"Stay the grand finale, stay the reading of our swan song and epilogue." 23rd May 2022.
He - "So, what's for today then"?
Me - "Oh, offering the scarf!"
A rush of pain washes over me as I begin to write.
This is the last session.
Then and now, I was really aware that I wanted to leave having done it right.
My integrity is rooted in one statement: love is worth dying for.
Perhaps it is the only thing...
I had chosen not to run.
I had trusted that Kit would stop treating self-disclosure as dangerous.
He didn't.
Instead he lectured me about avoidance, whilst he avoided making any reply to my questions. He ignored the power-dynamic he had created, and failed to understand -or perhaps he did understand - that it would be maintained by his absence.
I left his room feeling worthless...disempowered, suicidal.
I'd set my coordinates straight for the heart of the storm; my role is to work with the people who get medicated unless we find a way to turn self-attack and justified rage, fear, hallucinations and paranoia into a narrative to be evolved and made beautiful.
Overall I have learnt how much I had needed him to be human; to step away from the role of pedagogue, and lawyer; both roles signifying an understandable desire for self-protection, to accomplish the above.
But ultimately, what I take from my 'therapy' is that Kit didn't see me as worth it.
Nothing I stood for, and remain standing for, was or is worth it, not any of it in his view.
This session as you will read, was almost too much...The whole version will be published on the 23rd May 2066...
I say - "Every time I've paid you I have have offered you money for teachings"
But this isn't all of why I offer him the khata, I'm asking him to respect the difference between us, and respect my reasons for travelling so far to attain wisdom.
I could be doing this to provide him with the last chance? An opportunity to undo the harm of the last two years? But I don't think that is what is underneath my gesture.
I know that he regards me as someone who is at best acting from a wilful ignorance. He believes that I have, in effect made an indecent proposal. Therefore he thinks that I have little regard for the ethics of our profession.
We are both old enough to know better, and to have done better than this.
I offer him the khata, because I am absolutely at the end of my endurance, and I make myself do the best I can do, with my best understanding of the situation, whilst knowing that I don't know and that what ever I chose wont be the best...
He asks me, 'what does this mean - the scarf?' I don't think it is possible to transmit how it feels to be with one's Lama and offer the white scarf. The Tibetan term for devotion is, mugu, it means deep respect, it is a solid confidence.
Me - "What is this scarf of which you speak - I just take these things as normal don't I!"
He - "<laughing> Well..."
Me - "Normal for me"
I am folding the scarf into seven folds, and putting the envelope that contains the money inside the middle fold.
I say - "I am treating you as a Lama OK?"
Me - "So, you need to stand up"
He doesn't respond...
Me - "So, you need to stand up...
I explain that the scarf is an offering of honour. The word has a very dear place in my heart, I felt so dishonoured by my husband, it was indescribable, a different sort of pain to any other. I offer the khata to him, and he offers it back to me.
Again, he asks me - "So why - why with the scarf - why give it now and receive it back"?
Me - "Play back how it feels..."
He wont talk about his feelings.
Then text book, he suggests that I recall how I felt when I first attended therapy and how I feel now. What has changed?
Me - "That sounds like solution-focused to me! Um...yeah...not different, no difference for me. I'm the same person. The only difference...I suppose it is a case of...at the very first, not quite knowing where all the pieces were in relation to each other. I felt as if I'd been dismembered, parts of me in black plastic bags, that was my psychic state"
He - "Hmm....so how did you become"
Me - "Not dismembered - how did I remember? I had to deal with the not being able to be angry until it was justified. So that is hard, there is justifiable anger, but you can't unleash it until you know that you are correct - it could otherwise be a mistake, missing information has to be found".
He - "How did you know"?
I've explained this in other sessions already.
Me - "It's not possible to know what the criteria will be exactly beforehand, but when it is reached it will be recognized"
He - "In retrospect, how did you know"
Me - "Because my husband lied to me one more time, for no good reason"
We were in a café garden. I asked him if he'd seen her at some CDP thing after he'd said that he wished to repair our marriage. He said no. Her husband had told me before I asked my husband, that she had also attended that CPD. This lie makes no sense.
But the evidence is plain and simple.
Even after moving out, he was still lying.
He - "OK"
Me - "It was the lying that did it. It was lying that was the unfathomable thing, or the malevolent thing. It felt malevolent, it felt like I was being pushed (off a cliff)
Which is exactly how I feel in this final session, now..
