Hide and Seek

Therapy is a lot like a game of hide and seek. To get at what...or who...is really there, you've really gotta look. Sometimes a look inside someones closet just isn't enough to get at what you're looking for. Every door needs to be opened, every bed needs to be looked under. Sometimes things are hiding in places that you would least expect or in plain sight. If you go through the game quickly without paying attention to the nooks and crannies, it's easy to miss what you're really trying to get at. People are good  at this, we learned at early ages that if you don't look at someone through the crack of the door they can't feel you watching them and will probably pass you by. That any amount of attention drawn to yourself sets the alarm. People don't want to be found. Not in hide and seek, not in therapy, and sometimes not even in themselves.

Class after class about people and their lives and just humanity it amazes me how much we, as a species, are capable of keeping a secret. Some things we see as best pushed under the rug-left alone, forgotten or tucked deep away, suppressed so that we can just go on living.

When I was 6 and as usual in trouble with my mom I thought it would be fun to play a game of hide and seek with my mom when I was supposed to be in "restriction" in my room. I tiptoed down the hallway and into the living room where we at the time had the kind of couch that would eat a child. I pushed myself into the crevice behind the cushion and covered myself up. I sat quietly, waiting. They started looking, at first kind of mad and then frantically. "Jessie! Jessie?! Jessie?!" I didn't laugh, didn't giggle, in fact I'm sure I was holding my breath doing everything I could to be silent. When I came out they were at first relieved and then the relief turned again to anger.

Today, I had that same feeling. I held my breath, bit my lip to keep myself from making a sound. My teacher was looking behind the cushions, I looked through the crack in the door- I'd been caught. Even to me the hiding spot was a surprise. Medical Sociology-a class where no one expects to have to worry about this sort of thing. I think to me the biggest medical mishap I'd had was simply an accident, something that had happened and been fixed. But underneath the metal, the screws and the pins there was more pain than I'd ever known. The questions that had needed to be asked, by me, by someone, by ME, had never come up so that pain over time had just become something else to push under the rug. It amazed me that the questions I was asked put the kind of tears in my eyes that you can feel in your throat.

10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1... Ready or not, here I come!

How do you feel about what happened?

How do you feel about how it will affect your future?

FOUND YOU!

Think about it, what are the most defining moments of your life? I don't want to put a number on this, some people will have 5 some people will have 20. Just be honest with yourself here, think about the way that even the little things have affected you, they won't all be positive and they won't all be negative.