Dear K

Sometimes therapy still feels really confusing. Sometimes I wish there was just simple transference going on, instead of all these different relationships because I have so many parts. You have a relationship with all of the alters – even the ones you’ve never met have silently watched you, and your relationship with adult me and other parts filters down to them. And as you pointed out yesterday, there are multiple relationships going on inside of me as well. The parts are watching me, modelling me, and they learn from our relationship – you and I – and how I am in the world too. It is hugely confusing sometimes. And other times it just is now, and trying to make sense of it all is not something I feel the need to do. Sometimes now therapy just unfolds the way it needs to, but today I feel stuck somewhere horribly painful where I wonder if I am just prolonging my agony by keeping doing this work.

Some parts want you to be their mum and sometimes I wish it were that simple – straightforward mummy transference. It’s not though, there are parts that find that idea completely weird and unappealing. Sometimes our relationship feels more like that of equals, collaborating on my healing together. Sometimes I want guidance on parenting from you and other times I am so little that it feels completely weird to be talking about ‘my daughter’ with you. Sometimes I want you to be a terrible mother whose children never want to see you, other times I need to know you are a good mother so I know you would have been ‘good enough’ to us if you were ours. I need you to be the same in the world as you are with us in therapy, so I know you are ‘real’ with us, but we also hate that you might be how you are with us with everyone. Sometimes it is reassuring when you talk about teenagers and I know you know what parenting them is like, but for teen parts it is painful knowing you have had teenagers of your own and that those teenagers are yours, whereas they are not. They are not anyone’s. So we want you to be close to your children, to have been there for them in the way we needed because then we can trust you will be here for us, but we also despise knowing that you have people of your own that you are excited to see and are there for in ways you cannot be there for us.

Sometimes therapy feels ‘enough,’ more so now than it ever has before, but other times it becomes so painfully apparent that it will never truly be enough to heal us the way we thought, many years ago now, that we could heal. The painful truth is that even when we have healed, we still won’t have a mum. We are motherless, me and the parts, and at times that feels more than we can endure. There is nothing there to salvage. The end of all this journeying will be to have accepted that and to be able to live with that empty space inside us without doing mad things to avoid it.

You are not our ‘go to’ when we feel bad anymore, we don’t get caught in that painful push/pull place of needing you and being scared to contact you at that same time, but we are not free from those bad feelings. We are not well yet, but we are more stable. I know you always said you would want to do this work with us even if we were stable, that you knew that some parts might be scared if the frequent (near-constant at the beginning) crises ended you would  go away. You’ve proved that isn’t true. We trust you now. And yet it is hard to be able to hold it all myself. It is hard needing less from you. There is still so much work to do but it is different now. Mostly – today it feels like an echo of the past inside of me, but I know it will pass and it didn’t occur to me to contact you to help with this.

Sometimes it feels magical that we are individuating and becoming more central in our own lives, but other times it is actually terrifying to be growing away from you. Sometimes the distance and space is comforting because it means our wellbeing is not dependent on you in the way it once was and we can restabilise before we see you. Sometimes knowing we wouldn’t die without you is reassuring, but other times we miss how important you were. Sometimes our own life takes up more space than you do, and other times there is too much space without you being so central. Sometimes I feel I’ve internalised you so much that I can feel you all around me, but when I am dissociated and cut off I can still find I have no sense of who you are. The only difference is knowing that we will reconnect and that nothing has changed for you.

You will always be my attachment figure, the person who taught me what safety feels like, but you are not the person who should be in that role and so you are never really mine. I know I’m not losing you yet, I know we have many more stones to unturn together and many more miles to walk beside each other, but young parts want you the way they always have and they don’t like this emerging independence. I want to get better but I don’t want getting better to mean losing you. You said yesterday how much we matter to you, all of us, and I know that is true. I know you’ve not worked with anyone else for as long or as intensely as you have with us, but I cannot ever matter to you as much as I need to. No one can, no one will. I love what I have with you but it still hurts sometimes.

Disturbances

Today is already a struggle. I’m not in a good place attachment-wise and I’ve not had feelings like this for quite some time. Or rather I have, but they’ve felt very separate from the therapeutic relationship. Today I feel very unsettled over therapy, attachment, the future, my relationship with K, and other things. It’s such a difficult place to be. I’m trying to work out what the actual problem is, or problems I should probably say as there are a number of things going on and combining to leave everyone feeling pretty disturbed today. It’s not a disturbance on the level I used to experience basically all the time after therapy, but it’s not easy and I am so tired and need to start work but haven’t managed that yet.