He asks me if I thought that the lying was purposefully to harm me.
When I saw it that way I would curl up in small spaces in absolute terror and anguish, and start pleading. So I can forgive myself for not letting myself feel the echoes of that here and now..
Me - "No, I think for him it was a case of, he could not be truthful - he was ashamed. But the effect is malevolent (it clearly did me harm) and I suppose that's the thing that makes me hold back from making judgments or acting... is that the standards I expect from myself, I can't expect from other people. If somebody was in pain because they have been lied to by me, then I would think very badly of myself for continuing to lie. It would be worse for me to experience, than being truthful could be. But that last lie fell into the same mental folder as, being an alcoholic, it is as if lying has become an addiction for him"
He - "OK"
If I was the therapist hearing this I would be thinking....we are clearly not in the last session! That sense of malevolence needs checking - is the husband a threat to her now? She is trying not to think too closely and feel the fear. Trying to take all the responsibility. What is unfinished, what needs to be done or said? And if the client then says that there is nothing to be done - perhaps it is signifying their sense of powerlessness and overwhelm, their need to be safe by detaching from reality, taking care not to move, not to make any sound. Frozen...
Me - "So, there is no point, there is nothing that can be done with this. There is other stuff going on. Even then, the judgmental part of me says that is pure cowardice on his part, so my question originally was, I suppose, which kind of an infidelity is this? Is this a madness because of all the things we have been through, or is this because you are not an ethical person? That was my question to myself, which way do I think it is? It was the ethics that got me in the end - which is interesting because I feel that you have accused me a lot of times of not being ethical. That could be a feeling left over from that <awareness of my transference>...I don't know."
He - says something but I can't make it out...
Me - " <Trying to take care of his feelings> Not is a harsh way or anything like that, but with regards to me and the ethical framework.
He tells me that he can't recall accusing me of anything, simply explaining that the ethical framework was important and there for a reason... negation of his feelings. A language of intellectualising
Yup, same again, defence.
And the word that I used *accused* refers back to a previous session. I'd felt bewildered by how defensive that word *accused* had made him - as I'd used it in a mock serious way... But this time I'm not joking, because the way he had responded to me had felt like an accusation -how dare I criticize our professional ethical body!
Brian Thorne.... because Brian Thorne had said that qualifications don't prove that someone is a therapist!
I'm puzzled.
By his reaction to *accused*
I hear his reply now as 'How could you see me as anything other than who I'm trying so hard to be'!
The word I used was accused - which certainly indicates a rupture in the therapeutic alliance.
Me - <soothing tone of voice> "Yes. So that is what I was saying, it's, there's a wound from - yeah...I will make judgments, but I don't like making them. It just seems that that is the way it is. That yes, his choices were unethical"
He - "Yes"
I speak from Kit's view, to create consilience:
Me - "And so that meant that there wasn't someone worth fighting for, he isn't worth fighting for"
He - "No, it really isn't, no, no"
I don't believe that. I truly believe that it should be a hard thing to give up on someone, and never done lightly!
Me - "But it is very hard to reach that point. It is hard to decide when that critical point is reached. I mean I saw my husband reach that point with our son - so people do reach that point, of giving up on others, and where that point is depends on their value system, their belief system, so that means it should take a lot of thought - before giving up on someone.
Once again he describes his view, he tells me that I wanted to get back what had been. And the way out was to become more and more aware of what is - and that what has been, has been, and is no longer...
And my view?
Yeah, just throw away 25 years, during which, most of the time, we were good friends! Once I had proof that he was continuing to lie, I metaphorically destroyed him in my own mind and set about remembering how to be the person I decided to be...My memory of the early sessions is of Kit telling me that 'my husband wasn't worth it' and this was hurtful. Cutting across what I was trying to do - I was trying to pull myself together so I wouldn't keep breaking down.
I thought at the time that it said quite a lot about Kit, and had little to do with me.
And I even wondered at the time if he wanted me to see that he is better than my husband? I thought it could just be a male thing - that my husband offended him as a man - but either way it was a part of my questioning and wondering about Kit, wondering if he had feelings for me?
And here it is again - his energy!
Me - "I can feel the energy in you about that - that version. Um, no... people work stuff out, things change, things can get recreated. It is whether people are willing to re-create, no not re-create, to create, or whether it is about destruction due to despair. I see that as the difference. He had reached the point of despair, he felt that there was no point, and whatever winds of change, whichever way his life was going, he felt that he needed to be doing something else.
