Your therapist threatens to send you inpatient. Twice.
In response, I attempt [unsuccessfully] to fight back tears because all I can hear is my worst fear: You are never going to make anything of your life because you are going to be in and out of psychiatric hospitals for the rest of your freaking life.
It’s a fear I’ve had for a while — since I’ve been making yearly trips to treatment and/or the psychiatric ward a sort of annual thing. And I’ve got to DO something with my life, right? I’m “gifted,” I have “so much potential,” I could “change the world.” Sure, if I didn’t have half a dozen psychiatric diagnoses that threaten to derail everything I have worked so hard for if my nutrition and chemical balances aren’t just so.
In general, I try to keep my emotions under wrap. I just don’t have time to acknowledge them if I want to maybe possibly stay on top of my schoolwork and eating. And who really wants to sit with the shit that’s beneath all my shame and self-contempt?
So yeah, when you ask me how I really feel, if I feel safe, I’m going to tell you. I feel empty, sad, lonely, hopeless. You ask me what I want to do and I’ll tell you. I want to quit. I want to curl up in a corner and just wait for life to be over. I want to speed up the process by starving and drinking and slicing up my arms and legs.
It doesn’t mean I’m actively thinking of suicide. It just means I’m tired. And yes, passively suicidal can turn to actively suicidal in time. I understand your concern. I understand that you can’t let me leave your office if you think I am even remotely a danger to self. I understand all this professional ethics bullshit.
My point is, don’t push so hard if you don’t want to hear the answers. Because dammit, A, if you’re going to push me, YES, we’re going to go into dark places and I probably WILL want to kill myself.
But your suggestion of finding “someone else who can help me” is just as heartbreaking because you are, hands down, the most competent therapist I’ve ever had. The only therapist I have ever really trusted. The only therapist who is willing to put up with all my stupid games and push me and tell me I can have better and deserve better.
You haven’t given up and that’s the only reason I haven’t.
