanted their opinion. I needed another female to interpret his words as I was, to help prove to myself that I wasn't merely over-reacting.
