post session musing at 4 am...Nov. 22/11

The sky, endless and freeing; heavy with wave after wave of grey. Impending rain. Winds that blow with the determination of years of oppression. With the storms that brew on the outside, my insides find a bizarre sense of calm. Suddenly, feeling unrestricted; discombobulated. I sit awkwardly in that room. Heat like a suffocating blanket around me and I struggle with words. I managed to stumble through an hour long session and I feel like I don’t make any sense. She tries to sit in silence; let something come bubbling up. After all, I said I need to unload. I can`t manage it. Silence and me don`t get along. I stifle and kill silence every day.  The sheer volume of it is overwhelming. I`m afraid of what might come out of that silence. I tell her this. I can’t be quiet. I have to fill that silence. If there was music, I could not talk. But that’s a whole other story.

I wake up at 3 am in a semi panic. How do I conjure up things to unload? How do I start talking about things I’ve buried so deep that I can’t remember how to start? I wonder if I’m just wasting everyone’s time.  I tell her I’m in a good mood. I tell her with the coming of winter, my insides ignite. Something stirs alive within me. We talk about mini anger bursts and I tell her when that happened, I tell people the happy me is dead. The current angry me killed her. She asks me if the happy me is worth fighting for. I contemplate this for the rest of the day. I’m reluctant to admit out loud that if I lose this “drama” I won’t be me. Something vital will be lost and I’ll be normal and boring. I admit this latter part. I dream that she’s not listening. That there are different elements at play each session. I’m embarrassed to disclose this to her. It’s so cliché...I contemplate sanity every day. Being happy, calm, collected. The movie “Frankie and Johnny” runs through my mind. The end from “Devil’s Advocate.”  Al Pacino asks Keanu Reeves to put down the sack of guilt. It will set him free. I think about my anger baggage. I can’t seem to let go of it. I fear if I let it go, I’ll stop breathing. Who will I be without it? Yet. I have no patience.  Sometimes I think I’m just making this up to keep some sort of drama going.

I’m awake and not sure about how to start talking. I wonder how to bring it up. Everything in my head sounds so trivial and...what? It sounds lame. I’m lost in the help I’m seeking. I can’t find the right words to explain. In my head, words and thoughts swirl and stop making sense. They overwhelm me. There are too many words and I can’t pin point which ones I want to unleash.

open love letter...

Cab Callaway was in the background. It almost sounded like a record. You could hear the hissing in that recording. I imagined a lively bar in New York City; an animated little place with flappers. Alcohol flowing like hair twirling in a shampoo commercial. It had been raining all day, drops like small meteors. The afternoon was filled with sirens. Rain always brought the accidents. I lived down the street from the hospital.  The air smelled like... something I could never quite describe. It was fresh and nostalgic. Rain always reminded me of Germany. I spent my youth and some of the best years of my life in Germany. Winter had that... je ne sais quoi. I was never able to find words to convey that feeling. It was like a mixture of excitement, some kind of impending something with that comfort feeling of a hot cup of chocolate by a fire in the Swiss Alps. I get that feeling every winter. When the clouds go grey, and obscure all sense of spring and autumn, something inside me ignites. Everything becomes better and more vibrant. Waking up isn’t a chore anymore, it’s more like a privilege, a gift from some northern god bestowing magic upon us mere mortals. When people complain about winter, I almost feel like they’re speaking ill of my child or my parents. It’s offensive.  I wish I could capture that smell in a bottle. I wish I could confine it in a snow globe. Release tiny blizzards when summer days become too much. When the sweltering heat and the blistering sun exhaust all my energy. The damn light, full of rich and valuable vitamin D is suffocating; the sun is so obscene. The heat insults my appetite. Summer and spring represent colour and outdoors. Ugh. Kill me know. Deliver me from sunshine country. Dark clouds and subfreezing temperatures are my friends. Winter is my eternal lover. The rain and snow my allies. I am indestructible in the winter. No one can get to me. Minus 20C is when I’m at my best. The peak of my propensity. Everything is ok when it’s cold. When it’s dark. ”I only smile in the dark, my only comfort is the night gone black ;I didn't accidentally tell you that I'm only happy when it rains...” summer and light are so constricting; over bearing. There’s an unimaginable freedom that my beloved winter brings with him. I feel safe and shielded. On cold stormy nights, I sit in the dark and listen to jazz. It transports me to another time. Another state of mind. I hold my breath and wait for my winter to come back and save me...