Kit tells me that it seemed to him that it took me a lot to 'get there'
Me - "Well he had to lie to me again - but this time I knew it was a lie because already for the first time I already knew the answer to the question I'd asked him! Before that it had always been ambiguous! So then I wrote down exactly the way I thought and exactly the way I felt about it"
He asks me, how I feel about my husband now?
Me - "I sort of wonder if at some point he will wake up and think 'I did that wrong'? How do I feel about him - I am still scared of him, there is still fear"
He asks...'what are you afraid of?' the language of the practical, missing out that I'm speaking from emotion...
Have I not already said before in other sessions? To me he is as Ash, the synth in Alien. I don't recognise him as human, humanity has gone, he had and still has an agenda that included smashing us to bits (my son physically, me psychologically - and that is truly scary.
What are you afraid of, doesn't go there.
Ash attacks when Ripley works out that Ash will kill the whole crew - and that is exactly how I still feel (20th September 2024) nothing has changed...
Me - "The lack of recognition, I don't know or recognize who he is"
He - "Ah, OK"
Me - "But also the amount of actual rage I feel. My own rage"
I'm giving a text book answer - unlike many of my counselling sisters I'm not scared of rage, but I learnt that I needed to be very wary of gaslighting, for cognitive dissonance is a real threat to my sanity.
He asks me if I'm afraid of 'that?
Me - "No, I just don't want to feel it. Am I afraid? <pause> No, it is disgust, it is disgust. The image that was very clear and I remember writing it in journal, the way - it was interesting the way themes from the Alien film did crop up"
He is laughing - but I'm not laughing...In my voice you can hear that I'm in contact with primal fear and the gut wrenching awfulness of what happened.
What I'm feeling is a visceral horror, a direct encounter with sex and death conjoined and entangled; I'm remembering that energy affecting my husband. Or did it come from him? Was it was his energy? I don't know - Libido and Thanatos; the pairing, or conjunction is clear in the first Alien film. I experienced the presence of these forces as synchronicity - but also more powerfully as the poltergeist. My interpretation of it (and the 'car and the CD incident!) comes from Jung - Catalytic Exteriorization.
But no, this isn't funny.
My son in psychosis, the atmosphere. My husband's actual violence...
Real threat - real danger.
This is a place Kit can not go - he is actually laughing - have I not said how awful this was for me? And I'm back there - it is in my tone of voice.
I want him to hear, he is not listening - he is actually laughing...
Me -"The men who took my son to be sectioned, in the van, were working for a company called Prometheus - the name of the spaceship in the film Alien Covenant (Covenant the band that got me through) it is almost - I could, if I was that way inclined...but that is just the way it was, and it was just chance, but the coincidences are factually true. I literally did listen to Covenant (The Swedish Electro-Goth band) and the mixture of the singer's calm voice, so I needed that music and that band is called Covenant. And the last film we saw with my son before he went completely down, was Alien Covenant. But the Prometheus van, how was that for my son, with the resonance with the film? But it just seemed to me what my husband had done was, because of having unprotected sex with someone else and hiding it all, being inhuman - having a different agenda somehow - just reminded me of the character of the android, the synth (Ash). The android has been programmed with the imperative to sacrifice the crew to get an alien onto the ship, the Nostromo, somehow. We were the crew - my sons and myself...the agenda created the feeling that comes from gaslighting. What is happening is harm it is harmful, and it will destroy. Somebody who does it that way (path of lies and deception) there is no need for it to be underhand"
He says that it sounds as if I am drawing parallels between the company that took my son and my husband. That though they were not connected, they were both 'operating in a way that was undermining me and my son, in a way'
Undermine?
"in a way"?
You mean, being powerless to stop the violence, having to put myself physically between my husband and son to stop him hitting his son, and feeling bullied, and being lied to is possibly just a little bit undermining?
I had said that he was prepared to do anything to get rid of us....
This from Kit as therapist - has had the effect of seriously undermining my confidence, Kit added his weight to the reality that 'people don't care about what happened to us, because neither of us - my son or myself - matter. We were all required to accept that my son needed to take his meds, accept that he is 'ill' but more than that, psychosis is so immense and unpredictable....What happened was so awful it shattered our family. Kit's distancing mirrors my husband's attitude. I feel that I will never be able to talk about how I actually felt...Kit's reaction has added a force of disrespect, he was laughing. I can't let it silence me! I can't curl up and howl in pain. I can't - I will stay rational and assume I made a mistake in how I said it, that he could have understood if I'd used the right words.
