Wednesday's session -

Got back to the room and did the usual how are you's. She was excited to give me a new business card. They are on heavy weight stock. I said ooo fancy. As I was holding the card, she closed the box. I said I needed a 2nd one. She asked if I wanted another one. I said yes. Wanted? I needed a 2nd one. I have 2 of her current business cards. One sits in my night stand and the other is in my backpack that goes everywhere with me. She gave me a second one. I said thank you.

I gave her the forms for her private practice. I had also created blank PDF and word documents of the forms and had emailed them to her. She thanked me for them and asked me if I had to create the word document versions. I said that acrobat had an export feature. She didn't know that. She was happy to have them electronically and thought they were amazing. I was unsure about giving her the blank versions because of that whole dual role thing, but then I thought it would be silly to not give them to her since I had to create them to create my filled in one. She didn’t ask or say anything about this idea/concept around it may be inappropriate because of our roles. She is not very IT savvy and I’m in IT so it’s been hard for me to not offer little things like converting these forms to editable PDFs and such. She has not asked me for anything around this so it is not like she is pushing it or even asking me how she might do it.

I told her that I was able to tell the front staff person goodbye. She said that was nice of me/considerate of me. I told her that he made a comment about hoping I do well and such. I asked her if he knew I was moving with her. She said she didn’t know. I was left with the impression that he might have known. I am not sure how I feel about that.
We started talking about how we were feeling about the move and such. I said I was scared. She asked me what it felt like. After a moment, I said it felt like I had to move. I told her that I could feel it in my body, in my chest. She said a few things were going to be going with us. My mind flashed to the filing cabinet ... I knew that wasn't possible so I asked about the plants. She said no, but these snoopy figurines and a vase would be going. (so she likes snoopy, nugget of personal information)

Next, I pulled out the posting I did in the Dear T thread. I read it a few times in silence. It had the 'I love you' statement. I had made a rule about not telling her that again so I felt like I couldn't give her the posting to read. I also wasn't sure about giving it to her. I read it and sat in silence for a long enough period of time that T sat back and crossed her legs waiting for me. I was looking at the paper. I sat it aside and said that I made a last day bucket list. She smiled at that and said something about it being a good idea. I told her that there wasn't much on it and I showed her the list. She asked me if there were some things more important than others. I said yes. She told me that she could email me when stuff got switched over to her new email address. She said she didn't know when that would be but she could email me and let me know. She said she couldn't do one of the items because of her after session plans. She asked me how much time did I need to have in the room alone, I said a few minutes. She asked if going and checking out the conference room to do the remote control cars would be enough time. I said it would be.

She left the room and told me not to lock her out. She had left the door open. After she left I pushed the door closed but not latched. I took 2 pictures of the filing cabinet (one turned out and the other did not) and I went and sat in the corner. I wanted to sit under the desk and actually spend time with the filing cabinet but she knocked on the door as I was trying to put stuff back in the corner. The corner had been blocked by some moving boxes since the remodel. I moved things back and opened the door.

I proceeded to pull out the remote control cars. I handed her one and I held one (in their boxes). I said that as I was packing them up, I still feel like they belong or needed to be stored with her. I said that is because he isn't safe with anyone else yet. She just accepted this statement with a slight nod. We proceeded to the conference room. There wasn't anything to use in there to build ramps so we just drove around and over chair/table legs. I laughed and giggled. She showed me how she had figured out how to do a 360. I showed her how to do a faster and tighter 360. We talked about the logic/physics of these specific cars. They are for very young children and don't work off standard principles of one lever controlling right-left and the other forward or backwards. Instead one controls the left the other the right. I love that it does this because it means that you can't let your brain wander to other things while you are playing with them. I figured out why I struggled with controlling the car when I am behind it and it is going away from me; specifically, around turns. That is when you want to turn right you have to press the left lever upwards rather than doing anything with the right side; almost anti logic. Then I made a solemn course for us to go through out of water bottles and hand sanitizer. She started down the course first and then I lapped her, that is until I got to the last bottle (an empty water bottle) and I crashed right into it. She wondered if we had enough power to knock over one of the full water bottles and we did. Then we tried to figure out how to go over the legs of 2 chairs next to each other. Nothing was working until for some reason I ended up going over them backwards. This method seemed to work about 50% of the time. At about 10 mins left, I stopped playing and leaned against the table. It was time to put them away. I got quiet as I dealt with the knowledge that this might be the last time we play with them. After a few moments, she stopped and leaned against another table and she said that the new room was larger than our usual room, big enough to still play with the cars. We talked about it some and she tried to guess the size of the space. We talked about the size of the space. Currently, it has nothing in it so it seems large. So most likely it won't be significantly larger once she adds furniture. We packed up the cars and headed back to the room. While packing up the cars she mentioned how the antennae reminds her of the exclamation point book. I just smiled at that. I asked her if she was ready for the next evolution (from movie GI Jane) as we started to head back to the room. She seemed to like that concept, next evolution.

