So, had an 11-1 session today, since I had no babysitting with H out of town. Told T I was having an internal battle over whether to ask for more time tomorrow and he offered it to me, so now I will be having my sister sleep over, watch my daughter, and I will have an evening session about 45 minutes away at his other office tomorrow evening, 7:00 or 8:00 pm.
Anyway, it was a hard session, because I have parts that are freaked out with daytime. There were several women in the lobby, which was stressful, and I started panicking and my eyes welled up with tears for no reason. T says he had never seem me walk in like I did today. However, once I was in there and he had the lights low and we were sitting together, there were lots of fun moments, joking and teasing with one another. Also, some hard moments and I tried to nevermind them away, but T pushed a little bit and kept me with what my reactions were, which was good.
At one point we were talking about my heritage (no clue how we got on that topic), so I pulled up some family photos from Facebook. Then, we looked through a bunch of photos I scanned of my childhood a few years ago and looked through them, passing my phone back and forth. We were eventually sitting pretty close, because he kept asking questions and I was getting annoyed at having to pass the phone just to answer who was who or how old I was in a particular photo. Some incidental contact passing the phone back and forth, which made me a little anxious, like maybe he was disgusted by it, but he seemed to be having fun and just happy to be connecting.
When I went to leave, T was standing in front of the door with it closed (usually he is away from the door when I leave, so I'm not used to him being in the way). I made a joke about whether he was blocking me from leaving or something. I blanked out pretty hard, so I feel like he turned the overhead lights on and then back off, in case I wanted it dim when I left to...and maybe opened the door and closed it again. And then made some sort of comment about a handshake (which we've never had). I offered my hand and he asked if it was OK timing or something. I jokingly withdrew my hand and then offered it again and we shook, which I barely remember, as everything is blank or fuzzy. Like, I have no image in my head of this moment, no thoughts or emotions...just, kind of the sensation of his hand in mine. Anyway, I do sort of remember that it felt nice, connecting, so much better of a way to leave then having to walk myself out while he says "God bless" from behind me.
I hope I'm able to connect again tomorrow night and actually really experience and remember it. T and I purposefully touched for the first time. I survived and so did he. He didn't spontaneously combust. I actually said that to him on my way out and I could hear him chuckling until I was almost out of the lobby. He didn't recoil in horror. Who knew it would take me one year and one week to be able to sort out something as simple as a handshake?
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And finally I did mention it in one session saying that when I met him I thought he was aloof and unfriendly cause he didn't shake my hand and he said he was "not adverse" to shaking hands. That is as far as I got. Well it was exactly one year and 2 weeks after our first meeting (it was the day before Christmas Eve) and I figured the holiday was a good reason to shake hands LOL and so I stuck out my hand at the end of the session while we were standing on the threshold of his office door and he took my hand and gave me a nice long and very warm handshake. The whole experience made me dizzy with emotion but I did NOT dissociate at all. I really was not scared, especially when he accepted my hand so nicely. It was not a perfunctory handshake it was almost as if we were sort of just holding hands because there was little up and down handshake motion involved. Gosh, I can remember this like it happened an hour ago. It is sort of seared into my memory. It was a very happy time for me with him. I was also going to miss an appointment because he was having knee surgery and so that handshake really kept him with me through the break and I was feeling really good. It was just 7 months after that when he initiated a hug on my birthday. He probably does not remember either experience and it was probably no big deal to him but it was simply amazing to me.
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