Dear T: I really need to tell you something XLVIII

Since you are a rotten, unreliable, reeking old rat bag, I am investigating the possibility of group therapy. I will find other people to torment - resourceful moo. You will be sorry when you find out that I am branching out. Your peers will come to call you Frankenstein.

I overreacted, and now I regret it. I am thankful that the situation isn't as severe as I first feared. I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.

Help me!

Oh. I get it now.

Artie, if you are saying you 'get' the whole therapy relationship, please can you share it with the rest of us, haha... I'm still in the dark!!

I've been eating healthy today mainly to help with my anxiety and mental health more then weight loss. But I've been eating vegetables like we have talked about. As for you yourself I kind of am thinking about you for some reason. More then yesterday, but less then saturday. I did ask my mom today if my eyes looked male so that comment you made is still affecting me but I probably won't bring it up on Wednesday. But other stuff will probably be brought up. Like that whole email, asking for an extra session, ordeal that went on last Wednesday afternoon.

Sadly no that I still do not get. I'm not sure that is even "get-able"! haha.

Dear T,
I hope you arrive (arrived?) home safely today. I feel weirdly distanced from you, even though we met on Friday. Hopefully it will feel OK tomorrow. I don't know whether to talk about anything related to the therapeutic relationship or whether to just focus on D and potentially save that for Friday? I guess I'll see how I feel when I see you pop up on my screen.

Sucks that you aren't in town today, or we could have probably met outside with the weather being so nice. Supposed to rain tomorrow, and I imagine for Wednesday, I'd be emotional after the IEP meeting, so would want privacy (plus I think it's supposed to be windy). I'm wondering if you're still considering resuming in-person next month? If so, then I'd of course be less anxious about meeting outside. I fear you'll just push it back again. Our county is doing considerably better than it was, but still not out of the woods. I'm not sure what your metrics will be--I suspect *you* don't even know. And who knows if your wife will veto it if you are ready to return in person (like you said about her reaction the one time).... Presumably we could at least meet outside on occasion later next month, if nothing else.

So I may need to bring up the in-person thing this week, though maybe not tomorrow and probably not Wednesday. Though maybe I could just make the comment of "we could have met outside today" and see if you jump off from there.

Safe travels.

Love,
LT

I feel like everything is kinda redundant now. The songs I used to listen to. The food I used to eat. The day I started my transtion. I feel like none of it matters anymore. The songs I listen to I don't relate to her anymore. I stopped eating the candy and I don't plan on buying more. But will you realize why it happened? Or did it really just happen because the one year mark is on Wednesday and holding on any longer is just silly? But I am super tempted to move my appointment with my pdoc to virtual and my trip up a week.

Ok so my mom and I have decided to move my pdoc to virtual and the trip to sometime later in the month. I told her that I felt like I was finally over my old T after a very hard year and I did not want to go into that building again. My mom says that makes sense. I hope my current T doesnt ask what changed. I don't think my mom had any idea how difficult this year actually was with letting her go.

Sometimes I wish we could just be friends who met once a week. I felt guilty today when I realised we’d kind of hit a rut in the therapy, since we’ve been going over my relationship with mum and other things lately, so it was a relief when you asked what we should work on, even if it did take some hard thought.
And maybe my sense of smell isn’t great, but I couldn’t tell that your dog had rolled in fox poo at the weekend, and still smelled of it after having a bath (why is it always another animal’s poo?! Dogs are weird…).
Lovely chocolate croissants, too. Everything is better just out of the oven!

Dear T,

Another week has gone by and yet another week I still seem no closer to being able to talk to you, connect with you, share with you. Another week just missing K terribly. Another week where she has been on my mind both night and day. Another week where I'm not sure if holding on is helping or hurting. I have no idea what I will talk to you about tomorrow. I have tried writing to you several times the past few weeks, but I just can't do it. I get a few paragraphs in and then... Nothing. What needs to be said isn't coming out. Nothing is coming out, not even the trivial stuff.

I'm not sure whether me having no idea who you are (I still don't even know what you look like other than your picture online) is helping or hindering. To be fair, it can't be helping, can it? It honestly doesn't feel like anything is helping right now. I don't know. Maybe this just isn't the right time for me. Maybe this just isn't right for me, right now.

I told you last week I wasn't even going to force myself to eat when I wasn't hungry. And you respected that and told me to just eat what I felt I could. And thats what I've been doing lately. Then my doctor messaged me about my blood work results today and I think are conversation made sense and wasnt just a coincidence.

Dear T,
I hope you reply tonight. Really, just something very simple, like, "Yes, still on for 10 tomorrow" would serve as, I guess, proof of life. Is that what I'm looking for? Maybe you'll wait till the morning to reply, which I'd understand (plus maybe you aren't getting home until really late tonight--of course I have no idea), and that's still better than waiting anxiously to see if I receive the Zoom link at 10:00. I mean, unless you wait until 9:58 to email. But let's be real--if I haven't heard back by, say, 8:30 or 9 am, I'd send a quick text. You know me well enough to realize I'd be anxious, so I don't think you'd let it get to that, unless something was actually wrong.

