Therapy

Has anyone ever had breakthrough results from therapy, of whatever variety?

 

This is not a rhetorical question.

 

I have undergone a variety of therapies and they have impacted on me in positive and negative ways, but only ever to a small degree of each. 

 

I have always known half the source of what ails me and in later years have learnt the rest but knowledge has never had the slightest impact on squashing the demons of my mind so I don’t think that is what it is about.

 

I know there is some power in talking aloud the thoughts that constantly run through our heads and it can be very relieving but at the end of the day this is just emotional titilation.

 

I have wasted far too much money on therapy so far and have absolutely no faith in its power to heal.  I only stick with it for two reasons.  Firstly, it makes me feel good to know that I’m making some small effort to cure myself and secondly, with the fact that it is reputed socially and medically on such a wide scale, I think there most be some truth to its healing abilities.

 

But in reality I don’t believe this. I’ve seen so many cases of people constant in their failings, after decades of therapy.

 

I would love to hear of a genuine experience of where therapy has cured/controlled strong evils.

 

Filth

In this secret anonymous world we inhabit, there is a freedom to talk about the dark things.

The darkness for me is always about sex.

Not that the act is dark, but the pool where desire lies has a black, glinting surface.

Here there be monsters, of our own creation.

Most people in Ireland would claim to have a normal, vanilla existence.

But beneath the surface there are sharp edges and dark desires. One should never dip one’s hand in that pool without the expectation of suprise.

I have spent many hours in bed, in the company of a reasonable number of different people. Almost all of the same gender. But the variety in style, in approach, in enthusiasm and in the light and shade of the encounters beggars belief.

It does follow that the more extreme and more dissonant requests come from the more extreme and more dissonant personalities, but sometimes the sweet ones turn dark.

It’s always odd to be suprised in bed. Odd but good.

And beneath it all, I still wonder what lies in the deepest part of my own shadow pool. I know I have a dark and insatiable appetite for all things sexual. I seek out titillation and sleaze, luckily without any grim consequences. But the hunt for the dark side rarely satisifies. And all sex grows tired.

I don’t think anyone knows what they really want.

I don’t think anyone gets what they think they want.

But I also don’t think that we’d be happy if we did.

I always worry when I find people with a taste for the extreme. It seems to me if you spend all of your time pushing the edges – eventually you run out of space. The pool may be deep, but it’s also shallow. And it’s easy to drown.

I don’t understand what I want. I don’t know if I’d like it if I got it. But I continue to search, down dark alleys, in late night places, in search of danger and the thrill of the unknown.

Sex with someone I never met would be more exciting than great sex with someone I know. Sometimes.

emotional self sufficiency

I wonder what it would be like to have been loved so sufficiently that in your adult life, you didn’t feel the need to be loved. To retain within yourself the emotional independence, self esteem, the strength and wholeness not to need validation or comfort from outside yourself. Does this really exist? What would a marriage between two such people be like?

I try not to think about it too often, but sometimes it swamps me. I knew the longing to be loved as a child and I tried to disperse my affections into other things – pets, imagination. friends. And as a teenager I threw myself into teenage affectionate friendships, lost my virginity and had my heart broken at fifteen, made a fool of myself over all the people I hoped would love me. But never had any confidence they would.

And now I’m still as lonely, as starved for affection. And so embarrassed about it. About still needing arms around me, about not having them. About being this lost little rejected soul. Sometimes I just want to huddle up in a corner and cry again, like I spent half my teenage life doing.

I don’t want to do years of expensive therapy. I know. I know what is behind all this. I don’t know how to find the self love that will make all these feelings go away. I’m not sure I can locate them in myself, no matter who I find to coach me.

I thought living a life of being loved and loving would do it. I still believe it should, to be honest – til death do us part. Romance. A warm body to snuggle into each night, no matter how cold your ass. Why marry if not for that? I don’t know.

Suicide spots

Don’t worry as this isn’t a cry for help or someone looking for a little attention but over the years I’ve had a series of spots I’ve always scouted out in case I felt the need to end my own life. In the past I’ve been unhappy some of the time sometime to the extent of being so depressed that I was heading down a dark bad road. A road that was a dead end.

I am far too much of a coward to do anything like take pills or slash my wrists. I’ve even thought the whole situation through if I had jumped in front of a train and I couldn’t do that to some innocent train driver and scar him for the rest of his life. So my favourite idea was always to jump from a height. I liked the idea of flying for a few seconds before I went as well. Giving myself one last thrill before it all finished. So from time to time I updated my list of where it would be from.

Of course it had to be a spot with sufficient elevation that there would be no chance of me surviving the jump. The first was the roof on the building I worked in at the time which was at least 10 stories up. It wasn’t the easiest in the world to get out on but I was shown how to one day and it was positively dangerous to be out there most of the time. Next was the balcony at the very top of the escalators in the Jervis Centre which would give you at least 3 floors full drop before you needed to worry about hitting the ground. In later years it became the spot right above the stairs at Tesco in the Dundrum Centre. Why shopping centres? I suppose unrestricted access to high places like that. It’s hard to get out in the open from genuinely high buildings in Dublin these days.

There was only one time I genuinely looked at one and was close enough to have made the run. I didn’t of course and am very pleased I didn’t. Things have changed these days and I haven’t really thought about them in a while but it seemed like the sort of thing to let go in a space like this. Now they’re gone.