Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

May was a really tough month, unsurprisingly, and this blog post was started right at the beginning of it – and then sat languishing as an open tab alongside tabs for a million past exam papers – whilst I did my best to get through the busiest working month of my teaching calendar and trying not to emotionally fall apart.

Mid-May signalled a year since that god awful session where Anita came back from her break and then dropped the bomb about her thinking she’d have to give up her long-term clients…but then at the end of that session doubling back and saying that we’d “find a way through and still try to connect”.

Then of course, there was the agony of flip-flopping back and forth over the next couple of weeks until I just couldn’t take it anymore and then ultimately, I walked away on the 2^nd June with the agreement that Anita and I would come back together in September and either figure things out if she felt better, or end properly if the picture was not improving. I hoped she’d get better, I hoped she’d feel like I was worth her time…but nope. Her silence has been so loud that it’s been impossible to ignore and this ‘end but not’ has done so much damage…on top of so much damage that was already there.

And so here I am – a year and a day on…and we have not yet had that meeting to end, to honour what once was such an important and meaningful relationship, or to simply say goodbye and give me the opportunity to get my things back. The thought of holding my baby elephant in one hand and my storybooks in the other actually fills me with the most profound sadness, but I know it’s something I’ll have to go through in order to move on and past this. Again, given the kind of work we were doing, it’s just terribly poor that A hasn’t been able to return those things to me in order for those young parts to get a kind of closure.

It’s been a completely horrible year but this last week or so has been really terrible. Anniversaries are hard and I knew I’d find it difficult – a year without A – I could never have imagined that eighteen months ago and yet here we are, or rather, here I am.

I wasn’t expecting the wheels to totally come off yesterday given that I had survived most of May with the minibus reasonably intact and everyone more or less safely strapped in – but the wheels came off, and the windows and doors blew off, and the engine exploded, and the steering wheel came loose in my hand, and the gear stick snapped, and the brakes failed, and the air bag activated…. and you get the picture. It was a total shitshow.

I woke up and just felt completely and utterly broken, externally frozen and internally in complete meltdown. I thought a walk might help so I took myself off out to the river having failed to motivate myself to get up and out of bed on Saturday where I, instead, spent several hours like a zombie staring into nothingness when I was literally in my most favourite place in the world and a stone’s throw from the sea and sand – big gold star for brilliant dissociation skills there RB.

Usually, I find walking in nature soothing and settling or at least distracting, but all I felt yesterday at the river was total shit and anger and upset and then I started spiralling and my brain started serving me so many episodes of rejection and abandonment – and of course threw in the Em stuff for good measure. Thoughts of self-harm crept in (just because I really need that right now!) which was especially worrying given how long it’s been since I have hurt myself deliberately. There’s been a lot of dissociation related accidents with the oven and burns lately, but none of them have been on purpose. Anyway, the more I walked the worse it all got, and then my brain started really panicking and began unpicking my relationship with Elle and then I started totally unravelling… AND OH MY FUCKING GOD MAKE IT STOP ALREADY!!!!!!

It was really painful. Not only was I feeling the full force of the grief around Anita, the … what would be call it for Em?… shit?…then all of a sudden I have really really vocal parts telling me that I am a fucking fool to think I can trust Elle, that she is only going to hurt me in the end, and that actually she doesn’t really care anyway so I am idiotically marching myself into another replay of the same old shit where I get my heart broken and she walks away without so much as a backward glance…because…(here’s the fun with parts) that’s all I deserve because why would anyone care when it’s been proven time and again that I am ‘too much’.

Ouch.

Nice one Brian (brain).

These days I have a pretty good handle on my system (!). I am usually able to separate myself from the parts and to hear and listen to them and generally I’m not completely taken over and unable to function when they’re activated. Ha! Well, they had other ideas yesterday, didn’t they?!- and, honestly, I mustn’t underestimate the power of the Teen and Critic when they are doing their utmost to protect the littles because they are fucking formidable. But wow- am I tired today. And honestly, I feel so unmoored it’s awful. It’s hard not to plunge headfirst into a shame cycle because the level of need I feel right now is huge. I feel like I need a massive amount of reassurance and physical proximity…and that’s a problem because…isn’t that what eventually burns people out?

Ugh.

My whole system is totally off its tits and I can’t seem to regulate or ground. I keep trembling. It’s really bad. Part of me just wants to run away and hide and there’s the other parts that just want to feel safe and settled.

