Dear T: I really need to tell you something XLVII

L, although I know we made the right decision about taking a break (and do you realize this was the first time we've taken a break where I didn't instigate it but we instead arrived at the decision together? Or well, more like we were each independently thinking it this time and so our conversation just organically went that way and the decision was then made together.) I feel.... a little adrift, maybe? But also a sense of freedom.

Also, thank you for saying that you know I'll be back and that "this isn't goodbye". I needed to hear that.

...even if it was.

L, I want to tell you that I am sitting here tonight feeling cut adrift, dismissed, tossed to the wind. In my logical mind I know that this makes absolutely no sense because this break was my idea just as much as it was yours. My earlier, competing sense of freedom has left me.

Stupid heart.

Strange things are happening and I don’t understand what is going on with me. Will it ever get better? I feel like I can’t go anywhere without getting triggered and switching at the moment which is making want to give up on life. I feel utterly useless to everybody. Yes I can keep myself safe just about and get through each crisis but how much longer is this truly sustainable and when does it become too much for everyone around me? I don’t know which me is me. I just want to be normal. I don’t know how much more I can take. I don’t know if there’s any point trying to continue our work together, it feels too dangerous but how do I reverse it all? I’m scared and confused and desperately trying to hold on and I wish I could tell you all this.

....and this morning, L, I am not feeling nearly as sad as I was last night. Almost not at all. The sense of freedom is back, too. Maybe it was just a little bit of a mind-**** watching you erase me from your book. I'm thinking I just needed that gentle nudge to 'leave the nest' for awhile. Thank you.

And... another thread on here got me thinking that perhaps our discussion yesterday was also a gentle reminder that at the end of the day this is a professional relationship that I pay you for and while it feels close and friendly, we are not friends. That's hard, but I get it. I do. I would never tell my friends some of the things you have listened to over the years, not even the closest ones. H doesn't even know some of it. It's hard to understand sometimes that in order for me to be able to share that stuff with you, we had to first develop this deep connection/alliance but once we did I could tell you anything. Now I have internalized it, can 'talk' to you in my head anytime I want, and maybe it's time I start being about letting go of the outer relationship. I've got a lot of thinking and writing to do over the next couple of months while we aren't meeting. Yes, I'm a "slow cooker" as you said, and this is gonna take some time too.

Anyway our 10 year 'thera-versary' is in a little over 2 months. Maybe we should meet again on that date and use that occasion to talk about the "goodbye" that you said this break is not. I think this morning that perhaps this break is kinda like a "pre-goodbye" or a "practice goodbye" if there is any such thing.

Regardless, one thing is true: I will always love you.

It kind of dawned on me today that you will probably never forget me. Not that you'll think of me a lot or anything like that... but just that my set of needs and what not is so ... so... that I doubt you will ever forget this one client you had that behaved this way and did those things... and so on.

Dear T,
Looks like you took my "crush the competition" words to heart. Congrats!

Love,
LT

PS--Miss you.

Dear E- Your self-disclosure meant a lot, more than I would have expected it to.

My mom says I should listen to my doctor more then I should listen to you. Since you are totally clueless on this stuff. I don’t want to hear about how insurance might not pay for it when you know nothing and my doctor says there will be no problem with insurance paying for it. I know you don’t like to sugarcoat things, but sometimes you just don’t know what the **** you are talking about it.

But I think we both know now that you aren’t helping me anymore and are just trying to get me through until my new therapist has an opening. I do not take offense to that I totally agree with it.

I would much prefer to be alone alone than to be alone with you.

So I got in touch with the facilitator of the thursday evening circles and asked to join them, after i take his divination workshop and he said i am welcome to. as i recall we did some of that in the basic workshop a couple years ago but just focusing on that alone over a weekend now will be good! i'm just waiting for him to send me the registration details so i can get signed up.

I am now fully thinking of this break as a "trial separation" of sorts. Not that I really know what I mean by that exactly. A practice separation might be a better phrase.

I talked to you in my head for most of my walk this evening. Partly asking the questions "what happened?! How and why did we go from last week's totally awesome session to yesterday deciding we need a 2 month break?!" Yeah I guess you can tell I'm a little confused at both of us right now. I'm questioning myself now. Did I do or say something wrong? Are you finally sick of me? Are you okay? Or do I really not need to come there anymore? I'm just all over the map over this. I'll find my way though.

