Not enough time

Despite the growth and relative-stability of the past two months, there are still times when the pain of the ending of my therapy with K feels too much to bear, when it feels unsurvivable and I just want to curl up in a hole and die so I don’t have to feel it. And there are times when the pain of not having a mum feels so acute it quite literally takes my breath away. What I wouldn’t give to have a mum to reach out to for support and love to help me with the pain of this ending (and yes, I know I wouldn’t be in this place if I had a Mum like that but sometimes the absence of any kind of mum, however bad and dysfunctional, is so all-consuming – I don’t even have someone rubbish but who tries hard and can just make me tea and crumpets and watch a film with me). It is a year today that my Mum received my letter cutting contact completely. I have no doubts about this decision, I am even more sure now than I was then that it was, and remains, the only tolerable way forward, but her absence from my life is still so present sometimes. My daughter starting secondary school has been such a big (though hugely happy so far) transition for us both, and not having a mum to even send a photo of her in her new uniform to – it just hurts.

This evening at the end of my session both of these came at once. I knew another wave of grief over K was bearing down, felt it in the car on the way to session, and then the tears came during our breathing and mindfulness practice at the start of the session. A brief interaction before we started breathing was all it took for the enormity of what I am losing to hit me – we are SO good, she is so attuned, we have something so real and whole and containing. And our time together is ticking away. I named the feelings behind the tears, named the pain, sobbed that “I don’t want you to go away but I can’t talk about it today” and we put it to one side, knowing it is there, but not going there today. This is one of the greatest skills I have learnt through my time with K – being able to name pain and leave it, so that it is present but not opened up. At the beginning I would have needed to poke that wound as hard as I could today, but now I can know it is there and leave it alone till another day.

I cried a lot on the way home, feeling the full force of what is ahead of me and what is behind me at the same time. I am losing something so real, so tangible, so valuable to my life. I am losing someone who knows me better than anyone, who can always now help me make sense of my reactions and struggles. I took so much muddle to her today after an overwhelming week of anxiety and panic attacks and insomnia and flashbacks, and we made sense of it all. And losing her is triggering the biggest loss, the loss I carry with me everywhere, the loss that has shaped me into who I am and colours every other loss. I am doing my best to hold both these things separately, and at arm’s length, to feel these two huge losses and not lose myself inside them. It is hard though, so fucking hard.

We are ending in December and I plan to work every week until this time. So I am doing what I didn’t think I could do. We are working through the ending, but also working through it, working despite it, because we are still getting therapy work done which has come as a surprise. It has surprised and pleased me that I am still able to take everything to her the way I always have, despite the maybe-forever ending that is looming. “We still have time” is something she has said in recent weeks. And yes, we do, but not enough – never enough. Still so much comes up each week. Me and the parts made a list of things we want to do before the end – the trip to the forest, a memory jar, some art projects, a film night, taking our rabbits to see her again – and we are scared we will run out of time. We have 13 sessions left now. I feel physically sick when I think how fast they will go. I don’t want to waste a single second, and yet at the same time I want the ending to fade into the background so K and I can create more healing alchemy together and not be permanently dragged down by a pain that is bigger than us, a pain that is not about her and I but about things that happened long, long ago.

I was freaking out before my session and messaged my lovely friend asking her what the positives of this ending were again… And her messages were there waiting for me when I got out this evening – K will get better, I will have time and money to do nice things and go to pretty places and be able to integrate all the work K and I have done. Her messages helped so much, reminded me that there is life after therapy and that I have been able to see these things at other times over the past couple of months. I want time to stand still so I can keep K forever, but I know that when this pain has subsided a little in the days to come I will once more be eager to get on with my life and continue my journey, even though this journey will take me away from her.