Me - "No, it was my husband, he was acting like the synth - Ash - there was an agenda, and the synth actually tries to kill Ripley, the character in the film who questions him, so, you know...because she might find out. So he has to - no has to but...he has to kill her basically. He doesn't want someone getting in the way of the agenda, but meanwhile this thing is incubating in John Hurt's character, and it is going to destroy the whole ship - unless Ripley blows the damn thing out of the air-lock! The company, the name on the van, Prometheus was just synchronicity, something that takes you down to the underworld I suppose? No, Prometheus suffered for giving man, fire, so no, nothing to do with that layer of myth. But for my son, Prometheus is not good - two big burley men dressed in black, putting him in a van.."
I also try to forget that my husband tried to physically harm me (it felt like attempted murder) by putting my life in danger - in a way that would have appeared to have been an accident. And I can't even bring myself to write it. I remember a succession of jolts, and tears come to my eyes as I'm writing now - I still feel it and my disintegration when I got back home to safety, crawling into a ball, simply unable to stop shaking unable to breathe. When the person you believe is your partner, when every fiber of your body says, this man has just tried to kill you, but he's making out that it was just a moment of rage...of course he doesn't want you hurt...and you don't want to believe what you know...remembering the other time, a knife.
Both times he was so angry with himself...
I was the living proof of who he is...
That is how it was dangerous.
And why when I demanded the keys to the house back so he can't get into my home, I was shaking and crying.
I still have the broken knife.
To remind me.
He focuses on the name, Prometheus, and asks me if I can talk about all of that - um I'm now talking about it?! Rather than feeling its live presence. Right, we don't want any emotional leakage in this room, all over your sofa, do we! He asks, does it still have any live presence for me?
Me -"To talk about it it has to have a live presence! To talk about something...I suppose there are two things. It could be like a hijack, a flashback, the event horizon - the image is just frozen and if you get too close you will be sucked into this devastating, again the image of dismemberment. And then there is the writing about something, and it has to have life to be written about. I could talk about it at the time. Part of me was like - there is so much here! But, it is also so different to normal life. It is difficult to speak it or write it in a way that allows it to mesh, for other people to get up to speed with it. Because unless you have been in that situation; there is a whole swathe of television dramas, documentaries, people's opinions, consensus reality about what mental health problems, and what care is like. And in writing about something - well there is either truth seeking or truth preserving. Truth preserving will get a bigger audience and people will understand what you say faster because you are using ideas that are already existing. But truth seeking requires me to ask myself what I think has actually happened, and it is more an edge of awareness thing, so I do prefer that. I think your question is another question - is it dealt with?
He asks again, does it have some emotional content to it, but it doesn't feel like its raw and unfinished and unresolved?
He laughed...how can I be open or honest with someone laughing about this!
Kit, there are some things that should never be ok, and this is one of them.
Me - "I don't think that much of it felt raw and unresolved at the time. Because I was there, in it and present, constantly on the edge of this is too much-I can't bear it, but there was only one incident after my son had been in surgery (after his suicide attempt) for seven hours, and we couldn't find him, we were walking through dark corridors inside the place where the worst things happen, he didn't seem to be on the computer system, and eventually we were directed to a small waiting room where all the leaflets were about living with severe head injury. We had already been told that he had 'life changing injuries' and I thought - this is not a good sign...seven hours in surgery, he is being moved to intensive care, what state is he going to be in? But actually post op, he was sane then because he had been given enough opiates, so he was normal, not psychotic in terror, or rage, which proved to me - it was absolutely clear and a wonderfully beautiful experiment, I thought well, that is all it is then! If all it takes is for his brain to create the right amount of endorphins, he will recover his sanity. The equation was simple, if a person has a lack of endorphins, then their state of mind can be altered into psychosis. I'm fortunate, I've read the work of Jaak Panksepp, I don't see mental illness as complicated! Endogenous opioids, diminish the feelings associated with the grief and panic system, here is the evidence. So I knew my son would be OK, it wasn't like that for my husband or the rest of the family though. But in that waiting room, before we found that he was OK, that was a dark despair. I don't know what I believe in terms of schizophrenia and other concepts, as real things. I think the original diagnosis of such a thing was mostly a failure to recognize syphilis! But I do know that the medical drugs given to 'cure' mental health conditions are horrendous.
