SEVEN

Hello World.

So, I saw Dr. Joyce again yesterday.  We talked about all the walks I had taken with Riley and I told her everywhere we went and how well I handled all of it.  She was really proud of me so I decided to tell her that I talked to Riley about getting a job.  She looked a little wary of the idea and thought hard for a few moments before speaking again.  She repeated to me that she was really proud and that she is glad that I’m feeling so confident but she doesn’t think it’s such a good idea to be diving headfirst into a ‘shark infested sea’ as she called it.  I felt frustrated with her and I tried to explain that I feel like I’m ready and I know it doesn’t seem like a rational idea but I really think that I can do it.  She shut me down once again and that only made me angrier.  She started talking again but I had tuned her out at this point.  I was so angry at her for disagreeing with me about this.  I cut her off mid-sentence at one point and just yelled at her, “I don’t need to listen to you all the time!  I’m almost 21 years old and I’m an adult, I can make my own decisions!  I decide what is right for me in my life and I control what happens!”
Dr. Joyce stared at me, obviously quite shocked by my outburst.  Then her eyes widened and she scrambled for the tissue box on her desk.  I looked at her all confused but then she was pressing a tissue to my nose telling me I had a nosebleed.  She followed me to the bathroom where I cleaned up and after about 10 minutes my nose finally stopped bleeding.  Dr. Joyce called my mom to come and get me, and she told me that she’d like to see me again tomorrow after I’ve calmed down and thought things over.

Quite honestly I don’t feel like going back.  Lately I’ve been feeling that I just don’t need to see Dr. Joyce anymore.  I feel like I no longer have anything to gain by talking to her and listening to what she says, let alone obeying whatever she tells me to do.  I want to talk to Riley again.  I need to firstly tell him what happened and secondly, I need to ask him if he can help me get a job.  I need to get away from Dr. Joyce and my house, my prison.  I want to be free and I want to live my life the way it is meant to be lived.

I am not a timid little child anymore.

~Willow

SIX

Hello World.

I haven’t seen Dr. Joyce in almost a week.  It’s actually pretty nice.  I finally have a chance to get out and act as if I don’t see a therapist multiple times in a week.  I’ve been on several walks through the park and around town with Riley, who turned out to be more than happy to go outside with me.  I can always count on him.  We went to several places and he even took me shopping at the mall.  I only got a little nervous once and it was when we were sitting at the food court.  I guess I still need to work on eating around other people.  So many people stared at us, and I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or bad thing…or if maybe I was just being paranoid. 

I talked to Riley about looking for a job.  Of course the first thing he asked me was if Dr. Joyce thought that was a good idea.  I told him I hadn’t talked to her about it and he looked a little uncertain.  He told me he wasn’t sure that it was such a good idea that I be getting a job so soon.  I figured that he would be that way, but I told him that I just want to keep moving forward.  I feel pretty confident that I can do it.  It’s kind of funny how only a few weeks ago I wouldn’t even have dared to think about a life outside my house.  I was always too scared about the World and people, and I was always afraid that I would hurt somebody.  Now I’m chucking myself outside into everything and I only keep getting better.  I’m not sure what it is that made me this way, but I love not feeling scared anymore.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s the dreams I have been having.
I don’t know.  Oh well.

~Willow

FIVE

Hello World.
Upon my last visit I spoke to Dr. Joyce about the camping trip, and also about the dream I had the other night.  She was excited and happy to hear that I feel like I’m ready to take bigger steps towards overcoming the ‘social problems’ in my life.  She also told me that she is glad the whole ‘writing a blog’ thing has been helping me.  She said that my speech patterns are getting easier to understand more and more each day and she agrees that I’m ready to lighten up on all the therapy visits.  She wants me to get out of the house more.  I don’t necessarily have to interact with the people I see but if I feel like I’m ready for that, I can try it.  She did tell me however that the first outing or two, I should bring someone I know and trust with me.  I’ll probably ask Riley about it.  I’m sure he won’t mind since we won’t be cooped up inside.