There are some very big themes coming up for my system as a whole right now, difficulties around separation and need and growing up, and what this means for a DID system. There are difficulties around shame when we share good news and successes and later feel over-exposed and disgusting. There are difficulties around food. And there are difficulties around realising how separate K and I really are which, ironically, come when good and exciting things happen in my life like the house move and thoughts over getting a dog – when good things are happening in my real life it really underlines that K and I are separate people and that outside the therapy room our lives don’t intertwine (not in a practical sense at least, I am aware that it is her support and encouragement that means I am making this move many years before I thought I would be able to). I know she is hugely excited about my house move, we’ve talked at great length about the possibilities around getting a dog, she is very involved in the changes, but she will still never see my new house. She will never pop round for tea and sit in the garden, or come round for dinner and to watch a film. The, sometimes harsh, reality of the therapeutic relationship hurts a lot less now I am (usually) able to take in what I get from it instead of lamenting over what it isn’t, but it still stings and I think to a certain extent it always will.

So these big themes are all causing a huge amount of inner turmoil – despite adult me being relatively stable last week, parts were in quite a lot of distress and the session yesterday was very fragmented with parts coming in and out and a lot of distress in the parts’ book which K reads every week. We did work with some parts and K has asked Phoebe (15) to find and bring a special stone with her next week and for other parts to write down people who have seen good in us. It wasn’t a bad session at all, just very full and incredibly fragmented and it really reminded me that I do have DID and that holding everyone is fucking hard work – it is something I do well so much of the time now without thinking about it a huge amount, but it is still incredibly hard having a whole bunch of needy children and stroppy, hurting teens and young adults inside! Sessions like that always leave us unsettled, which is inevitable I guess. All of the big themes need writing about and making sense of and working through, but now doesn’t feel a good time as I need to start work in a minute. So I will start with some other things which, though less intense, are still very unsettling with regards the future of my therapy.

There are some practicalities which are bothering me, namely about when my therapy session is. At the moment my session is Mondays from 4 till 5.30. I get home at 6 and until October last year I was then going to choir. I’ve been in my choir for a long time – it was the first thing I did when I began my recovery from CFS/fibromyalgia in September 2012 and I love it. I did take a break for about 10 months until March last year because it was proving too hard fitting everything in when I had two therapy sessions a week, but it is something I love and it was so nice to go back and to realise it was still there and the same as when I had stopped 10 months before. Although there were times I went and felt very wobbly after therapy, particularly around the time of K’s news she was taking this year off (which obviously didn’t end up happening), it has also been a stabilising force and it is one of the few places where I really feel I belong. We quite often get the giggles there as well, and it is where I met my new friend Sue who I feel a really strong connection with. It is also part of my life from ‘before therapy’ and it helped last summer to remember I am bigger than my relationship with K and I had a life before I knew her and there are so many parts of me that she knows nothing of (apart from what I tell her obviously). I wouldn’t want to meet up with friends after therapy because I would find it hard to keep boundaries and so on, but choir is a good mix as it is with people but there is not much time for chatting.

Until last night I hadn’t been since the end of October because I missed a couple in a row and realised I wouldn’t know the songs well enough to perform at Christmas so I decided to go back in January. And also I was very much enjoying coming home and being in my ‘therapy cocoon’ – this was such a new experience for me, leaving therapy and feeling better instead of worse, and I really loved it. And I missed the first three weeks this year for various reasons so went for the first time last night. The problem is that I felt really unsettled after therapy yesterday for the first time in quite a long time – I was planning to self-harm and so I went to choir to distract. It worked, but then when I got home at 9.30 I still needed to unpick what was going on for me and the parts, and why.  I think this is one of the key differences between my therapy now and my therapy until last year – I am able to process it and unpick it myself. Not only able to – I need to. I used to get home and just feel a great big glob of confusing mess inside me. I had no idea what I was feeling or why and so I didn’t ever try and process either the session or the therapeutic journey afterwards. I wasn’t able to and it was just a matter of holding on tightly until things settled a little. Sometimes (often) insights came to me (weeks) later, and often parts would write in our parts’ journal, but there was no way for me to untangle what was going on emotionally. Last night I really needed to do this, and I did do it to a certain extent – but it was very late. I had a lovely chat with my friend which really helped me a lot because I was able to work out what was going on and how it was all linked together, and she validated it all. It definitely helped calm me. The problem is I ended up going to bed very late and today I feel tired and groggy and unsettled. I needed to write out what was going on last night as I made sense of it and I was too tired in the end to do that. I’m beginning to really need quiet time after therapy and so I wonder if choir is incompatible with that, and this makes me sad.