He - "Absolutely, absolutely"!
Me - "Unbelievably bad, truly messing up people's systems - So nothing at the time felt like, no I don't want to talk about it, or was painful, it didn't at the time, it doesn't now. My hesitance comes from thinking that the other person really wont be able to understand - and I'm not sure that I have the ability to transmit, I mean I haven't dedicated my time to trying to write better! I write, but I don't try to write better - so if I was a better writer I could do it. But it isn't as though I can't talk about it, nor at the time it wasn't like that. When I began therapy I needed to put the events into order and make sense of it. So perhaps that is the question, do I feel as if I have made sense of it? It just feels like....like I was given the most...it's a bit like reading all the works of Jung. I was given so many rich ideas and images, and such an intense learning experience. So, I've actually seen the truth of things, this is what it is really like for somebody to be called service user, this is what it is really like to be sectioned, this is what it is really like to be a parent watching that happen. This is experience you cannot get in any other way, no way without having to take all of it. So...I did ask for this, crazy as that sounds, I did ask."
He asks me what I mean by this.
Me - "That sounds like a semi-mystic thing, like I asked and the universe listened! No, what really happened was I perceived that this might be what my future would hold. That is more likely. But, if you recall, it started with my son's friend who died on the rail-track. When I asked my son what had happened to him I saw something, an expression I couldn't translate pass across my son's face. So I investigated, and it didn't make sense, none of it made sense. So I went to the inquest and it didn't make sense. None of this story made sense. So I had lots of thoughts about that and ways to look at it, but still none of it made sense. I could not understand how it had happened. The phrase is ' in this day and age!' the feeling is, surely we are better than this! Where was this young man's care plan, where was the mental health care, team? Where were all the things that are supposed to happen? Because between it happening and the inquest I took a course on mental health and the course made it appear that there is some kind of logical process underpinning psychiatric care. So I had so many thoughts and opinions about mental health care, suicide, and what had happened. and every single one I faced and learnt a lesson from. I lived every single part leading up to my son's friend suicide, and then I faced the what comes after. A part of me thinks that his friend knew what comes after and that is why he is dead...because he had already experienced being in a psychiatric ward. But it was at that inquest I listened as his doctor described how at his final appointment; he had seemed happy, he was clean and tidy, and his mental health was stable. She gave him a repeat prescription for his SSRI, and asked him if he would like to talk to a counsellor. And I thought, ‘well why would he want to see a counsellor, why would he want to talk to a nice middle class lady who talks like his mom's friend, just why!? None of my son's friends would want to see a counsellor - so, I have to become the sort of counsellor they would want to see. So, there we go. So I have to be the sort of counsellor who can deal with people who are extremely upset, and in altered states. Because what I understood from my son in particular was, though there is long term work. But the people who do effective counselling in the present tense, with a person in insanity in full flow, that is a different skill, because that is not about looking at the cause of the pain - because that kind of thought amplifies it - it is entirely about taking what that pain is for that person, and finding a way to turn it a few degrees so it shifts out of the nose dive. So, I needed to find 'the psychic lightning conductor'! "
Time is slip, slip slipping away....
He asks me about placements...
Me - "No. And there is such a lot to do, find a list of placements, find a supervisor, find another therapist - and I am sorry about that."
He - "Yes"
Me - "And that will be at least £200 a month, and I don't think I can afford that money, or rather I need that money. And I was ranting to my son about my last assignment, because I wrote that assignment about my existing placement - a placement not accepted by my college so my 70+ hours there will not be counted as part of my 100 - so that assignment was literally a put that it your pipe and smoke it, in my opinion my course leader is out of order for disregarding that work, which I hope I've made plain in that assignment! I am sick of people missing the post-modern therapies. These are the facts, this is the contract we use, this is the way clients arrive, this is the ethos of the place. So, I was certain that assignment would fail."
He asks me if I've failed...
Me - "It passed, because it does fulfil the criteria demanded by the ethical body, and by the college! But I was angry, so this means I have to do a 'top-up degree', and do extra training to be called a psychotherapist and then I can come back and tell them why, why, whenever you have dismissed me, the other training I received, and what I've said - you are wrong! But you are not going to listen to me until I've got letters after my name. So, I need money for that!
