Speak now

It’s actually feeling pretty horrendous right now that in less than 48 hours I’ll be ending a call with K with no idea of when I’ll see or speak with her again. On the face of it I’m fine, but lurking below the surface is a lot of shock and disbelief that this is really happening. It all seems so sudden. It is hard to believe I’ve been trying to make online therapy work for 5 months. Even harder to believe that it could be 6 months or more until we can actually see K. So much could change in that time.

I keep thinking of what I can do to make sure I get what I need from Monday’s session and come away settled enough and with enough of K to sustain me for this time apart.

I can’t.

I can’t get what I need to sustain me for that time via a screen because if I could, I wouldn’t be in this position of having to take a break – remote therapy would be sustaining me.

I want the session to be what my whole system needs but it can’t be. I want our tears to be held and soothed but they won’t be. Most likely I’ll spend the session in a dissociated disconnected haze, unable to reach K, with young and teen parts creating internal mayhem but not being able to verbalise anything, and then the whole fucking horror show will hit afterwards and it will be too late. K will know absolutely nothing about how we are for months and months. Whatever happens afterwards will be mine alone to hold. It won’t get shared the following week. It won’t get shared ever.

I don’t want to do this. I keep thinking of a million things we haven’t told K. I keep thinking of how we will survive the winter and Christmas and our mum’s birthday and the anniversary of Jess killing herself without K. Will she even think of us on those awful dates that shape my year and have shaped our work for 5 years? I don’t want to have to get through those times without her, but even if we keep working like this it still feels as though we have to do it without her this year because we cannot reach her. We haven’t reached her since 16th March. This whole thing is so fucking heart-breaking and I wish time could stop so that Monday never comes and we don’t have to say goodbye. Or I wish that my life could be suspended so that time continues to pass without me being aware and then it would be the day before we are actually seeing K at last.

Everyone always says ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, but when you have a dissociative disorder that is not true. When you have spent your whole life dissociated, absence only makes the heart forget. It is hard to believe we won’t be forgotten when we grew up invisible and when we are so good at erasing people from our mind. We can’t hold on to people we love so how we can understand that other people can hold on to us? Can they? Will K? What does it even mean to be held in mind? What does it mean that K holds us all in her heart? Will she be holding us there when we are not paying her to?

This past 5 months has been so fucking traumatic for young parts. For all of us. (And for the whole world, I know). I can imagine that if and when we finally get to be in the room with K again there will be a whole lot of howling and screaming to be done as we are finally able to really feel and express what it was like to so suddenly not be able to get to her, not be able to physically see her, after all those years of her being the safe haven in our week. It is almost our worst nightmare coming true, with no time to prepare and at a time when we needed her more than ever.

I miss her so much it is fucking agony really. An agony I know is there but I cannot connect to. The only way I am managing to get through this build up to the break is with the knowledge that whether we work remotely or not it still feels like we are on a break. And I know in some ways this way is better and there will be growth despite it being difficult, but I am sick of having to be strong and brave and look on the bright side and find my own stability. I only want K. I only want to be in my safe space. I only want to know we are in this together but we are not anymore. From Monday at 5.30 I am in this alone. Our relationship is paused which basically means it doesn’t exist in any tangible way anymore.

K said back in March, early on when we were discussing the fact that we both needed to prepare for not meeting for a while, that she was so committed to this work, to continuing it and making it work. We have both tried so hard and it has been painful and tense and our work has had an edge to it a lot of the time, a harshness it had not had for more than 18 months. I’m scared she won’t be committed when we go back or won’t want us to go back in 6 months because that commitment will have disappeared with this space.

On Monday we want so much – stories and drawing together and talking about the dogs and all the things we have done together and telling her our plans and how we will survive and how much she means to us – but I can feel it will all fall flat and it just fucking hurts that we have to take a break under these circumstances even though of course if we weren’t in this stupid situation we wouldn’t have needed a break at all. We want to tell her everything we’ve been waiting to tell her – tales of love and shame and grief and regret – but I don’t know if we will be able to speak at all and then it will be too late and all those unspoken words and stories will have to be kept inside until it is time to speak again. If that time ever even comes.