Interesting session. We have decided to shift focus for a bit. I agree with the decision. Given the amount of stress right now, digging through my relationship seems a bad idea. We will come back to it, but for now we will change the direction. It is interesting to note, I have thought about our work quite a bit in the past few weeks. In this past week my gut really was telling me to back off. I should have listened to it. Thankfully I have a good therapist. There are plenty out there that would have kept up the full court press.

Today was spent figuring out which direction we would go. As per usual, I am clueless when it comes to what I want to do in session. We spoke quite a bit about my past, and when everything started to change. I have quite a bit of difficulty remembering when something happened. It is all such a gray jumble. I usually have to use geographic clues to figure out how old I was. What house? where we lived at the time, or how the room looks etc. That is usually the only way I can figure it out. Unfortunately it only gives me a window, and isn’t all that accurate. Not that it matters. There is enough info to work off of. Beatrice asked me about fantasy. I let myself scan my mind, carefully looking for any traces of fantasy. As hard as I looked, I could not find any. I’m sure they are there somewhere. I know sometime after my mother left, I learned to look for a way out. Rather than think about a foreign land, or some other life, I found suicide. It inhabited my mind. It settled there. Since I was pretty young, maybe 10 or so, I had no real concrete skills that might be used to end my life. Instead I looked for passive ways to explore my wish. It was easy to think about the train, since we lived right next to the tracks. That was the first time in my life I was consumed by these thoughts and impulses. So, why did my mind settle on that and not some fantasy life? Where did death enter the picture? Is that genetics? is it the result of trauma and abandonment? I don’t know much about suicidal kids. I know early on after my mom took off I would fantasize about her coming back to get me. She never did. The months stretched out and I gave up on that fantasy. I took refuge in my closet. I took refuge in my mind. In the silence. In the quiet. That is where I wanted to be. I wanted nothing to do with school. I did find refuge in the horses. It was around that time when I started riding. Between books and horses, I found somewhere to go. Something far safer than the train tracks. I guess you could say horses saved me. It wasn’t my family. Here we almost 30 years later and they seem to be killing me. When did everything go so wrong?