[InRealLife45]

Letter to my ex-T


Dear Ex-T,

So. I saw you today at Trader Joe's. Part of me wanted to walk up to you and give you the few words I have been holding, clutching in a vise grip, waiting to give to you. Another part was flushed with something I can only name as an intense but fleeting anger, filling my entire body from the top of my head, reaching out to the curly strands of my hair, down to my toes, settling in the bottoms of my feet, white hot with the heat beating up from the pavement, through my thin sandals. Then it passed and I felt resigned, and thought to myself "the words will keep, even if they won't be well received." And I grabbed hold of my kids and finished my shopping.

In class we are reading a book called Hold Me Tight, it is meant to be a book for couples, but I believe the patterns it discusses reveal a framework (of dysfunction) for all relationships that swirl down the tubes. When I read about the protest polka, I think of our conversations, I think of how determined I was to find the bad guy in you, I see how I employ demon dialogues in my frustration at my lack of connection to you; I see how you fed back with your own demon dialogues how we pushed further away. I see how I froze and fled because I couldn't get you to hear me, to care about me. In response to my shut down, I see how you froze and fled as well, how last year you stopped trying to reach for me, the way you gazed silently off into space, the way you refused to hold my gaze, as if my quiet eyes burned an invisible hole into you.

I read this book and I see more clearly my needs, and why I can't get them met, because I use the wrong words, express the wrong emotions to ask for them. I want to be close and you won't so I frown at you and tell you all the ways you've messed up, and of course instead of drawing closer, that pushes you over the edge into the chasm. Forever and ever away from me.

You are right that I can't go back, I can't unlearn or unwant the things you did for me before, the things you gave before. To hold me and say "you are special, I love you," to hug me fully with my head on your chest, your heart beating comfortingly under my ear, thump, thump thump...your hand on the back of my head, "the love is here" you said. To A-frame hug me with cold eyes and words that say,"our breasts and stomach's shouldn't touch because they're sexual body parts," sexualizing the maternal hugs that were like emotional gold to me. To say,"you are not special, you are just another client, one of many. You want something you can't have, that can never be, you are not my child." To say, "you need to view me as just a coach." To say, "you can never come back," to say, "we are done forever" to say you are doing it for me, for my highest good, to say we are ending well, as you ignore my sobs and pry your hand out of mine and walk away.

So for me this time, it is not the relationship that heals.

For me, it is the coaching, for me, you believe it is the flat eyes, the A-frame hug, the guide, the disconnect. But it is not the relationship. So, deep in the bottom of my heart, in all of the cells that make my body work, that pump through my blood; with all of who I am; I wish that you had never jokingly shoulder bumped me that day on the couch, smiled with your eyes and told me,"it's the relationship that heals, anyway. The rest of it doesn't matter." I wish that you had not said that, I wish that you had not held me or touched me or massaged my feet or helped me by massaging my scalp when I had that multiple day "pound me into the ground tear apart my emotional reserves" headache-migraine-brain-bomb, I wish you had not loved me (or said you loved me, if ever it was true). Because it means that you found me unworthy of healing via relationship, it means you found me impossible, it means you found a relationship with me too frought with danger, with minefields and explosions.

So I struggle.

I struggle deeply not to feel this tsunami wave of pain that wants to crush me. Until I saw you today, I hadn't cried since the week of August 17th. The tears just were not there, successfully set aside, emotion stripped away. But I struggle. I struggle trying to understand how you loved me before, how you can't love me now, and how you are just gone forever, and you call it ending well.

Ending well? I have examined from all sides, and I still can't find the well ending in an eternally locked and barred door, in "never come back."

[growlycat]

She is not worth your time

You write so eloquently, and your words are really insightful. What you said about your T resonated with me in terms of what happened with my ex-T. Sometimes I think the therapeutic relationship just goes wrong.

The film Cassablanca comes to mind - have you seen it? You know at the end there is the line 'we'll always have Paris' (the good part of their relationship). I wonder if there is anyway for you to have your 'Paris' with your ex-T even though, like Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca the door is now closed? It sounds like there were some really powerfully helpful moments with your ex-T.

I think that you, like me had a dose of bad therapy. I hope your new T is a good one. When I told my new T a bit about the therapy I had had, I felt she very quickly gained an understanding of me, and that this was a bit of a gift for my therapy with her. The same thing will definitely not happen with my new T. I know that when similar issues come up with up my new T that came up with my ex- T she will help me through them.

Have you been able to eat anything?

[InRealLife45]

Originally Posted by Brown Owl

You write so eloquently, and your words are really insightful. What you said about your T resonated with me in terms of what happened with my ex-T. Sometimes I think the therapeutic relationship just goes wrong.

The film Cassablanca comes to mind - have you seen it? You know at the end there is the line 'we'll always have Paris' (the good part of their relationship). I wonder if there is anyway for you to have your 'Paris' with your ex-T even though, like Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca the door is now closed? It sounds like there were some really powerfully helpful moments with your ex-T.

I think that you, like me had a dose of bad therapy. I hope your new T is a good one. When I told my new T a bit about the therapy I had had, I felt she very quickly gained an understanding of me, and that this was a bit of a gift for my therapy with her. The same thing will definitely not happen with my new T. I know that when similar issues come up with up my new T that came up with my ex- T she will help me through them.

Have you been able to eat anything?

Yes, I ate. Program chair said if I didn't I had to take a leave of absence.

Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by InRealLife45

Yes, I ate. Program chair said if I didn't I had to take a leave of absence.

Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

I'm glad.