Dear T: I really need to tell you something XLVII

I had a crush on a medical doctor last year and I could have had a test done to um, help test my perfromance, but I said no because I was worried something else would instead during the test. Idk if it would have but I didn't want to find out. I kinda want to tell you this just to see what your thoughts would be.

It wasn't necessary anyways though.

Dr. S. 7 weeks since the goodbye email. I need to get over myself. Bottom line, I am not coping well.

Gosh, I miss you.

I need to figure out how to find some closure here.

I was watching a documentary tonight about a dog rescue centre in Australia.
The staff match the available dogs to the people that come looking for companionship.

A woman came in with her son...her husband died 18 months ago.
She didn't say how at first, and then she mentioned that he 'lost his battle with mental illness.'

Their son was the same age as Steve's eldest.

Falling apart whilst trying not to fall apart visibly.
This new version of me decided to speak up, instead of ruminate.

Sometimes I just need someone to bear witness, without offering insight.
Family offered insight instead.

I still pathetically wish you would respond to my email. But since I sent it 6 days ago - it's abundantly clear that you're not going to. Oh well. I don't know what I was expecting anyway.

I'll get over all of this eventually.

So many threads, and I am having trouble working out where we need to go this week.

The thought of watching the video makes me feel unwell, so I am not ready yet.

Thank you for giving me what I asked for. I'm turning the last page & closing this book now. It's not your job to provide closure for me; I need to find that inside myself.

Goodbye L, take care of you.

Dear T,

We started heading down a negative path there--well, you did!--with the "invasiveness" thing today. But we course-corrected very quickly. Your reassurance there helped. And that you seem to get it now--why I was trying to find those things out. That I was trying to feel safe. Not something I was doing to you.

I read some of the emails to ex-MC in working on that section. And feeling bad about how needy I was. I wish I could talk to you again before Friday... but I have the office hours for my course, and I'm hoping that will help, at least in the sense of maybe giving me direction and connecting to a few other people.

I'm also telling myself that it's just where I was in my therapy and development at that time. Like what you were saying about romantic breakups from long ago, how you were young and clueless then, and can look at it that way. I mean, it's not like I was 18, but I was still young in my therapeutic development. So I'll try to think of it that way.

Love,
LT

Would you quit your job and drop all your clients suddenly if you won the lottery?

Idk I guess that amount of money would change somebody.

Dear T,

Also, I thought the memoir office hours were 2 hours, but she said it was only 1. So I felt oddly abandoned there...and no one else backed me up, so maybe somehow only I saw the 2 hours listed? And it was basically just introductions. Which was nice, in a way, but I was hoping for more content, to be able to ask a question besides "I thought we had over an hour left, not just 10 minutes?"

Wasn't going to go anywhere tonight, but I suddenly have an extra hour, so perhaps I will... Or I'll just take a windy walk on the beach (which I guess is "somewhere").

Love,
LT

Did you find the abrupt end to this week's session odd like I did?

Dear T,

Ooh, I just wrote something (when I should be finishing my work and getting ready to head home) that I think you'll really like! I may need to share it with you tomorrow. Maybe that's why I slept poorly last night--my brain was working on this. I made a connection regarding my mom and her career/lessons about friendship that had never really occurred to me before.


Love,
LT

You said "you never had strep before even as a kid? Thats pretty cool."
.
I wouldn't necessairly call whats going on right now "cool."

Once upon a time I thought it would be a good idea to sign up for a grief poetry workshop.
Specifically around the topic of elegies

It starts in about an hour, and begins with an exercise writing about a dream of them...or making one up. Sleep is hard enough, so I have never dreamt of him.

I've spent the last three years trying to balance my thinking of him.

After the workshop I'm left with a sense that I really didn't know him well enough to write about him...which is a really odd feeling.

Do you ever feel like your therapist is a bit of a sociopath? I think my transference therapist might have been one.

Dear T,
Really wish you were in person this week...not sure how much I'll feel comfortable talking to you about tomorrow with H and D here. We'll see...
Love,
LT

I told you I sleep in jeans for sensory reasons and I saw the face you made before you got ahold of yourself. These jeans are kinda too much though.

T, i'm still angry with you. not so much for the boundary itself, but for not disclosing it until now. sure, you've apologised for that, but does an apology really offset a decade of non-disclosure of a pretty big (in terms of its impact on me) and important boundary? i feel like we've been doing therapy under false pretences. and while you're the one at fault, i'm the one who now has to resolve the situation--and the only way to do that is by somehow choosing between two options that will harm me. great work, dude.

'I didn't make the call because I couldn't talk about it twice' is a terrible excuse, I know.

I am keen to talk about it with you in a few days.

Dear T,
Feeling a bit weird about the session. I do wish you'd said in advance you'd have the background blurred. I think that alone might have been OK.

But when you shared your screen with the info on the writing group, and I said I was going to screenshot it--like, I was literally going to take a screenshot of that portion of the screen, not the whole thing--you seemed really anxious, like you suddenly pasted in the chat, then texted it to me. I've been a MacBook owner for many years; I know how to take a cropped screenshot.

And I shouldn't have mentioned the post-session "Safe travels" text, I guess.

I imagine you're just distracted with whatever you're working on while there. And maybe you were worried I'd somehow capture something in the background with the screenshot that would affect the privacy of wherever you were? That it wasn't about *me*, but about any client who might have done that? Much of the content of the session was good and helpful. At least Thursday, I'll be prepared for the blurring.

Love,
LT

Dear T,
Now I'm like, "Maybe I should just cancel Thursday." But I Imagine you'd be annoyed if I did that. I guess I have until 9:59 a.m. Wednesday to figure it out. High chance of regretting it if I did that now, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't give it back if I changed my mind, just due to your very limited schedule this week. That maybe you'd put someone else in there.

Love,
LT

Thanks for making that emergency appointment for tommorow. The thing is, I threw up after I emailed you and I felt a lot better. So here we go again with me being in a mental health crisis and it ending up that something physical was about to happen. Something we have been discussing.

Dr. S - I miss you. I cancelled on Dr. H for tomorrow. I didn't want to see him and I still don't. I figured (kept/keep thinking) that all that time I went to session when I didn't feel like it ... what did it get me. So, why go now if I don't feel like it. And after reading Dr. D's notes; why go and have more stuff written down about me... pathologizing my existence - my willingness to be open and explore parts of myself and to be honest with another person about that experience and how I am feeling about existing - about my everyday life?

You wrote notes like that about me. Some of it would be fair - some of it wouldn't.