My therapy sessions cost £70 for the 90 minutes so I guess my question is – what do I do to ensure I am getting the most of my sessions? I do not want to stop choir, but I think I might need to for a while. When we move in a couple of months Nina will not be sleeping at my Dad’s during the week anymore (she’s slept there one night a week since she was two and a half so this is a big change). So firstly I think maybe I should make the most of the next 2 or 3 months of having some space after therapy as this will soon end and Nina will be home when I get back from therapy. And secondly I’m not sure she would be okay being left until 9.30 on a week night yet, and even if I could get someone to babysit each week (not my Dad as he doesn’t have a car), I hate having a babysitter during the week as they like to chat when I get home and I just want to defrag and go to bed!

I am also worried about how it will be to be back with Nina after therapy every week – will it give me time to decompress and process what has happened in a way that ensures I am making the most of my time there? In the past if I had to be with her after therapy it was just a matter of survival, but then after therapy was always so awful that it was always just about surviving until the next session anyway. As I wrote above- things are very different now. I have thought about asking K if we can change days, but Nina swims Tuesday-Thursday evenings and so the only other time I could do is after work on Fridays (which might be better as Nina will sleep at my Dad’s every other Friday when we move) and I’m not sure K would either want or be able to work then. Not every week at least – we do meet Fridays occasionally. I don’t want to ask her because it is so triggering discussing any change and it always reinforces that it is her job to spend time with us.

I guess it may involve making a clear plan with Nina about what happens when I get home on Monday evenings – we eat dinner together and then I go to my study or room for a couple of hours to be by myself. I’m not usually upset when I get home now, it’s more a case of needing to spend time being with how I am feeling and settling myself and the parts. I think Nina would understand this (and to be honest she usually goes to her room now anyway) and it would be okay – it may even help in some ways as I sometimes enter a freeze state after therapy and find it hard to eat or move much really. Having to interact and make dinner might help shift things internally. On the other hand, I know K and I need to go deeper into #themotherwound at some points this year, and that time when it all hit when I got home in December was horrific. Whilst I don’t think it would have hit like that if Nina was home, I don’t think that is necessarily a good thing either, and I don’t want my sessions to shift and not be what I need because I am needing to go straight back to parenting afterwards. I know my sessions when Nina is home for whatever reason are different and it’s a lot of money to be spending if I’m not getting what I need.

So, these are the practical concerns. I’ll try and untangle the much deeper stuff that is going on either this evening or later in the week. It’s all stuff I need to take to K and it’s hard – we’ve not really needed to talk about our relationship for a while and I think it is going to mean young parts facing some uncomfortable truths around the changes in therapy as we become stronger and more individuated and less dependent on K. I guess in some ways we need some reassurance that our relationship is still strong and real even though we need her less. It is hard for young parts to sense the changes and still feel so very little and not ready to move away from her.

 

 

 

Sunday evening ramble

Things settled. As they always do. Somehow, now, in the midst of the overwhelm storm I can hold on to the fact that the feelings I am flooded with don’t reflect current day reality. Sure, I have a lot on my plate, but those thoughts of “I can’t cope” and “I can’t keep going, I need to die” are in response to feelings that mostly belong in the past.

The decision-making is done. I viewed the house we liked again on Monday, my offer was accepted, I have the mortgage decision in principle and the memorandum of sale, and all the legal stuff is beginning to happen. House buying laws in England and Wales are ridiculous as anyone can pull out at any time in the process unlike in some other countries where a deposit is paid at a much earlier point in time, providing all parties involved with an element of security. However, I don’t think a reform of our law regarding property ownership is going to happen anytime soon, so, all being well we will hopefully have a completion date of mid-April which fits perfectly with the end of the manic 6 months at work so I couldn’t have asked for better timing for a house move (barring last weekend which was extremely stressful).