He asks me if therefore my 70 hours placement for the SFBT diploma will count as placement hours for my integrative course?
Me - "No, god no! My hours don't count as a placement there!"
He asks 'isn't that a contradiction'?
Me - "We are dismissed, yet it is counselling. For I would say that someone who says that they are psychodynamic, or person centred, but they don't make a relationship with their client, they don't feel the changes in the atmosphere as the person speaks - then they are not doing counselling! As opposed to someone who is listening and is aware, and uses space and time. And even if they are not doing 'counselling', they are actually doing counselling. And there is the theoretical underpinning, and that seems sound enough for me! I know that you quote Balint, but I disagree with you. I wrote as if I agree with Balint, but I don't, I really don't" Or rather, what I disagree with is that problems are fixed through awareness of what's gone wrong, and talking about it. There is the reparative relationship, that is important. But it is not as important - in my view- as working out what that person is doing in the here and now, that is working. And how they get more of that. That sounds like avoiding, it sounds like rescuing, it's not. It is literally using their skills and asking them to be creative, creative thought is very important."
And now he is pointing out to me that I have just described my course leader's point of view, and why she sees a difference.
Me - "But I disagree that that standard view is what counselling should be, that that standard view is only what counselling can be. Avoiding? Ordinary counselling avoids what the person wants, and enjoys and needs."
My tone of voice, the pain I'm in now, the way time is slipping away - he responds from Parent, with a 'so, this all arose because I was asking you if you have a placement and you haven't'
..all this?
Which I hear as 'all this fuss and palaver over a measly 70 hours...and SFBT isn't therapy!'
He continues - asking me about the procedure now at college. I explain that after our two years, we spend the third focusing on our placements. He is surprised and says that he hasn't heard of that before - only when someone hasn't completed the course and have an extension.
Implication once again that I'm lying, or that I've failed and can't tell him?
Me - "That is why all the assignments are so concentrated, and we do two years worth of assignments in six months. That is why it was continual, endless writing to the point of insanity.
He asks if I have had the last meeting of my course?
Me - "No, that's tomorrow and Wednesday"
He - "Oh, OK"!
Me - <pause - I'm breaking> "What you are seeing is...let's call it, 'agree to disagree', if I'm honest..(no I'm beaten I can hardly speak). There it goes <I gesture, indicating putting it behind me> So, I don't know what we are doing tomorrow, but the next day we are going out for a meal.
He asks me if it is going to be almost the equivalent of the last day of school where you play games and watch TV?
Me - "Bloody 'In Therapy' - that's time I'm never getting back. With Gabriel Byrne it is entertaining. But it isn't the best use of time is it <Last session. Last minutes and we are talking about TV, this is awful > It is a made for TV story, that viewers are meant to be piecing together, basically the cop interview scene without the plot, and different sort of cop.
He - "Right, well times up"!
Me - "Right, times up"
He tells me that he hopes all goes well and that I 'come out the other side with, what? and tells me that last time we spoke about this I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it!
What didn't you get about ' I have to be the sort of counsellor who can deal with people who are extremely upset, and in altered states'? My aim is to work with families who are being bullied by the mental health services, actually! Mediation and translation, meshing opposing worlds to create something better for all. My criticism of SFBT is that it was developed by social workers who wanted to be therapists.
My aim is to be a counsellor who re-invents social work!
A long silence from me...
Me - "To keep listening"
He says that in a minute he will type out my final form and email it to me.
Me - OK, thank you - I kind of hoped it was going to be my score! My rating -as a client!"
<we both laugh - and we have laughed. I can't end this, I just can't>
He - "Hmm - take care, bye"
Me - "Bye"
--
Closing the door I turned towards the road, to walk to my car, to drive to the Waitrose closest to the tracks. This is my ritual of confirmation - my promise to see all of this out until the 'end'. And I wasn't brave enough to face the trees; the ones closest to the embankment where my son's friend had gone one cold December morning, to end his life. The same trees I'd insisted that my husband and I walk to after I'd tried to say how sorry I was...and that I would do anything to make things right. The depth of anger this inspired in him never made sense, nothing about his rage made any sense.
I was at the edge of complete disintegration. Then and after this awful, awful session.
A semi-psychotic vision, a truer view filled my mind...I wrote it down and then recorded it.
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