Love,
LT

Dear T,
Sorry I'm so needy. Please don't be annoyed with me. I haven't texted.

Love,
LT

I told M that I could do tomorrow, but right now I want to cancel the session,

You would have said this was resistance. M says "it's okay and part of my journey and that I get to choose my pace."

Dear T,
Thanks for the nice reply. I feel an immense sense of relief. I hate how my anxiety and OCD can make me so worried about things with no rational reason to worry about them.

Love,
LT

Thanks for the support to call the crisis line, even if it didn’t help much.

I miss seeing you in person. A lot.

Felt like you were annoyed that I'm worried you're going to retire.

Hurting a lot. Spent hours and hours today looking at all the drugs I could buy on the dark web. I wish ketamine infusion wasn't so very expensive. I can't spend 3k on something when I don't know if it will even work. But then I'm also really worried that ketamine bought illegally will be cut with something else.

I'm just really desperate.

I'm really getting an insight into how much influence prior experiences can have on us. Even though the imminent 'danger' has gone, I'm having trouble getting settled again.

Of course, I'm going to have egg on my face when you reply to the mid-crisis email now that the actual issue has stabilised.

Sometimes we can't even communicate successfully about really basic aspects. It's frustrating and irritating. You really irritate me. I know I irritate you. Why are we like this? Maybe I was unconsciously obtuse about the arrangements because I don't really want to meet in person and am primarily doing so because I know you want to. Maybe you were pushing for me to say something else because you want control as much as I do. Or maybe we just struggle to get along. Either way, this culminates in me feeling very put off by the prospect of being in contact with you.

Dear T,
Today's session was OK, I guess. You were understanding about the email, and it seems you'd also have been understanding had I emailed Friday night, like I'd originally wanted to. I could have done without the reminder that you have the same email policy for all clients and that it's not your favorite part of the job, but something you feel you must do (even though, like I said, I know plenty of therapists don't). At least you stopped talking about it when I said we'd discussed it (the email not being your favorite) once before and that it had been rather painful.

We may need to talk about all this more--some of the conversation felt incomplete. I could have delved more but was maybe afraid to? In part because I'll definitely want your support after tomorrow's IEP meeting, and I didn't want to risk feeling more distanced. Though it would have been nice to have felt more connected. Felt risky to try, though, at least down that vein--safer to talk about D, which tends to make me feel connected based on your usual empathy.

And I suppose we need to talk more in general about my fear of people's safety when they're out of town and where that comes from. If nothing else, I imagine you'll be traveling more this spring and summer. Maybe we can figure out some sort of compromise where I feel more comforted and you don't feel like I'm prying too much. Even something like a planned check-in, via email, text, whatever. Or your giving me some sort of transitional thing, whether an email (sent before you leave), voicemail, object from the office (pretty sure the stone has lost its energy, having not been in your office for nearly 2 years, aside from a few brief visits in my purse), short handwritten note, etc.

Would be better to talk about that soon, rather than waiting until you're about to go away again.

On a related note, I'm glad you've noticed that I'm doing better with sitting with things rather than immediately reaching out. You compared now to 2 years ago, and I'd agree. I would like to think that some of my anxiety this week was related to the IEP meeting tomorrow and general stuff about D and not just that I'm regressing or something. I'd like to think that it will also help once we can meet in person again. Even an occasional meeting outside would likely help, though I certainly hope we can resume regular in person by mid or late spring (even if we'll occasionally need to go virtual in there at times). I want to ask about that, but fear your reply.

I'm realizing a theme here...I suppose I'm not gaining anything by avoiding discussing things with you, am I? Maybe avoiding potential distress or discomfort, but is it really going to help me grow and progress if I keep avoiding that?

Love,
LT

Dear T,

I have written it, in an email, and I tell you what I'm so bloody close to hitting send. I can't see it happening any time soon any other way. My whole life spirals back to this one single event, and it feels surreal to know that everything stems from less than three lines of text. How can that be? I do think that's one of the big reasons I keep it all in. I've built it up into something enormous, and in scared that it will be seen as small once I let it out. By others and by myself. It changes things. Which is ironic, because I want things to change. I think.

I guess sending it by email doesn't mean it's over and done with though, does it. I guess that's only the beginning, and at least it would be a beginning. I just never wanted it to be like this, I wanted to be able to tell you in person, but who am I kidding.

I knew you’d say yes, but thank you, anyway. You made it possible in the first place, and I’m so grateful for that.

Dear K, a realisation! It's all about security. I feel now like I felt back at the beginning of seeing you. I feel like I'm searching for you. Like I can't find you. Like I want more and more from you. Like I need more. I feel restless and on edge. I feel insecure. It took time to build up trust and connection and eventually I got to a place of real security with you, but then the bomb went off didn't it. And now we are still in the fallout. I am still in the fallout. God knows where you are! I seriously wish you could have found a way to talk to me about this, over the years. I wish you had made time for this in our last meeting. I wish (in a way) that I hadn't told you not to reply to that email I sent you. I feel like in the coming months it will be time to write to you again, and I think I need to ask what we are doing here. I think we need to have a serious conversation about this, no matter the outcome.