I am excited. I am tired today as I’ve worked literally all weekend (Nina was away) and will be working all week as normal too. I’ve sat on the sofa working while next door’s kids have been screaming, shouting, running around and swinging on the banister for 2 whole days. I was woken up at midnight and 7am by the 5-year-old next door screaming. This is frustrating but it is nice to know we only have to put up with this another 2 or 3 months. It doesn’t look like our new neighbours have children (I looked into their garden and there were no children’s toys and the estate agent says they are out all day) and I’ve heard soundproofing in the new builds where we are moving is pretty good. K and I had a big conversation about noise on Monday and I’ve realised this whole experience with our neighbours the past couple of years has tapped into bigger and older experiences of having my sleep disturbed and interrupted by shouting and drunk behaviour when I was growing up. Whenever I hear unexpected noise I feel invaded. My space is intruded upon. I think in part I experience the presence of other people as intrusive – I don’t want to be reminded other people are there at all, especially when I’m in my own home. And the minute I hear noise I go into fight/flight, anticipating something bad is about to happen (which of course it often was when I was a child).

Anyway, so I’m feeling weird about therapy at the moment. I don’t want to go tomorrow really. Last week was triggering because we were excited about the house and showing K pictures and parts were in and out and K struggled to get adult me online and had to be very firm and then someone little pretended to be grown up and she could tell and it was funny but also disconcerting. And then shame swept in because we had shown too much joy and excitement and felt over-exposed. I hate it that showing too much of any kind of emotion is such a huge trigger. I actually get more triggered showing positive emotions than negative ones these days…

And life outside therapy is hard because therapy has changed. The whole dynamic has shifted and it’s good but also hard – it’s as though I’ve reached a more stable place with it, where K’s absence doesn’t consume me and where I don’t think of her much between sessions (compared to how it was at least!), which is great and what the aim is of course, but I am losing something too and that really hurts and young parts absolutely hate it. I miss the times when I desperately needed K, even though those years were completely awful and I needed her all the time and yet couldn’t have her and life was unbearable. I don’t know. It’s weird because I do still need her, but not how it was. And even though I don’t pine for her in the same way life isn’t great either. Life is better, undoubtedly, but still hard and painful and lonely. On Nina’s birthday she got very upset about getting older and wanting to be little again. I cannot compute this because I was always desperate to grow up and leave home, but maybe it is a little like what I am experiencing with K now. Things are changing, I am less enmeshed with her, and it feels a little like I have had something taken away I’m not ready to lose. I also know if she were to go away I wouldn’t cope very well, so…

This weekend has been pretty bad with work and I’m tired and can’t make sense of things so I’ll leave it there.

Overwhelmed

This will be a brief post, and I don’t want to descend into a moan about how hard my life is – these feelings and thoughts and emotions are trauma-based and not entirely related to my actual, current life anyway – but I am really struggling at the thought of how I am going to survive the day, and the next few weeks and months. Somehow I’ve ended up sorting out legal stuff and the practicalities of a house move at the same time as work goes insane every year and it is Nina’s birthday also.

My anxiety and overwhelm levels are absolutely through the roof. I am exhausted as a I barely slept last night and apart from Friday that has been the pattern for a week now. And I have to work today, and also the next 13 days in a row, because it is the absolutely manic season at work. I could do with a nap before working but I am too tightly coiled inside to achieve sleep. My body is screaming at me that something is really wrong and I know sleep is what I need to make things feel manageable but it proves so elusive at times.

Yesterday we viewed two houses in the morning before Nina’s party in the afternoon. One was completely gross and much too small, the other was really nice and I have put an offer in. It is not my dream house, far from it, being a new build and open plan downstairs, but having trawled rightmove for a year now, I don’t think we are going to get anything better in the right location and within budget. It is semi-detached so only potential neighbour noise from one side, it has a garage, and it has a third bedroom so I can work at home without sitting on the sofa. This will be hugely helpful when I am working when Nina comes home from school, or at weekends or school holidays – I often end up working with my laptop on my bed when she’s home which is just plain rubbish, especially when I need books and papers spread out around me. The second and third bedrooms are really tiny, so Nina will be quite cramped, but to be honest what do teenage girls do in their bedrooms – sleep, dance around in front of the mirror, use devices… With a study I’ll be able to write in there or do craft things in the evenings too, so she can have the living space. And in terms of making my life easier in practical terms, this house is right because of where it is. And there is loads of green space around and lovely cycling and a nature reserve, and only a 20 minute drive to my favourite beach. It is not my dream house or my dream location, but it is much better than where we are now, and in around 4 or 5 years we’ll be able to move again and get something bigger in a different place.

