The Boxer

My aunt.
I am having a conversation with her. Trying to explain where I have been and why this last year. Though I have been physically absent for many family activities it is mostly a psychological explanation because I obviously have been some place psychologically strange this past year.
It is interesting to me the elements that different people will pick up on in my story. She is an intellectual and has worked in research at colleges for all her career that I know of. She picks up on the way my heart felt and the surging of chemicals. She knows something about this and knows what I am saying is real and possible. She finds it somewhat fascinating how I was physically effected by what was happening to me that seemed tied to the relationship with my neuropsychologist.
-She also knows about acid because she was a real, true, Woodstock-attending-hippy back in the day. We don't talk about that today but I find myself remembering a long passed conversation with her about the affects of acid in comparison to some of the highs I would feel with my mental health conditions. This is the buried story stuff that Dr. He had helped bring to the surface and that I initially feared he had dropped me for -with an "oh shit, she is one of those," kind of realization.
Coming back to today, as I am talking to my aunt, and she is adding some insight, and I am -as I stabilize- even still settling into realizations and understandings that I have felt and explored over the months but have fought and really was not able or willing to accept.
Aunt also points out, even before I say much about it, that the investigation was likely just a decoy to get me to say and do things that they could use against me or to justify themselves should they feel they needed to. It was a set up. She seems familiar with this type of practice. I wish I could remember the exact words she used, they were much more intelligent sounding, but that is the gist of it. My sister who works in prisons has said the same thing. She is familiar with how the psychologists can twist things to their favor.
Way back when, when I was convinced I was in love with my therapist and behaving like someone who has been groomed, I remember my sister telling me the that things he said were classic manipulations straight out of a players handbook. I knew it, but couldn't believe it in spite of the evidence. I was so broken and yet I still thought I was immune to being played like that. Plus it did not seem possible in that environment, he is so sweet and charming, everyone loves him, and I trusted him so very much... and I felt things so powerfully
... including yin and yang... I remember... including "I don't know what I can trust" .... and he how he could turn me away so easily even though "you broke me" (me) "I did not mean to" (he). Even though "I've tested your brain in ways you don't even know" (he) "I know. You have even tested how I feel about you" (me) followed by no reply from he. And even though  he was "okay with being wrong" about me. Those things I felt as well... it is likely important to remember, even though I would rather not believe, they may have been significant evidence of foul play...
So at this moment in time as I am looking back I feel like a boxer,
beaten, broken, and bloodied by too many cheap shots when I went to the doctors in the first place.
At first they nurtured me and they were helping me to recover
but as my strength and confidence were returning
they saw in me the reason others had taken cheap shots
and decided that maybe they better also because in their misunderstanding of me and my manic superpowers they believed, if I ever wanted, I could take them down if I were to recover to my full capacities.
They feared they were no match if I had full strength since I was seeing the holes in their treatment before I even knew what I was saying and without even realizing I was pointing them out.
So they decided in the fear of their own insecurity and/or fraudulent practices that they had better keep me down
and they started throwing punches themselves and claiming it ethical treatment because I was a boxer before I came to them
and I had not told them so,
even though the blows to the head had caused me to forget.
So I am a boxer again
only this time beat down by the professionals that were supposed to help me up and that were supposed to help me be strong in this game.
The Boxer
I am a boxer, not by choice but because I have to be. I have to keep fighting to survive.
Mental illness, head injury... girl... Utah... middle child... ECN...
Extremely vulnerable fighters
who don't want to see or accept that they are vulnerable.
And this one, regardless of all these labels, is grateful for my own insanity, my own trials. Grateful to be strong enough, to be intelligent enough, and to be lucky enough to have so many things that are good and right in my life so that I can speak up and speak out and fight for fair treatment.
Not a boxer by choice. I'd rather be a lover, but I'll box until I burn out if that is the life I am meant to live
and I'll find beauty in that too.