Anyway, let’s rewind a bit and go back and go back to where I began this a few weeks ago…

Back to the end that wasn’t…I feel like I am treading this same old ground over and over, feeling my way through the dark and seemingly getting nowhere – although that’s probably unfair, I am still here and so that’s something…

The lack of planning around the ‘end that wasn’t’ was impressive and, honestly, the more I think about it the more annoyed I am about it all. Therapists can’t/shouldn’t just make it up as they go along and hope for the best when it comes to closing down a therapy – especially a long-term one like mine and Anita’s was. If therapists decide to end long-term work they should be seeking proper supervision first, formulating a plan with their supervisor, and finding ways to minimise the harm to their clients so they create as good endings as possible for those clients…

Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?

To be fair to Anita, she was in a complete state of panic and survival and just didn’t have it in her to be working, let alone working as a therapist at that point last year. I am so sad about how it all went down and I do get it…sort of…but I am less understanding about that fact she continued to keep working, and I PAID for that fucking shitshow of a month, and that she is STILL working but hasn’t kept her end of the bargain with me. Like wtaf?!

It was clear A couldn’t hold the end and needed space as she edged closer and closer to collapse…but three months rolled by, and no end, more months passed, no end, every time I asked to meet to end she was “not in a good enough place” and just avoided going anywhere near this/me.

I’m a fairly patient person but I have my limits.

I feel that after 3.5 years of paying to see a therapist twice a week that I should at least have got some kind of ending that is about me and my experience not just a therapist saying how ‘hard’ everything was for them and being unable to hear anything that was in any way painful for me. Like it would never have been great – it wasn’t what I wanted – but at least holding space for how fucking terrible it was would have been something.

We had agreed to tie up what has been massive work…but also what has been massive heartbreak and betrayal of trust. There ought to have been a space to process that and there just hasn’t been. I’ve been left holding such a lot – and thank goodness for Elle, but this isn’t work for Elle and I, really, it should be between me and A. I shouldn’t have had to find a way through this on my own – and I don’t, Elle is there, but I still find it really difficult talking about this stuff because there’s enough of me that believes this is fundamentally a ‘me’ problem and there’s a cautious bit of me that doesn’t want to have her confirm this because I do or say enough to send her running for the hills. I shouldn’t have had to grieve this loss in this way, especially given the kinds of losses and bereavements I have experienced that Anita is so very aware of.

In March when all the health stuff was kicking off and it was my birthday I hit a really bad place. Tbh it feels like I am perpetually skidding on black ice and then I periodically face plant into the worst bits, pick myself up and continue slipping and sliding along until I fall again. But in the March crash I sent Anita a message it had been months since the last one and I made reference to some of the stuff above:

There has been no proper end, no goodbye, you’ve still got my books and baby elephant…and I can’t even begin to explain how hard that feels for the littlest parts of me.

There was no reply to that.

And radio silence is just so wonderful isn’t it?

Several weeks later in April I reached a point where I had enough of being fobbed off or completely ignored and decided to try a different tactic. I haven’t been hounding Anita or contacting her very regularly at all, but every few months I’ll ask if we can meet to end and for me to get my stuff back because…that’s what should happen!

However, I realised that if Anita wasn’t going to be prepared to meet with me then I need to find a way of closing this off and moving on because it’s so painful to me.

On 4^th April  I sent this email to her:

Dear Anita,

It’s nearly a year since you went away on holiday and never properly returned. Those couple of weeks when you came back and said we had to end were really awful. Part of me was glad you could share with me how hard everything had got for you but it was really hard for me – because I care such a lot about you, could see you were in no place to hold the kind of end I needed, and so I walked away in the hope that giving you time and space would help you get well quicker and eventually open up space to be able to properly end- if that’s what needed to happen.

Of course, there was a huge part of me that hoped you’d come out the other side and actually want to see me, that actually the love you said you felt for me was real and not just words, and our relationship meant something. Clearly, I’m delusional to have thought that there was any foundation to our relationship.

After a few months it was clear to me you weren’t coming back and things weren’t better for you – but I didn’t expect for us not to be able to come back together even just for an hour, to meet, to properly say goodbye and end. Endings in therapy are such a significant part of the work. In life we are often faced with shit endings, but therapy can offer us a chance to get a good one. To grieve, to celebrate, to get closure. Only we haven’t done that. And the confusion and hurt I feel around this is just enormous… and this is especially so after what happened with Em. I never thought you’d be like her.