I’ve not heard if the offer has been accepted yet, but I am able to increase a little if necessary. I am also going for a second viewing tomorrow to check out measurements a little more and to see if any neighbours are around to get a sense of who they are and what the quality of those particular new-build properties is like. We drove and walked around a little yesterday evening and the area was really quiet, eerily quiet almost. I’ve heard good things about it from people who live there. I did talk it over with my Dad and he thinks I am doing the right thing (he came to the viewings), but I just hate being solely responsible for such a big decision.

None of this explains why I am so incredibly anxious. So what is it? Mostly it is about noise. I am completely petrified that we will end up in one of the new builds with atrocious sound-proofing and I will lose my mind because we’ll hear every sneeze and door-opening and murmured conversation from next door and I won’t be able to sleep or relax or work at home. I’ve done a lot of googling and it seems some new builds have wonderful sound insulation and others are shockingly bad. The level of anxiety this is provoking is really quite ridiculous and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m anxious about other things, and I know the passive influence of young parts worrying about things like getting a dog, and how stressful it would be if we did, is not helping, but the potential noise is definitely the worst. If it was a bigger house I guess it would be less important, but the house is only one room wide so there is no potential for a different room configuration if noise is a problem. The experience we’ve had with our neighbours for the past 18 months has made me totally neurotic, and the children there are at their Dad’s every other weekend so it’s not even like they are there all the time.

I don’t know what to do about these anxieties. There are parts feeling desperately suicidal today because life is so hard, they are not old enough for these worries and for parenting and adult life generally, and the next weeks and months and years feel unmanageable. The party yesterday was hard because teen parts get triggered when Nina has friends over and one of the friends is such a catty bitch (Nina is trying to let her friendship with her go, but it is tough doing that when they are together at school every day) and we felt quite intimidated by her. And Nina has a cold and this has triggered all my health anxiety because I just can’t get a cold at the moment with the amount of work that needs doing. If I take days off sick I will just have even more to cram in to the other days. (My union is calling for a strike on workload so I am not exaggerating how ridiculous it is in the field I am in, even relatively robust people are buckling under the pressure).

I realise a lot of these worries are very normal for people making such a big decision which involves a lot of money and will affect them for years to come. I do think they are amplified by PTSD and parts though, and everything gets tangled together into a general feeling of ‘I can’t cope’ which is just a non-specific body memory of overwhelm and panic. I am going to try and get my sleep-deprived brain to do some work now, and try and drink water and eat good food today to try and fight off any cold germs that might be coming my way. I just really want someone to look after me and tell me if I am doing the right thing. I wish I could see 3 months into the future and know everything will be okay and the house move will be a positive one and that life will get just a little bit easier.

Thank You Universe

Today is Nina’s 12th birthday and we have extra cause for celebration as I’ve this morning accepted an offer on our house! It’s a first time buyer who liked it and so when I reduced the price yesterday he put in an offer of the full asking price.

I spent Monday in therapy in a state of utter overwhelm and despair that we would never move. The location I’d visited on Sunday and decided would be “good enough” seemed like a no go due to getting Nina to and from school as there is no public transport and even though it’s a 10 minute cycle ride the road is ridiculously dangerous. It all felt hopeless and I was feeling completely exhausted from all the driving around to get her to school plus also broken car woes. K told me I would magic something up because I always do, but I was completely disbelieving.

Anyway, on Tuesday I found out we can pay for her to go on a school bus each day, yesterday I reduced the price, today I accepted an offer and on Saturday we are viewing two chain-free houses, either of which I think would be perfectly fine for us and a big improvement on where we are now for all the reasons I’ve posted about before. So I will hopefully put an offer in on the one we like best on either Saturday or Monday.

I am so happy and excited – all being well we will be able to move in 2 or 3 months tops! It finally feels like everything is coming together and I couldn’t be more relieved and excited for our fresh start in a safe place that is surrounded by countryside and which will make daily life a million times easier too. Thank you Universe!

I need to be somewhere else

Today has been utterly rubbish and I have accomplished next to zero work-wise which means I will need to work a day of the weekend. I am completely exhausted as I’ve not slept enough the past few nights and stayed up too late last night. My dreams have been intense and disturbed for the past 10 nights; trauma dreams running all night in one messy, emotionally charged tangle leaving me dissociated and done in before I even open my eyes.

And this evening I am at the limits of my coping capacities. I hurt. My brain is overloaded. My body is on edge. I just want to curl up in my pyjamas with a blanket but instead I have just had to go out in the cold to take Nina to swimming training and soon I need to go to the pet shop and supermarket, make packed lunches and sort the kitchen, before picking her up again at 8.45 (only to spend nearly an hour feeding her and chivvying her into the shower and up to bed).