She listened to me explain my dream until I was finished and she thought about it for a moment.  She then proceeded to explain that she figures that it’s just a harmless and simple bad dream.  I shouldn’t be worried about it.  If it occurs more than once however she advised me to once again write down what happened in my dream and we would talk about it on our following visit.  I don’t really feel like that is necessary since the dream didn’t scare me.  It was different and somewhat intense but I wasn’t scared.

Should I be?

~Willow

FOUR

Hello World.
Riley left.  He only stays with us for so long to spend time with me, and then he goes home and continues to work.  I skipped out on seeing Dr. Joyce today because I haven’t been feeling well.  I had a really weird dream last night. Riley and I were in the woods where we had been camping and we were walking through the trees talking to one another and I kept looking over my shoulder and all around me.  It felt as if something were watching us constantly.  Riley kept talking and didn’t seem to notice me looking all around.  Eventually I started to see something black and white out of the corner of my eye but when I would turn to see what it was, it would be gone. 
I woke up and my throat was really dry and scratchy, kind of like as if I had been coughing all night.  Mom checked my temperature and told me I don’t have a fever, and I certainly don’t feel sick.  I feel fine, and my throat wasn’t even dry and scratchy for more than an hour.  Just to be safe though I called Dr. Joyce and told her I wouldn’t be coming in to see her.  I want to call Riley and tell him about my dream but, I don’t want to bother him while he’s not here with us.  When he leaves to go back to his normal life, that’s the only time he can have to himself and I don’t want to disturb that peace.  Not that I think I’m a bother to him, but I do try to respect his personal space.  After all, he’s the one person in the World besides Dr. Joyce whom I can talk to like a normal person.  Hopefully I will be able to see Dr. Joyce tomorrow and we can finally talk about what step I can take next towards having a life of my own.

I don’t feel as frightened about the World anymore.

~Willow

THREE

Hello World.
I’m back from a long few days spent with the family.
That’s right, no therapy session to talk about today.  Dr. Joyce told me in our last session that she wanted me to spend a few days with my family, just to try and have a decent amount of ‘bonding’ time.

The trip was fun.  We went camping in the mountains. The drive was long but thankfully I was able to sleep most of the ride so I didn’t have to suffer hours of awkward thirty second conversations in intervals of thirty minutes.  When we got to the campground there weren’t too many people that I could see, which for me was great.  We picked a site and Riley and I pitched our tents while our parents put together their own.  Mom told us that we should explore a little and check out the camp grounds while she and dad set up everything to make dinner.  I think that she just wanted me to have a chance to scope out the place and become comfortable with it so we wouldn’t have another disaster vacation.  I would explain how nearly all of our family vacations have been ruined by me but it would take too long.  I suppose the long story short is my difficulty to feel remotely comfortable around a lot of people.  I can never go anywhere like Disney World because theme parks have just way too many people for me to handle.

Riley and I walked for a while before we came to a little creek.  There was a fallen tree that acted like a bridge to get us across safely and without having to soak our shoes.  We ran into someone else’s campsite but Riley was quick to drag me away.  I was a little angry at first but then he reminded me that I hadn’t taken my pills yet.  We walked back to the creek and sat on the fallen tree with our feet dangling into the icy water.  We talked about random things; mostly he talked about his job and how much he hated his boss.  He knows I like to laugh at his stories so I don’t ever mind that he’s the one always talking.  He actually asked me more about how things are going with me though.  I told him I feel trapped, and babied.  I want to try new things in the World so that I can finally experience the things that most people experience in their life at my age.  I mean, I’m 20 years old for fucks sake!  I think I deserve the ‘next step’ towards living life the way I should be!  Riley told me he was happy I felt that way.  He hadn’t ever seen me act like I really wanted to be a part of the World, so he was proud.  This made me really happy, and excited.

