I wish I could remember more from my therapy sessions, but I don't, so I guess I just write about what I do remember. I have been seeing this New T for about 4 months now, properly, and have been increasingly coming to the point where I needed to either get on and tell her what the root cause of everything is or just give up completely. Before session today I had a last minute thought to write out some stuff, at the time having absolutely no idea whether I would share it or not. In fact, if you had asked me to make a bet I would have bet on me not sharing it. As usual I arrived, I came in, I washed my hands and I sat down, thick coat still on and blanket over my legs. I only with my blanket had been 10 times as thick because I was feeling incredibly exposed and felt I wanted a lot more protection. She sat down too. I don't remember what happened next. Maybe she just gave me plenty of space and time to settle in. There is often a lot of silence in our sessions. I am good with that. I like silence. It feels safe and comfortable and familiar.

I got my book out at some point, and showed her a spread I had done about hiding vs sharing. She commented that the fact that the hiding page had lots of reasons on it could be because that is what I have always known, whereas the prospect of sharing is actually a relatively new one, hence why it only had three things written on it. One of those I crossed out when I opened the book though, because I didn't believe in it as a reason anymore. 'Let someone care'. Must admit given what's gone on for me this last year, I don't now believe that anyone will ever genuinely care. I don't even know what genuinely caring means anymore. I thought I did, but now I am not so sure.

We looked at the book for a little while, not really sure what else was said, but somehow we must have got on to mentioning the reasons I find sharing hard. One of the big reasons is that I am scared that whoever I tell will downplay what happened to me. I spent a long time of my life downplaying it to myself, and only recently, with a lot of effort have started to see that it was traumatic, and that it is no wonder it had devastating consequences. But the voices that tell me "it's nothing; what are you doing making all this up; can't you just get over it already; everyone goes through stuff like this" etc are still quite strong, and I am scared that she will collude with those voices. I have built it up into something so enormous that I am always scared that when it is let out it won't be that big. I don't know if that makes sense, but it does to me. Anyway, I had written about this at the start of my 'letter' and so I folded it to only that part and gave it to her.

She said that she could see that whatever it was has had a very big impact on me, because she could see in the here and now how traumatising it was for me. She said that I can't talk when we get close to this, and that I freeze, I think. She asked if I knew the flight, fight, freeze responses. I nodded. She said that she wouldn't downplay whatever it was, that it didn't matter how other people might view it, that it only matters what I feel and how it impacted me. She then went on to say something about a path, that she had something in her head about this having put me on a certain path. This opened the way for me to show her the next bit of the letter where I too had written about paths. About how that one moment in my life had shut off many of the paths that I could have ended up travelling on. This made me to start feeling angry.

It does make me angry that they took so much away from me. That everything conspired to mean that I didn't become who I could have become. So many lost opportunities. So many lost hopes and dreams. She asked something about who I had been before this... I am not sure I fully understood the question but I answered 'happy'. I had been happy, I think. A lot of years of lost happiness.

I could see from the clock that we had been there for an hour. Only 30 minutes left. Was I going to let another week go by without sharing? Without showing? I'm not sure what happened or why I finally felt I could/would/wanted to show her the rest, but I knew that I couldn't show it all, so I ripped off the last section. The one memory that tells me how far it went. I wonder whether I felt that by still keeping that card close to my chest I could share the rest of it? I gave her the paper. She read it in silence rather than normal, reading it out. I'm not ready to hear any of this said back to me yet. She said some stuff, no idea what though, but it made me realise that I still hadn't told her expressly what happened, and, unlike my first 'T', she doesn't strike me as someone to outwardly read between the lines. I figured I needed to tell her. What was the point of sharing all of that if she still didn't actually know what happened. So I took the last remaining piece of paper, folded away the bit that no-one knows and showed her the rest.

She cried. I think. I mean I couldn't see it, but I could hear it. Not like crazy blubbing or anything, but a slight tear, a little sniffle. She said "I am so sorry. I am so sorry that this happened to you. I am so sorry" While I just sat there. Emotionless. I think. Except one. Fear. Again, I can't tell for sure because I spent the entire session facing away from her, but I felt her inch just a little closer and she said "you are safe here. You are safe in this room. They can't hurt you in here". To which my written reply was "they can't, but you can". My fear doesn't (mostly) stem from a distorted reality that I am back in that place. I know I am not. Rather it comes from a very real place that people hurt other people. All the time. Children hurt children. Adults hurt children. Adults hurt adults. How the hell do I know that she isn't going to spot this weakness in me and abuse that. I don't. And so I have to vehemently protect myself. At all times.

I think I drifted off at one point. Dissociated I guess. Safest place to be sometimes.
And then I told her it was pancake day and spent a couple of minutes talking about pancakes until it was time to leave.
I said goodbye and got up and walked out. A weird end to a weird session.

Oh yeah, she also said something like she promised me she wouldn't hurt me, and she promised she wouldn't let me down. My first thought? Don't make promises you can't keep.

I guess I just go back next week and see what happens next!?