I have had about a day and a half of being really enraged – by an e-mail that felt like a dismissive insult, and from someone that matters to me... and at the same time still getting work done: finishing off that paper on figures of death and transcendence.
Today we met for our usual HIV+ patient presentation for medical students (some very good-looking ones this time, and they were all charmingly engaged and wide-eyed).
Beforehand, M. was in an irritable mood himself; it turns out he is suing the local HIV charity for treating him badly – of course he is a hothead, and accustomed to fights (and I mean real fights, prison fights and knife fights and gang fights, not just being annoyed with someone). After listening to him for a few minutes I stopped him, said I didn't want to hear it – not the ideal response, perhaps, for someone studying to be an analyst....
but no, my own analyst has said that choosing to be an analyst, or any kind of therapist, does not mean you are expected to listen to everything that anyone wants to say to you. In fact I like my analyst's brusque story about telling people, "I'm not paid for this."
Well, M. did stop telling me about his lawsuit; fortunately he likes me, so he puts up with me being direct. (I don't know what I'd do if he were ever really angry at me – I'm not actually made for violence. As is pretty obvious.)
And then we went in to the students, and talked through our stories, our pasts – I did my 'set piece' (I've done it so often it's like a baroque aria, except probably the form is more modern) about Christmas in 1991, and telling my family about being HIV+.
Came out, walked with M. a bit, excused myself to buy some food, went home... discovered I was still angry; handled trivial paperwork at the desk. Then fell asleep watching a new (new! that alone is a surprise) episode of The Big Bang Theory (which, I don't mind saying, I like a great deal).
And somehow it got mixed up in my head: California, Pasadena, and science and scientists; here and now, my life, their lives; and perhaps all this anger....
When I woke I had a sense of dislocation: am I a young scientist in Pasadena, am I an aging musicologist in northern England? Is it warm or cold outside? What are my concerns... what part of my life am I living – and which track did I follow?
As you may have noticed in the blog, these kinds of dislocations aren't that unusual for me these days – being on sabbatical (and thus out of contact with daily demands), paying attention to dreams and memories, and responding differently to frustrations, to imagination... the present and the past seem oddly flexible: not necessarily in their reality, but in how they are perceived, how they are remembered.
All that combined with a slight sense of exhaustion from being so angry... (and even that felt like remembered anger: as though this was not the first time I have been angry at this person in this way. Hey, it's called a complex).
But these strange portals of time and perception and feeling do seem to be open, lately: as though I could move through them and experience it all differently....
Perhaps my urge to go to sleep tonight is merely a wish to return to, to explore, some alternate space, some earlier or nonexistent time.
Well, I may as well indulge myself in that....
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