‘Am I glad to see you!’
‘That was a nice greeting, I think?’
R came in and sat down, and said:
‘You’ve either had a good week, or it has been really tough.’
‘Frankly, I have been a bit of a mess since last session.’
‘A bit of a mess? What do you mean?’
‘With where we ended up last week –I think you know how hard that was for me to talk about… I knew it, but I underestimated the impact of actually saying it out loud. And then I dragged it out and waited until the end of the session before saying what I needed to say.’
‘Is there something there about when it came up? Is there anything we can put into place to help you feel more grounded?’
‘I think it’s about having 10 minutes at the end to make sure that I’m back in the room.’
‘Do you feel it left you more open than usual?’
‘Absolutely –I dealt with Friday’s pottery class by being very quiet. I was there and I was participating, but I wasn’t really there.’
‘What came up for me then as you said that is that it sounds like a very lonely place to be.’

‘Yes – I got through that and was sitting with a support worker on Friday night making my dinner when I glanced at the calendar. 25th of February, 25th of February…what’s important about the 25th of February? It came to me like treacle, the way things always do now when I have to work for them. 12 years since I met Chris.’

‘And is that something you feel that you should have remembered?’

‘It’s a happy date that I want to remember rather than all of the other dates.’

‘I am remembering your timeline in the early sessions. You had it all laid out in – not numerical – what’s the word for when it’s in date order?’

‘Chronological.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I failed to realise that I had been talking about the 25th out loud – so I said ‘It’s the twelfth anniversary of meeting my best friend.’ No sooner had I said that than I felt I had to explain.

‘You felt you had to?’
‘She asked ‘Are you going to meet up?’ I gave a surface level explanation, and was still feeling funny on Saturday, so I sat down to make a collage, and for the first time I couldn’t even start. I put a piece of paper down and last week’s TV guide, and nothing. I feel like I am past the point where I can make this pretty.’

‘Make this pretty? Is that what you feel you’ve been trying to do?’

‘Yes…and it’s getting scary again. I say that as if it magically stopped being scary at some point.’

‘Intensifying?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘You sound lost, Lost. “I can’t make a collage, I can’t write…”’

‘Yes – full body bristling, shoulders hurting…and come the night I am back in the ****ing bathroom.’

‘It sounds as though you are angry about that.’

‘I don’t want to be subjected to it again and again. I don’t ****ing understand why my brain takes me to that place.’

‘It’s as if you want to say “Just **** off!”’

‘I have. I have been talking to my Chilean psychoanalyst friend about this, and he tells me it is like quicksand: “How do you get out of quicksand?” Somewhere in the back of my mind – ‘Stop struggling.’’

‘And that makes sense to you?’

‘Yes – but when I stop struggling and allow myself to feel it, things come up that I am not always comfortable with.’

‘When you talk about allowing yourself to feel it, are you talking about here in this space, or at night?’
‘I am talking about at night. I am aware that it is not the safest way.’

I continued: ‘I hate using the two experiences as a comparison, but the night I heard that Chris was going to die, it was very different. I read the news I didn’t want to hear, and then I put a specific song on – which is why I have a complex relationship with ‘Here Comes the Sun’. Mum was on the phone at the time, so I couldn’t share the news, but within ten minutes I sat down with a cup of tea, and I couldn’t stop shaking. There was nothing I could have done about that, but it felt like something moved through. Nothing got stuck. My actual emotional reaction…Oh, God…I am a robot.’

‘What do you mean? You were talking, and then it was ‘I’m a robot.’’

‘That is a euphemism for crying. My actual emotional reaction. It took me five days to cry, and then it wasn’t my own grief. Jonathan, whoever they were, had posted a message wishing Chris’ son a happy 12th birthday, five days after his mother’s death, and that was what…and that was what set me off. It was controlled, though.’
‘Controlled? That jumped out at me…I’ll own it. For me, crying is an emotional release amongst other things…not something you can control.’

R then mentioned that she notices the difference when I talk about Chris:

‘There is no confusion or frustration. There is sadness – ‘I miss my friend, and it’s really sad she’s gone.’’

R and I spoke a little about how she didn’t feel that I was speaking freely from my feelings.

‘I can sense that there’s a process going on, where you filter what you want to say – a kind of holding back.’

‘I know I am safe right here, right now, but when I am in that between space, the sense of safety disappears.’

R then mentioned that she had spent most of the session leaning over the arm of the sofa trying to see my face.

‘When you are in that space, I can’t see your face at all…your hair goes forward, your head goes down…’

She gave the ten minute warning I had requested as a safety measure, and I then said:

‘I feel profoundly disconnected from everything at the moment.’

‘As you say that, I feel a sadness.’

‘So, I feel that reconnecting with the emotions I squashed back then is key…but I think it would help, as we’ve discussed before, if I could hold your hand whilst I’m talking, so that I am still ‘connected’ to you.’

‘Connected physically.’

‘Next week, I want to cut the rubbish and get straight to it.’

‘I don’t feel like you are talking to me.’