|
Connection!!!
It was the first time in awhile that I was able to cry while expressing emotions and thoughts about my father.
I shared memories about my father with T-- memories that made both of us smile and laugh.
T wants me to start recording memories. I had started this awhile ago, but when the hard drive was replaced on my computer, it was wiped out. I don't mind starting it over though. T kept asking, "When are you going to start? When? When am I going to read them?" He wants me to work on it each week and he wants to read, each week, what I have written in an effort to get a sense of who I am in relation to who my father was.
In the midst of the session I looked up at him and said, "This is therapy."
At one point while I was crying and expressing, T asked me for a tissue (the tissue box is on the table next to my chair). I gave it to him and he wiped his eye. I said, "Please tell me you're having an allergy attack." He said, "No, I had to wipe my eye. This experience is painful for both of us to go through."
T was so real with me, which is exactly what I need. He said, "It isn't going to get better. It will change, but it never actually gets better. You have lost the the person who was the most special to you in the entire world." Then he said, "That was my experience." First of all, I loved that he added that. He rarely touches on his own experience-- and I didn't want details. It was just enough that he said that. Second, he said exactly what I needed to hear. I am sick of people telling me that my father is looking down on me, that he's proud of me (I'm sorry-- he's dead. I don't believe in that type of stuff), that it will get less painful in time, to remember the good times, that I was so lucky to have him, etc. I need someone to be real with me. It is the raw emotion that I am dealing with. In my experience, losing the person most dear to me doesn't cause me to sit here thinking, "Oh I was so lucky to have him." Of course I was-- but when I am caught in the intense pain of loss, I am not going to be thinking that. The pain is very raw, and I needed someone to be there with me. And T was.
|