The rest of the camping trip was fun.  It was just like any other camping trip we ever had, except better.  I wasn’t ever uncomfortable at any point, even when people were driving past our site, and even when the sites next to ours became filled with other families.  Instead of being nervous and anxious about seeing other people I was interested in what they would do next.  I watched them minutes at a time every once in a while just to see how they acted towards one another and what they would do next.  Riley caught me a couple times and finally asked me what I was doing.  I think he thought that I was having more ‘fantasies’ but I tried my best to explain to him what I was really doing without making it seem like I was acting hostile towards the families.  Mom and dad seemed uneasy about trusting what I was saying but Riley trusted me and convinced them that it was no big deal.  I can’t wait to talk to Dr. Joyce again! 

Tomorrow seems so far away!

~Willow

TWO

Hello World.
It’s me again.
Today’s meeting with Dr. Joyce went well.  I let her read what I had posted here yesterday and she was really proud of me.  She said that it is much easier to understand what I’m trying to say when I’m writing things down, because I can go back over what I’ve written down and fix things; whereas if I’m speaking it’s not like I can just rewind time and say whatever it was over again the right way.  She told me that she wants me to continue writing to you all because she feels that since there were such great results from her little experiment exercise that she believes one day I’ll be able to communicate much better verbally with people.  It’s a step.  A small step towards having a normal life. 
We talked once again about why I’m even seeing her.  She always has to remind me at the beginning of each session, otherwise I can’t focus.  I go into one of my little ‘fantasies’ as she calls them.  Yet another symptom of my disorder.  I wouldn’t exactly call it a ‘fantasy’ though.  I enjoy them in the moment, but afterwards I am always left feeling guilty.  At one point they weren’t even ‘fantasies’, I had actually built up the curiosity to see what would happen if I actually carried one of these ‘fantasies’ out.  That was a huge mistake.  I didn’t even get very far.  Riley came in and stopped me, he told me it was wrong and I could go to jail for it.  It’s not like I didn’t already understand that.  I knew the consequences but when I zone out like that, I block out everything including the difference between what is right and what is wrong in this World.  That’s when my family realized that I wasn’t simply just a very shy and imaginative little girl.  There was always much more to my behavior than meets the EYE.

I have to leave now.  I have to find Riley and get my pills.
I fucking hate taking my pills…

~Willow

ONE

Hello World.
My name is Willow.
Don’t assume you’re something special.  I am only writing to you because Dr. Joyce told me it would be good for me.  Please don’t take that the wrong way, I don’t mean to come off as a rude person.  Let me try to explain what’s going on.

Dr. Joyce told me today that she wants me to write things.  She didn’t specify what to write, but she said that it’s a new exercise she would like me to try out.  She has read the stories I used to write and she is the only one who seems to like them.  She thinks that I am a good writer and so she came up with this whole idea of talking to you.  I didn’t think it was a good idea but she insisted.  I didn’t understand why writing to someone was any different than trying to make some kind of moderately decent conversation with someone face to face but…the more that I write the more I am coming to realize that I don’t feel nervous or scared, or even angry about it.  I don’t know if this ‘exercise’ will work wonders like Dr. Joyce thinks it will but she told me to give it time and we will eventually begin to see results.  I hope so.  It’s difficult to live in a World where you have to be social when you have no ability whatsoever to be social.

Anyway, I realize I’ve failed to mention that Dr. Joyce is my therapist.  I apologize ahead of time for skipping things, important or not, in my writing.  It’s sort of a bad habit.  If you think it is bad here, you should hear me talk in person.  Apparently, or as I am told, I don’t make very much sense when I talk.  Or at least it is difficult to decipher what I am saying.  I’m trying to work on that.  That is why I have Dr. Joyce though, to help me get better so I can maintain normal relationships and conversations with people.

Riley needs me to help him with something so I must go.
This was fun.

~Willow