Dear Ex-T,

I want to write to you even though I suspect it's out of line and inappropriate but whatever. I just don't care anymore. It has been almost a year since I've seen you and I've gone through a lot of feelings and changes since then that I want to explore and resolve here. I'm starting to reflect on our therapy relationship and I'm feeling let down, T. I really believe I was taken advantage of and that my level of vulnerability demanded a more cautious and experienced professional response. I don't think you maliciously set out to hurt me, but you did hurt me and the end result is still the same. I'm hurt.

One thing I appreciated about you was that you always appeared to be open to my observations about you, even though much of it seemed to be more of a projection on my part than anything else. Still, you were willing to explore my concerns even if it may have been uncomfortable for you. So yeah, I appreciate that about you and like I said, I don't think you intentionally set out to harm me. Nonetheless, we must be honest here in that I did end up in the psych ward twice during the end of our therapy and that was not a coincidence in my opinion. Something went very wrong. I had a strong transference going on during our therapy that really impacted me and I suspect I wasn't alone in this issue. I know I never really directly confronted these feelings with you and that is my fault but I didn't know how. I needed help - some guidance and direction. That was your role, not mine.

And when I progressed downhill, de compensating and grasping for any shred of reality I could find, I needed you to be there. But you weren't. I feel like you set up the environment for the transference to take hold and then you just watched it happen from the sidelines while I squirmed and shook in front of you. You just sat there and observed. Hopefully you didn't feel pleased by my adoration but I worry that you did and that it fed your ego. That my need to feel important really reflected your own deep need to be important and that I suspended my needs, once again, in favor of pleasing you. I needed you to really care about me but therapy is set up to feign care all the while the necessary boundaries of the relationship prohibit actual caring. So it is once again just out of reach.

Re-traumatizing.

A few days ago I had a moment where I felt like me again. It took nearly a full year of my life but I recognized myself in the mirror and felt a steady internal presence that has been like jello since I was hospitalized. I needed you, T. You were just my therapist but you were important to me and I feel very let down by the way our therapy played out in end. Where were you? Did you ever question your role in my de compensation? Do you see me as a crazy mess or do you wonder where you went wrong? Well, where "we" went wrong seeing as this was a joint partnership and I was not alone in that room. Of course, neither were you. This was something that happened in a "relationship" of two. So I see it as something that occurred with both of us contributing. Question is what did you contribute, T? That is something I feel like you kept hidden from me, as though you were only there to observe. I'm reaching for an answer. An explanation for what your contribution was and to hold you accountable for your piece in the whole thing. Because it's just not fair to be alone in this after two years of interaction...after all that it's like I'm left holding the bag.

Alone.

Yeah, so it was two years and maybe that's a "long haul" to you and I should've worked through everything by then but you know what? I wasn't there yet. I thought I was "unique" and that it takes as long as it takes, no? Yet, I was left holding the bag in the end. You waltzed out and I was left to deal with my feelings all by myself. Ironically, the same way that I had to do so as a child. Completely re-traumatizing. I don't know what I want you to say or do as nothing can really change the way things turned out for me. All I can do is go to therapy to process it as another trauma that I have to work through - like the trauma I hoped to work through with you.

Thank you for listening.
Freewilled