In today's session, I really cried about some stuff that I have been scarcely able to believe happened. I'm not a person who tends to cry about their own stuff. I cry so easily out of empathy (for real people, fictional people, or just because someone else is having intense emotions). But, the only time I can remember really crying about my own stuff has been out of frustration during an argument or a total meltdown, rather than sadness or loss.

I have a lot of pressure to get to one session a week by the end of the year, so I choose today to delve into some Dad stuff that keeps coming up (in the form of flashbacks) and then I usually deny and dissociate forthwith. This time, it came up, and it was more like having one foot in now and one foot in then. And I was able to experience all these feelings from that time, like this incredible, deep giving up feeling, a total loss, like, "There goes the last person I could count on." It was the feeling of being truly alone.

This stuff happened while we were sharing a room with one another when he moved back in after my mom had a breakdown. I was never really attached to my mom, but she was a caregiver, so her breakdown followed by his...hard to say this word...abuse, really meant being truly alone. My older siblings had just been taken away by their dad, and outside of my unstable parents, I had only my grandma on weekends.

I really struggle with whether my memories are even basically true (which drives my T nuts when I say that, because the other parts have been so adamant and have talked directly to him in detail about it and how it feels not being believed). Moreover, due to some other weird behavior, I'm not even sure how aware my dad was of what happened.

Anyway, I was talking to T about how complicated it is, when this stuff comes up, to do my annual Father's Day and birthday calls to him. That he only e-cards me (or has his wife do it), so I don't really feel obligated, but yet...it still seems "right" to do it and he seems to genuinely appreciate the calls too, even though he hates talking on the phone. And I blurted out, "And it's not like I hate him!" In my head, I heard...and felt..."He's my Dad! Of course I love him!" And had simultaneously this really strong sense of a past connection to him, memories of playing sports and video games together, and this sense of what losing him as a trusted person meant.

It's like I experienced the betrayal of it, the loss, and it was heartbreaking...and made so much sense why his later "abandonment" during his remarriage felt...not upsetting or angering, but only...mildly confusing. And I cried, kind of leaked, all over T. Right now, I'm trying to hold onto it, because I'm starting to think, "How could I love someone so much who did those things to me? So they must not have happened."

But, I did love him, and I needed him...and he failed me in a way that caused me to abandon the attachment. And apparently, I felt, feel, loss about this. So, I cried...

It's already fading away as something from a long time ago, but I wanted to write this while I was connecting to it. The parts of me who are stuck in this loss, they ARE me...and I don't want to let any of me live in darkness anymore...but it would be nice if I could avoid more leaking any time soon. :/


I'm having a really hard time not taking this down right now...