It’s always like this.
I finally manage to unravel a thread long enough from the tangled ball of yarn that is my brain. With those first stirrings of clarity, I sit, poised, needle in hand, hoping to do some mending on my soul or just fill in a comprehensive picture that I had been straining to make sense of.
And it is then that my therapist takes a leave of absence.
What I should really be doing is to neatly glide the needle into the fabric, fold it carefully, and place it on a shelf until this delicate work will resume.
But my frenetic brain doesn’t work like that.
My anxious hands cannot remain still, cannot let go of that needle. My fingers are itching to create, to tie up all the loose ends, to understand, to get answers. Right now.
And the thread, at my twisting fingers’ mercy, turns into a tangle. The needle dangles from it, and as my thoughts go round and round, faster, faster, knots form around each other. Soon I’m left with an ugly mess of twisted twine.
I try to undo the damage. Pull at a loose thread, but it just tightens the knot.
A Gordian knot, if there ever was one.
And when my therapist finally resumes her post on her chair, all I have to show is a mess of string, worse than it had been in a long time. Thoughts intertwined one in the other. A conglomeration of feelings that can’t be categorized. A mess of limbs, twisted around myself in protection.
And I know it’ll take weeks to unravel this new mess. Hours of damage control to regain my confidence before I can be poised for work again.