Diagnosis #3 OR I Am a Survivor

This is one hell of a hard post to write, explaining what came up at the psychiatrist’s office. No surprise here: We go directly to where I did not want to go. How did she do that?

It’s that past I can’t shake and hate:

• That complicated messy relationship with my adoptive parents. I have to admit that they were cruel. I also have to stop protecting them and blaming myself for their abuse; they betrayed me.  
• The guy who kidnapped me at knifepoint and the garbage men who drove away instead of helping me—their actions are not my due. The betrayed me.
• My birth mother "protecting" the privacy of the man she had no regard for at the expense of her son was an undeserved parental betrayal. 

There's a theme here. 

With new insight gained through the vision of Dr. Shoja, I see that writing my play and revealing the abuse was a step towards this crisis … and help. As was the death or Rita, Dad’s late companion, who was more motherly than my adoptive mother — she, who always wanted to kiss and hug me, making me uncomfortable with exactly what I missed and wanted. I miss her!

I can feel all the bottled up hatred of my adoptive mother and I don’t want to feel it. She was behind the abuse; Dad was her tool but he did it. To get my voice back I will have to accept what I have never wanted to talk about in therapy. And therein lies the reason for the voice loss.

The play now seems like an unconscious cry for help to me now, exposing the secrets I had kept for so long. I thought if I revealed them that it would be over but I was wrong. I cannot rewrite my history, but I can to change how I feel about it and that is what I will do with Dr. Shoja.  

I have sheets of exercises to help me deal with anxiety, I am starting weekly massages, I have sleep/anti-anxiety medication for nights and I go back to Dr. Shoja next week.

I am not to think of myself as weak. I am to think of myself as strong and remember that I am a survivor. I see a future with speech… and therapy. I was an excellent student. I am going to ace therapy. You just wait and see. My voice is coming back.