The Doctor

In 1990 I am a passenger involved in a serious road traffic accident. Because of the injuries I receive from this accident I have to attend my doctor's surgery for treatment. As time passes I come to accept my permanent injuries and the medications that I have to take in relation to them.
However, my visits to my doctor do not lessen.
I continue to use my accident my accident injuries as opportunities to secure appointments with my doctor. A few of these appointments are in relation to my accident injuries.
Most are not.
I attend these appointments to try to establish a contact with my doctor.
I desperately want to confide in her about my trichotillomania and self harm, but I don't know where to begin.
After a life time of Mother and my family telling me I am mad I can't make a decision on whether to confide in my doctor or not.
I am not brave enough.
I am certain that my doctor will diagnose me as mad and that she will be repulsed by me and by what I do.
I often just sit in front of my doctor and cry.
My tears are genuine.
I desperately want her to work it out.
To come to the conclusion that I have trichotillomania and I self harm .
I want her to use her brilliance as a doctor to work this out for herself, so that I don't have to face the shame of saying the words out loud.
But how can she work it out? She is not psychic, she cannot see inside my head and read my thoughts.
I sit before my doctor, I am perfectly groomed, cosmetics perfectly applied, clothes and accessories perfectly coordinated.
How could she possibly know?
I am very careful about my appearance, it is my suit of armour.
I wear it every day so that people cannot reach me or break through to me.
Naturally, my doctor diagnoses me as depressed.
She is right.
I am very depressed, but the depression is just on the surface, the reality runs much deeper.
Some days I feel detached from my body and I see myself as others do.
Some people say that I am unapproachable and I can see this for myself when I am feeling this detachment.
I get a perverse feeling of safety from this, knowing that no one can get near to me. But I also get a huge sense of sadness as the price I pay for this self imposed safety is extreme isolation and loneliness.
The feelings of isolation and loneliness are so intense they are debilitating. They make me feel as if I belong to nothing and I experience the sensation of watching life and the world go by without participating in it in any way.
Eventually my feelings of isolation and loneliness give way to a gradually increasing numbness,until I am so numb that I am incapable of feeling anything.
Totally numb,no one can reach out to me, touch me, make me laugh, engage me in conversation or try to help me.
But still I continue to make and attend appointments with my doctor, and sit before her in the desperate hope that she will be able to reach out to me, to find a chink in my armour.
But, yet again, I leave her consulting rooms with my secrets intact, and the belief that I am mad creates another seemingly impenetrable barrier between her and me.