Drowning in dissociation

Things are really awful and I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’m writing this in a last attempt to settle things because I really don’t want to self-harm and yet that is all I can think to do now. I have to work tomorrow and I need something to stop all the hell that has decided to unleash itself inside me. I feel so fucking alone.

The two and a half week therapy break was a lot harder than I expected. K and I met on Friday and we met again today, and yet despite spending 3 hours with her in the past 4 days and having text contact on Friday evening and this morning I still feel as though I’m on the break because I am so dissociated. I don’t feel as though I’ve seen her. I feel totally cut off from her and I want to die. I just want her. I want to feel connected to her. I feel completely annihilated and swept away on an abandonment tidal wave that isn’t even real. She was there, in the room, and yet I couldn’t reach her. On Friday I didn’t even realise I hadn’t reached her. I thought I was there and normal, but I got home and felt as though I hadn’t seen her at all. I hadn’t even realised the break was hard. I got really badly triggered by something that is actually huge and life-changing – potentially life-threatening – early on in the break, something I won’t write about now but that is really huge, and I needed K to help me hold it and help me keep hold of myself as the grief unfurled and anxiety over the future engulfed me. She wasn’t there and I got completely lost in it. It dominated the session and so we didn’t even talk about the break. She said it was no surprise I’d ended up in such a state over this huge thing during the break, and it wasn’t till I got home that I realised how hard the break had been, how hard it was to be experiencing something so big and not have her to steady me. I wasn’t counting the days or anything, it wasn’t like breaks used to be, and in some ways this seems to have made re-connecting even harder than normal. I pushed it all away because I wanted to be okay with breaks, having grown so much, and I didn’t put any coping strategies in place at all. I was so determined to be fine with breaks now that I ended up struggling really badly. Breaks used to be so awful. I used to always end up in crisis and needing weekend support and extra sessions once they were over. I thought I was past that, having survived and thrived over the month break last August, and having worked towards an ending with K all those months. Evidently not.

And I am so disappointed that this still happens. There were no pre-break meltdowns, we didn’t even talk about it in therapy in the build-up, and Miffy wrote how she was a bit worried but she knew K would come back and that we wouldn’t die. Two days in to the break I realised how my experience when K was away did used to be that I was actually dying, even though when I said I couldn’t survive without her I didn’t realise that is what I was experiencing – it wasn’t till there was a break that didn’t feel life-threatening that I realised that I did feel I was dying before. So I thought I would breeze through the 18 days now I didn’t have a felt sense that my life was in danger, and because I have been managing the time between sessions so well recently and really growing in the time between them.  I had reached a point where I was able to carry K with me and didn’t lose all sense of her the minute I was away from her (or even when I was with her sometimes). And now I just feel terrified that she will go away because evidently I STILL can’t hold on to her. I thought I didn’t need her anymore but I really do and I am scared that the life-changing thing will take me away from her, at a time when I will need her more than ever.

Logically I don’t know why she would go away because I still need her. I know that makes no sense. She has been patient and kind, we are working by phone on Friday this week and have an email check-in on Wednesday. She says all will be well and I will find her again. I can’t trust that though. I’d forgotten what this place was like, this place where she just doesn’t exist. And I think maybe it is worse now because I know what it is like to be able to hold on to her and now I can’t again. This place feels so bleak and barren and lonely. It is a terrifying place to be in. Being away from her is so painful in a way it hasn’t been for so many months and I don’t want to be back here. Friday feels forever away, Monday when I see her feels even further. She asked me to write a piece on what our room means to me, because we have so many memories in there and she thought it might help me re-connect. I want to try and do that but I am scared I won’t be able to feel anything. How can my brain completely erase someone who I have spent so many hours with and who has been so central in my life for so many years? It is fucking infuriating and crazy-making.