Dear T,
I'm glad you were completely OK with my walking back to check in after last session.

The conversation after that was...a bit odd? We were talking about certain topics in general but...I don't know--was it also sort of a discussion around something else?

I did end up reaching out to my parents about the stuff with D. I talked to H before to get his suggestions (mentioning what you'd said) and figured I'd leave it up to my parents in terms of preferred form of communication. Of course they left it up to me! I ended up texting (yeah, I know the easy way out!), and my mom had a bit of the expected response. Will likely talk to her tomorrow--issue being that I didn't give the Pollyanna/silver lining preface in the text, but I suppose I can do that by phone?

I need to talk to you more on the going virtual thing, too. I wish that last part hadn't been right as I was leaving, where you said you didn't know if you could give me a week after all, in part because your wife might insist on something. You told me you'd give me a week before, so that was something I was holding onto, like "At least if you say something today, I'll still have a week of in-person." So for you to potentially pull back on that is difficult.

And also if you were to put it on her, vs. taking responsibility for making the decision. I'm not sure if I'll fully be able to explain that to you. But if you blame her, then it feels like abdicating responsibility, like I can't say, "Hey, you said you'd give me more notice," because you'd say "my wife insisted," like "my hands were tied." Whereas if you said, "My wife pushed for it, but I was ultimately the one who made the decision," that would feel different to me. I guess I want you to own your decision?

I want to just ask if you can at least give (barring testing positive or a known close exposure) one session's notice, like if you're giving me notice Friday, then I can still see you Monday. Or, I don't know, if you email me about it tomorrow, say, and tell me we can meet Friday, but that's it. Not ideal, but I just don't want to sit down and have you say "Yeah, this is the last in-person session for a while." Or, worse, say it at the end (though I don't know, maybe if you say it at the beginning, it would derail whatever I was going to talk about. Maybe a no-win situation for you).

I do think you understood the physical safe space thing. How I like being able to metaphorically leave my emotions there. So that helped.

I mean, I think if we have to go back to virtual for a month...a couple months...many months...we will be OK. I think seeing you in person for a stretch of a couple months helped. We had some important conversations there and some moments where I really let my emotions out, and you were accepting of them, which felt more meaningful being in the same physical space.

But I just hope we can have a bit more time--or if we need to stop in person for a bit, that it's just that--just a bit. Like a month off, then resume in person. Even if we have to stop in the fall again. I just don't want to give it up yet....I want my safe space....

Love,
LT