The very things I’ve been trying to undo for so many years with you about ‘not being worthy’ and being ‘easy to abandon’ have been hardwired now because the evidence is there. I opened myself up fully, my most vulnerable parts were completely exposed, and actually deemed both ‘too much’ (work) and ‘not enough’ (to care about).

This year has been like living in limbo. It’s been torturous. I’ve been left holding so much and have got absolutely nowhere to put any of it. To keep reaching out and to either get no response at all or be told that you’re ‘not in a good enough place’ to meet to properly end feels really crap. Like I’m not worthy of your time. That an hour of your life is too much to ask for despite the fucking emotional mess this has left me in. You said this was delicate work – and it really is.

It feels like you’ve washed your hands clean of the situation and haven’t cared at all about the fall out of what’s happened with you for me. Probably now you’ll see this as me being mental and too dependent and too attached – a ‘me’ problem. And this is a huge problem for me, but I honestly feel like the kind of work we were doing, for the length and frequency of time that we were doing it, deserves a proper end.

I assume you are still working in some capacity, and I get that it might look different now – but like I said – it’s an hour of our lives and it could be anywhere.

You still have my books and my small elephant … there’s some serious irony there. You said you’d look after it if I looked after the big one. But actually, it feels like my child parts are being held hostage by someone who doesn’t care for them at all.

I, too, am not in a good place (you can probably tell). I can’t move on from this whilst you’ve got those things. It breaks my heart not being able to be close to you. I miss your hugs, your heartbeat, and our stories. I miss being with you. I miss your energy. I miss feeling safe.

I’ve been seeing someone for several months and I can’t go anywhere near this stuff because it’s too painful. As much as I don’t want this, I do need to find a way to move on and seeing as you won’t meet with me can we arrange a way of getting my things back?

It would be too upsetting to receive them in the mail because they’re not just things – they symbolise such an important part of our work and our relationship. I know I’m going to need to be with someone when that happens so I wondered whether you might give me the contact details for your supervisor so we could arrange some kind of handover of my things and a space for me to just be with that maybe? Or I don’t know, one of your colleagues? I just know I’ll need a bit of a space to process what this all has meant and what’s been lost because otherwise it’ll be like picking up my dad’s ashes and stuff from the undertaker’s garden wall. It’s the same well of grief. I can’t really believe it’s come to this – trying to navigate saying goodbye to someone who is very much alive but won’t participate.

I feel so broken by what has happened. I probably sound angry or nuts. But actually, I’m just very hurt and want to move past this heartbreak.

Despite how this must sound, I really hope that you are doing ok because I care about you and I love you … that has never changed and that’s why this hurts such a lot x

So that was a lot – wasn’t it?

In true RB fashion, I simultaneously managed to have a fucking breakdown with Elle – it was one of those lovely moments where several shits seemed to hit the fan all at once. Things had felt reasonably settled and I had managed to take a bit of armour off in sessions which had felt nice if not a bit risky. But then, of course, she announced she was going on a break and – brace positions – it didn’t land brilliantly well inside given the landscape was already pretty fucking crap.

Breaks are never very good but I think I find them even more difficult these days because …well, bad things happen after breaks don’t they?! – but also my ability to maintain any sense of connection with Elle when I am not with her is patchy at best and breaks just exacerbate that. I find that in the usual run of things, by Friday my brain just has this void where the evidence that things are ok and the Elle is safe should be. My system starts to do the thing where everything feels wrong and dangerous which is especially bad timing as this is exactly when the young, vulnerable parts feel really scared and desperately want evidence that things are ok. It’s just fucking awful!

Honestly, I find this such a nightmare. To be so functional in my adult life and then to have this fucking disaster mess going on draining the battery is just the pits…and frankly embarrassing after so long.

However, in some act of bravery, or madness, or both following that email to Anita I sent a long and exposing email to Elle… because hey, why not?! Like in for a penny in for a pound… yikes.

But this is long so I’ll carry this on in part 2 – and guess what – Anita replied to my email…so there’s that to look forward to! Not even I could make up the content of it. The positive was, I had to laugh because…I’ve done too much crying! This isn’t an intentional cliff-hanger – more of a oh jeez we’re at nearly 4000 words again.

xx