Wishes

So I did text K and she replied to say we could do a half hour phone session at 1pm. Phew. I really needed her today and I’m glad she wasn’t thinking she shouldn’t offer extra support because I should be getting used to her not being here. It calmed me a little just knowing she was there and is here still. And her voice is genuinely the most soothing sound I’ve ever heard. I remember thinking what a nice voice she had the first time I spoke to her on the phone, before we met for the first time.

Anyway, having cried most of the morning I managed to do about 20 minutes work, and then called her. I cried throughout most of the phone call, and again most of the afternoon, but I do feel a little more settled now, albeit with an excruciating headache and very puffy, sore eyes. I have to get up at 5.30 tomorrow morning to take Nina to swimming training (a new weekend delight) so am hoping I sleep okay tonight, obviously. I’m going to have a bath and an early night and hope the screaming 4 year old next door doesn’t keep me awake again.

It’s weird how K being there today has made it easier to consider what it will be like to let her go. She said how it can really help to talk about the feelings, to shift them from body sensations into a more cognitive space. So I sobbed out how we hardly had any time left and how much it hurts, how it is so hard because there is so little space for the feelings and I basically have to survive the busiest time of the year at work till 14th December and then we end on the 17th. No space to feel it. And she reminded me how I felt this bad when she met me 3 years ago, and that these feelings are because of the deep and profound attachment wounds I already had, that they transcend her and I and are bigger than the end of therapy. And she reminded me that the pain of not having had a mother is the most devastating thing a human being can endure, apart from that of losing a child. She heard it all and validated it all. And then she made me talk about resources and the house move which annoyed me momentarily because I wanted to poke around at the attachment wound and cry more (lol), but, as always, she knew what she was doing; although the pain of the ending still looms large, it feels less all-consuming – I have a future again. She said her job is to listen to my pain but also to prop me up and help me see the light, and I sobbed (AGAIN) ‘you dooooo prop me up’. More wailing. Honestly, it’s been months since I cried as much as I have today.

She asked where the plans were up to with putting the house on the market and I said my Dad was coming to do some odd jobs next week so I can get it valued the following week and pick an estate agent. And she made me tell her what jobs needed doing and how I will choose an estate agent and everything, trying her best to lift me out of that dark and dismal place where I am consumed by attachment pain and emptiness. And she said how moving away from the site of so much trauma, all the trauma of my childhood, was going to be so healing, that it is the most important thing I can do for myself at the moment, better than any therapy I can do. She said to be living in the countryside, surrounded by nature instead of an industrial estate, and near Nina’s amazing school that I picked for her, away from the place where I am curled up in fear every time I go out in case I see my Mum or her friends, will be transformational for me. And I do agree (but it doesn’t stop me wishing she would stay).

Near the end of the call we took some breaths together and she told me to let the things we had talked about and all the big thoughts and feelings settle inside me like glitter in a snow storm (how much do we all LOVE her?!). And we said goodbye and I stayed in bed and cried a whole lot more, but it felt like releasing tears this time and not just re-traumatising myself, because I had been heard and seen. And then I wrote a wish list which I will give her on Monday to read through and respond to the next week, when she’s been able to decide what is possible:

My Wish List

• To hear that K’s surgery went okay and that she is recovering
• To hear where K moves to next year (so I know if I still want/need therapy in 2020 whether it will definitely be possible to work with her again)
• To end therapy in December with the intention of meeting in January 2020 for at least one or two sessions, regardless of where we are both living (she’ll be in the same county but it may be too far to drive to every week) and whether I want/need to be back in regular therapy at that point (i.e. to know we are both intending to definitely meet then, even if it just ends up being a life update)
• To be able to continue attachment therapy with K
• To know there is the possibility of moving to fortnightly sessions (which is how I would have liked things for the foreseeable future were we transitioning more naturally to working less intensely) if I don’t need therapy like I do now
• To be able to send an email if something big happens – new house, promoted/made permanent, experience a whole day where I’m not dissociated – this is what I would have expected to be able to do if we were ending for another reason
• To end on a double session so we all feel safe on arrival
• To have an extra session around the end (Fri 14th/Wed 19th) so it’s not straight from penultimate session (10th) to end of term (14th) to last session (17th) with no time to feel in between.

None of these things seem like they are unreasonable and beyond the realms of the possible, but I want her to have some time to consider her responses and work out what she is happy with. Ending with the intention of meeting in January 2020 is the most important one for me, but a whole year with no contact at all because she is recovering and on sabbatical would also be really hard. I’ll see what she says, but I trust her to work with me to make sure this ending isn’t a mess. I am actually really proud of how I’m able to keep working with her and even though I’ve lost a day of work today, I didn’t cut or do anything mental. I’m just really tired and dissociated now and not looking forward to 5.30am at all…