Remembering

Edit: I opened it because Tuesday was too long to wait! It was actually a really warm and K-like message inside, with love and kisses and a sense of actually knowing who I am! She also said she hopes I am okay – it must be so weird for her not knowing. I would find it weird to be her.

A birthday card from K arrived this morning. “What happens if K doesn’t send a card?” I asked R on Wednesday. He said she wouldn’t send one, because she wouldn’t want to muddy the boundaries. I thought she would though, because to not would be really weird after all the years of cards and gifts for my birthday. And I sent her a card back in March even after the weird/unsettling/cold/abrupt email thing. We have a whole shoe box full of cards she’s given us and that we have made together for spring and winter solstice and things. Last year she posted a book she had got for us. It was a copy of her favourite ever book that we had read together lots of times, about a kitten who is abandoned and then taken in by a new family. It would have been very sad if she had forgotten or decided not to send a card this year. As it is, it feels like the light is still on for us.

Likely it won’t be the warmest of messages (I’ll find out on Tuesday!) but it is comforting that she remembered and that she didn’t decide not to send a card because I’m not in therapy right now. And in some ways it is easier this year that I am not in therapy with her but unable to get to her because of the pandemic. My birthday last year was awful for numerous reasons. I was meant to have a double therapy session on the day, which we were all really looking forward to because therapy was nice then and nice times didn’t trigger us anymore (therapy on my birthday the first year I worked with K was so painfully triggering and awful and I ended up self-harming in the bath in the evening). We were looking forward to two hours in nature together. As it was, it was therapy on a screen and she brought the dogs to see us and tried so hard to be there, but we just couldn’t feel any of it. So I guess this year will be better?

There is something huge I need to write about – I saw a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder (ADHD) a couple of weeks ago. It is huge and things have been quite a rollercoaster since then, learning more about the condition and seeing how pervasively it affects my life (and interestingly has got worse since healing more complex trauma and dissocation). I have started writing about it, but haven’t had chance to finish. It doesn’t feel urgent and I am just settling into it and getting my head round it.

Anyway, I do miss K a lot this past few days. I felt like I was drifting further and further away from her earlier this week but then after acupuncture on Wednesday I got hit by huge waves of grief again, just needing her to help me work out what to do about Nina’s ADHD assessment and treatment (the NHS waiting times are frankly ridiculous, but taking her privately is stupidly expensive) and to help me hold all I am discovering about myself. R said the treatment likely unblocked all the grief I was holding. I felt loads better yesterday though, so I’m glad it came. Maybe I just need a mum right now, with all that is going on!