Recovery

Week before last, my therapist had me read Man's Search For Meaning by Victor E. Frankl. It's an account of a psychotherapist's time in concentration camps during WW2 and his theory of therapy that grew out of that. I'm also re-reading Bloodletting by Victoria Leatham, an account of her self-injury and eventual recovery.

I find myself at a strange point. And part of that strangeness is these 2 books.

Coming at a time where I'd bottomed out, I read Man's Search For Meaning in one sitting and found part of myself responding to the existential ideas inside: why should we do things that make us miserable, that's just masochistic; and even when we are assaulted by things we have no control over, we can still choose our attitude to those things. It was the first time, and I realise I may have been slow, that I really understood what was meant by dignity in suffering.

I don't want to bandy around the words life-changing, mostly because I'm too cautious of change right now, especially knowing that it's likely that it won't hold and that I'll find myself spending my days in bed again, but today, and for the past few days, I have been feeling like there might be slow progress, and part of that is because of a subtle shift from reading the book. I still find it difficult to get up and do things, but I'm slowly trying to push through that. I still don't have any real sort of reason to get better, but I can feel the search scratching around at the back of my head, trying to find something, anything, that's going to give me a longer term anchor.

Bloodletting on the other hand gives me a more contemporary handle on what's going on. I can see bits of myself reflected back from the pages, and it's sobering and frightening and consoling all at the same time. I think what I'm taking from it this time, is the different, frequently unknowable, paths everyone takes, the extremes that sometimes we go to just to cope, and then that it's possible to get through it all and be ok.

I told a friend late last week that I felt as though I was in recovery, and I'm quietly hopeful. I wrote a big blog post a while back that I never posted about my frustrations about being able to remember being a better person and not really knowing how to, or really wanting to either, get back to that. Part of me still isn't sure that I do. But I guess we'll see.

Also, I'm being interviewed for the telly tomorrow. Past performances can be seen here. I suspect the need to be at least partially functional and presentable may have something to do with me making an effort :)