I set really specific new moon intentions on Sunday evening around my house sale and the house we liked in the nearby village. I have been picturing us living in the house, happy and settled and safe, because I trust the Universe to give me what I send out energetically. Yet today I heard that a cash buyer has put an offer in on the house we liked in the village we want to be in, and my estate agent thinks I should drop the price of ours because we’ve had about 10 viewings in the past 2 weeks and no one has wanted to put an offer in. It’s long and boring but basically the house we liked was well under my maximum budget and it would have been okay to accept less on ours if we had been able to put an offer in there. Now it is gone. And there is nothing else at all suitable on the market at the moment because we are very limited in where we can move to because it needs to be in Nina’s school’s catchment area so that she gets the school bus, but it can’t be on my Mum’s side of the city. And it is very unlikely we will find something else with enough space that is not a stretch financially – we don’t need a bigger house really, just one that is laid out a little differently to give me space to work when Nina is home, and to give us more space too – something I really need because of my complex-PTSD symptoms. The house we liked was pretty small but I could have had a tiny study and we could have fitted a table in the kitchen so two downstairs rooms instead of the one we have now, and it had a pretty garden and was exactly where we want to be.

I am also massively in debt which I find really stressful, so I want to pay some off and put a bit in the bank for emergencies and other unforeseen stuff when we sell. Each month at the moment my debt is creeping up because of paying for therapy and I just want to clear some of it. And I want to move because living here is stressful – I worry all the time I will bump into my Mum, brother or someone they know and Nina can’t get the bus to school, only home, so I drive her up the road to a friend’s house every morning to get a lift in with her which takes me 30 minutes and then I cycle to work. So basically I leave the house at 8 and get to work at 9 despite it being only a 25 minute bike ride away. It is exhausting, especially as she swims 3 nights of the week and the other night I have therapy so the evenings are often a rush too. When we move it will be to a village with a school bus so she will be completely independent getting to and from school again, like she was for the last year of primary school, and she will move to a different swimming club with more convenient training times. Well, this was the plan. Who knows what will happen now… Another thing my trauma-deformed brain loves – uncertainty and unknowns. I’ve spent today desperately trying to get ‘things’ under control, looking at maps and bus routes and houses and money, even though part of me also knows that there is just no way of controlling things at the moment and I just need to wait and see what happens.

I just want to sell our house. I am desperate to move to the countryside, pay off a big chunk of debt, get a dog and make a fresh start. I am so in need of a new beginning, new people, a community, and to be somewhere I feel psychologically safe. The move is about so much more than where we are physically. It will be somewhere my Mum has never been and never goes. I know I am very lucky to have been able to get on the housing ladder, to have a roof over our heads at all, and I know that we always have enough money for food and essentials and nice things sometimes too, and I am very good at practicing gratitude for all these things every day. Today, though, it all just feels unfair – being a solo parent is HARD, so hard; I have to pay for everything out of one salary, I have to do all the driving around and everything at home, I have to sort out all the life admin stuff for two people myself, and there is no one to provide emotional support to me apart from K for 90 minutes each week. This week my new-to-me car broke and had to go back to the dealership so it has been a jumble of lifts and borrowed cars and extra stress. In the morning I need to drop Nina at 8, take my Dad’s neighbour’s car back, cycle to work and then collect another car from a friend on my way home before taking Nina to swimming for 6pm.

I saw the tiny sliver of new moon on the way home just now and it looked so beautiful and hopeful. I am trying so hard to stay present and trust that everything will work out the way it needs to, that we will get a buyer and a new house even better than that one will come on the market at the right time, but it is hard to trust and let things unfold as they need to when so much of my wellbeing seems to be dependent upon this move happening. And it is hard to keep reminding myself that therapy has been and continues to be a necessity, because ultimately it is the reason I am in debt and it is the reason we have a really low budget for a house. I know it’s not therapy to blame really, it’s things that happened long ago that I have had to feel and face and untangle, but it is galling to work as hard as I do and to be struggling and unable to live on my income because I am spending so much money on something I shouldn’t have needed in the first place. I am trying to let this go, to see the two as separate (the money for therapy and the house move) because the reality is I have needed therapy and probably would have lost my job without it, if not my life. It is pointless to fall into a place of being angry with myself for needing so much therapy and yet it is hard not to.