4am and I am awake, T, because of a dream/nightmare. The first day this week that I am free to just 'be' again as we took our neice home yesterday and what happens, I dream about you. But it felt more like a nightmare. I woke up feeling stressed and panicked, thoughts just swirling round in my head.

It's been 7 weeks on Tuesday since you made the decision to just up and walk out out on our work together, with no safety plan for me in place, with no referrals to other counsellors , with no plan for returning my belongings and with no idea if I would ever even see you again.

The only way I have been explaining what happened to myself is that something awful must be happening in your life that has clouded your judgement. That in a different space you would see that how you did what you did was just wrong. In so many ways. I get that you couldnt continue working in that moment, but the more time passes the less able I am feeling that I am going to be able to forgive you.

I would have expected that initial shock to have worn off by now, I would have imagined the dust to have settled enough for you to see a little clearly, at least, and to be getting in touch about a way forwards.

The fact that I have no idea what happened in your life is means that I have no idea how much time is reasonable. I guess with grief though, if that is even what you are feeling, it differs for different people for different things. I just wish you would tell me though because it might help me to be patient.

Anyway. Resentment is building. Resentment is a bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly. That is what is building as the weeks go by without so much as a whisper from you.

I am really scared that the longer this goes on for, the longer these feelings and thoughts fester inside me the bigger it all grows. The bigger it grows the more time it will take to work through. Time I don't think we will have. Time I don't think you will give me. Time I am not sure I want to pay for.

This was your decision, not mine. But I love you and I can see this from your point of view (so far as anyone can see anything when they've g9t a blindfold on), and so I stick up for you. I defend your decisions and your actions to myself and to others... to a point? Are we at that point? Am I at that point?

Come on T. Please. I am losing my faith in you.

"Say something I'm giving up on you"

L, I know you have a life, but I really could have used a response tonight. It's probably all in my head, but I feel like the distance between us keeps growing.

Btw, saving $30 a month doesn't really help me financially. You do realize that's all you compromised on? I'm supposed to be open and honest with you. I don't know how to tell you that your fee reduction isn't helpful at all and is almost an insult.

I hate that you have gone away for so long for the first time in three years. Please come back, and be safe.

Mumbling the Serenity Prayer without invoking God seems to be the best I can do at the moment. You asked me what I needed, and that feels like a trick question. However, because you asked, I've written about it.

I'll send it to you on Tuesday, with the same caveat I used for the last email. I'm still feeling very...exposed.

L, I'm back to feeling sad this morning. I'm ping-ponging all over the place. I feel like you're mad at me, that you're punishing me for something and I don't know what I did wrong, and like you want me gone forever. I feel like when you erased my name in your appointment book you were erasing ME. Even though this break was my idea too!


I know this doesn't make any sense. You said you were putting my new card on file for when I come back, and also said you'd be raising my rate to your current one because I (finally) got a raise at work. And you even said "This isn't goodbye". If you were kicking me out for good you wouldn't have said those things. Right?


But knowing those things doesn't make me feel any better. I'm too damn ****ing attached to you and I need to figure out how not to be. This sucks. And mostly it sucks because I understand that the level of attachment was needed for me to do the work that I did with you. But now that I don't need it anymore, what the **** am I supposed to DO with it to make it go away?

I want to call you but I'm not going to. It would probably just make things worse if I did because if you are sick of me, then you would get even more sick of me. I'm just going to try to journal my way through this, and of course talk to you in my head and write here. Maybe after 2 months has gone by I won't even want to call you again. One can hope, right?

But what in the hell happened Friday? You know how cars go from 0-60 in x number of seconds? It's like we went from 60-0 between last week and Friday. Last week was an awesome session and I could have kept talking for hours. Then Friday boom you're all "It feels right to me to take a break for a month or two." Yes, yes I know what I said. But my idea of a break didn't go as far as 2 months. Why does yours? And why'd you say "We don't need to talk about that anymore" when I was talking about h? I thought it was up to me what we talk about? I'm so confused.

I feel like I need to email you, but none of the words seem right. I have way too much to say, but none of it seems right.

I want/need to say some things to you that aren't very nice. I need to speak my truth but your responses to 'angry emails' have always been short and terse (that's how they sound to me at least) so I really don't think that emailing you these things is a good idea.

I need to see you in person, but that's the problem isn't it. I can't. I just have to sit here and wait, unless I choose to walk away. I'm not even sure that's possible, but even if it is, that isn't what I think is right here. For the work that we did was relational. It needs to be ended properly.

How in God's name can you not see that?!?!

How long are you going to leave me here.......