She thanked me for bringing the cars, that it was a great way to have a last day (not her exact words). I pulled out the exclamation point book. And she smiled at this. I asked her how she was doing with all of it. I said it was a big deal for her too. She said that she was trying to trust and stay open to everything that was happening, taking it one step at a time. She’s enlisting several services to manage parts of it. She was funny around the money part because she said that she didn’t know how much it was going to be (for me) because the billing people hadn’t told her yet. I was like…. Ummm the billing people are going to set your rates??? I didn’t say that out loud but that was what I was thinking. She continued and I think she meant more that they haven’t sorted out what the out of network costs were going to be for me. We talked about that a little bit and I told her that I only had like another $270 on out of pocket annual max for out of network care so that won’t be too bad.

I was quiet and thinking about this being goodbye, the last time here. She asked me if it felt real or unreal. I paused then said that it felt real, very real. I started to tear up but then it passed. I said that I grieve early in the process of things. I talked about the months leading up to this being part of that grieving. She said something about me grieving more intense than others. I said I didn’t know about that just that I started to grieve before the event happens. I was thinking that I start to grieve the moment it feels like something might end or even when things are good because I know there is an ending that will eventually happen.

I pulled out the posting from the dear T thread and I gave it to her to read. There has been some regression here in having her read things rather than me read them or just verbalizing them. She read it, it seemed like she read parts of it again. She nodded at something. Then she asked me if I still felt trapped. I was thinking of the feeling of being physically trapped in a space/room and I couldn’t remember writing that so I said no. Later after she handed me back the paper I saw I was referring to being emotionally trapped, in my own head, in a stress/anxiety state. I wasn’t feeling very trapped that way either. I told her that on Tuesday I had shifted my thinking from feeling like this was something she was doing to me to something that was happening and that we are traveling together down the path. She said she was glad that the shift happened. Our time was up and I started to pull things in, gather stuff up. I started hugging the exclamation point book. She asked me if I wanted her to read it to me before we left [this space] and I said no. I was struggling internally with telling her I love her. I had made a rule to not tell her that again. That I could share that on the forum and in the personal side of my journal but not directly to her. I looked up at her and then away. She waited. I looked up again and I said ‘I love you’. She said she knew, she knew that I did. (Before anyone says that isn’t a supportive or good response, it is one that I have told her works for me over “ok” and some other responses she has used in the past.) She asked me how it felt to say it out loud and directly to her. I said it was hard. That I was breaking a rule. She asked if the rule was hers or mine. I said mine. Something was said about how for a while there were not rules and she said that they came back for a bit and now I am finding ways around them over them and such. I stood to leave and I asked her if she’d seen the movie GI Jane, she had but it had been a while. I described the scene about the statement to her. I said that we used to watch it every time we moved when you weren’t done yet but you were exhausted to keep going. She said that it was in inspiring movie. She said that maybe she’d watch it over the weekend.
We said our see you on Monday, I thanked her for seeing me on Monday. She said it would be her honor.

Then I left, I went down to the breakroom that I had been using for support, containment, transition, and eating my dinner. This is a shared breakroom for the team I used to work for and for a few other support teams. I said goodbye to the refrigerator (yes… I know, me and my attachment for inanimate objects – they don’t leave you, they don’t say hard words or yell at you, they don’t tease you nor are too busy for you). So I got a hug, was held, cried, and said goodbye. Then I left the institution that has been a major part of my life for 12 yrs. I will still be receiving medical care there so I’ll be back a few times a year. Not the same as it being part of my daily, then weekly life. I walked down a well-known path, down the 5 floors of stairs, down off the hill, and along the river as I did my usual 3.5 mile post session walk home.

I’m glad she is going to see me on Monday because the waiting for the change is harder on me than the actual change. My mind can come up with all kinds of things that might happen regardless of how probable it will happen, the possibility exists.