Dear T: I really need to tell you something XLIV

For whatever reasons, it's been a hard day to waiting for session. The longing .. time seems to be moving so slow.

I am distraught. The voice telling me I don't matter and nobody cares about me is deafening.

I wish I hadn't texted you because you saying you would talk to me tomorrow when you don't actually want me to come and for C to come instead didn't feel good. I felt invisible and ashamed. I really liked the second text you sent when I reminded you, but there has to be a reason I feel all weepy now.

I think it was a mistake to go against my impulse to withdraw. I've been too vulnerable and now I'm paying the consequences.

I want to text you that I hate you, but that's uncalled for and is not the way I want to manage my distress.

i'm having such a hard time dealing with everything. i feel like everyone around me is handling this crap so much better than i am. and on top of that i am getting sick sore throat headache and i am so tired i went to bed early last night and am heading that way now again and it's only 6:15pm. i'm scared i've got the stupid virus now. crap. h just came in and said he has a sore throat too. double crap.

god you people suck

Dear T,
I was driving D to camp today and started crying when I passed the exit for your office. I'm not sure whether to actually admit that to you. You did ask the other day what I felt was missing from online therapy, but then we got sidetracked. I had typed up an email about it that evening but opted not to send it. Maybe we need to talk about it... I'm worried you won't go back to in person until winter now, with schools pushing things back so much and cases rising around the country (only slightly in our area, but still). I don't really want to ask--I want to keep hope that maybe it could be, say, late September. I calculated that it's been a little over 4 months since I last saw you in person, but it feels like about a year (same for, say, the last time I went out with H or a friend). I wish we could like do a session outside or something, but you said no to that without my even asking. Though maybe you'd considering changing that? I don't know. We wouldn't have to talk about anything particularly deep. Or maybe I could do that thing where I talk to you from my car then you come outside from your office and wave to me at the end of session, but I worry that will just make me more sad. (I would also need to get a new car first!)
Love,
LT

I don't think I have the stupid virus anymore. After going to bed really early 2 nights in a row my throat is better this morning. Still have a headache, but no fever, and I can still smell stuff. Just a summer cold I guess.

5:21 am? You start your day as early as I do.

You must surely be disgusted by me. I am disgusted by me. I am also disgusted by him, and by him, by her, by her too, by everyone really. And I am disgusted by you and that makes me really sad because you can be beautiful and warm.

Dear T,
Thanks for being understanding about all that. And for reassuring me that you have no plans to get rid of your office, even if this goes on a really long time.

Love,
LT

I am a repulsive person and that's final.

so you do realize, don't you, that once i write this 1,000 word essay you 'assigned', i am going to send it to you? heh. I really don't need to write it though. I already know the ultimate answer to the question. It takes me farther away from myself. So I need to stop listening to it. Really, I need to write about how I FEEL about that answer, and start figuring out what the hell I am going to DO about that answer.

That's the crux of one of my problems, of course, the fact that I spend way too much time thinking and worrying and planning etc and not NEARLY enough time actually DOING.

lots of layers to the onion that is me, huh, t.

hahaha you are so cute. 1,000 words. I'm almost to 700 already.

eta update: just rolled on past 850

Dear T:

I am "deciding" again whether or not to be your client. I suppose this is bad to disclose, but I feel like a garbage individual for even bringing this up. I wish I could just express what's actually on my mind. Wouldn't that make things so much easier? Now I understand why life is hard. Because people can't just say what's on their mind because they're constrained by language. Language doesn't always work. Anyway, please just keep having hope in me because I want to be better at this thing.

...aaaaaaaaaaaand now I'm at 1,016 words. Heh. I wonder if you are actually going to want to read this thing when it's done.

I do whatever I want and I'm selfish and I love it!

Why do I like you so much T? I'm going to get dependent on you and then it's going to hurt like heck when we stop therapy. At least I only see you every other week. Hopefully that keeps me from getting too attached.

Thank you for your support today. I would have appreciated receiving that reply to my email.

at around 1500 words now and just getting around to the realization that hey guess what I am not you, I am not my mother, I am not h, I am not any number of other people that I have projected my crap onto over the years. I am ME. Time to act like it and stop trying to live up to what I think you, my mother, my h etc all expect of me and just BE and DO me.

Sometimes I feel like you don't really understand severe depression and how crippling the symptoms are. Reminds me of that meme where someone gives simplistic advice to someone suffering from MI and expects it to fix everything.

Aha, found an example.
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What a great freaking homework assignment. I should have done this YEARS ago. I started by answering the question you posed but this is evolving into so much more.

I hate when I want to tell you stuff the day after a session. Especially the stuff about how I felt when you said to really look at the picture of 4 year old me and tell you how it made me feel. I was so immersed in the feelings yesterday afternoon I wasn't capable of speaking them! How do you DO that?! Ask questions in such a way to send me back in time 54 years. I deeply felt her vulnerability and shame (things she didn't have words for yet) and yeah it was uncomfortable. I felt like I was that age again.

I think that yesterday, if I had been in your office when you asked me to say what I was feeling about little me in the picture, I would have gotten up and done a sand tray. That would have been really helpful to 'talk' in the sand and you were right to think it would have been. But I can't risk coming in there again yet. I just can't. Covid sucks.

Damn it, now I want us to do a sand tray together again and it makes me sad that we never did.

I really, really want to stop therapy until covid is over. I know it will be months before we meet in person again. The longer this goes on the harder it gets, the more frustrated and mad I get.

Sometimes I find progress reports a hassle because a lot of times not certain of my goals. Or how to express them.