*******Trigger warning End of therapy, leaving T and facing loss

DISCLAIMER: Most of what I'm about to say is about how I'm FEELING, not about what I know to be the truth, so there's a lot here that I know is irrational, but it IS how I'm feelng. I just don't want to to keep explaining that I know this stuff isn't true. I get that, I really do, there's nothing new here, there's just the actual feeling of the loss.

It's been a really long crappy week. So bad I haven't been able to post, either to write my own or to comment on other people's. It took awhile but I got hit with a kind of long rolling trigger starting with the fallout from the last time I saw my T. I talked in my last post about it sinking in that the boundaries were really going to stay in place. That I think deep inside I had been carrying a magical belief that I would finish therapy and leave and do well and then my T would say "well done AG, you've passed the test, NOW we can be friends!" Talking with my T allowed me to see this for what it was, that so hard to kill longing to get what I didn't get. As much as I get the fact that it's not possible to do so, I can't seem to quite let go of the hope.

Recognizing that I still needed to grieve the loss and let go led me back to the post-therapy grieving but I think I hit the anger phase. Angry that my T has let me go. After I posted about that here, I started to notice a lot of anger. Then I had a few incidents happen (some of which was probably due to the fact that I was triggered and I think more reactive than usual). I shared something that meant a lot to me, and several people, one of them being my T, didn't respond at all. I was hurt and even a little angry with a couple of my friends (I want to emphasize no one here) because this was a situation in which I had been very responsive in the past and them just ignoring it hurt. So that added to the sense of abandonment.

So I was feeling both angry and needy, a combination of feelings which make me really uncomfortable with myself, especially since I knew the anger at my T was not fair. And when I was a child the only way to be safe with both feeling needy and being angry was to be alone. So I started really hiding. Which made me feel like a coward, and a hypocrite. That it's ok for me to be seen when I'm feeling strong and helping other people, but not when I'm feeling pathetic. So a lot of the anger was also being turned against myself. In trying to talk to a close friend about how I was feeling, there was a huge failure of communication on my part and they thought my anger was directed against them. They got hurt and scared and, very understandably, withdrew. But there is a long standing pattern in my life, reinforced for a long time in my marriage (one of the things we changed in counseling) that expressing intense need and/or anger would get me abandoned. So although it was not my friends intention AT ALL, nor their fault I felt that way, I felt even more abandoned. The snowball was starting to feel like an avalanche. (We talked and worked everything out with apologies all around.)

And then my DH and I got into a bad fight about finances while we were out on a Valentine's Day data (of course ) and ended up not talking to each other unitl the next day. (We straightened it all out and things are fine. Just one of those fights, but the timing was sucky. Although again probably part of the reason it happened was that I was in an angry, reactive state.)

BTW, I really didn't realize most of this at the time, it was just in looking back and trying to make sense of what happened that I figured it out. I would also like to make clear before the next part that most of my feelings and perceptions about what happened were projections on my part and distorted perceptions from being triggered.

So I came to the last place that felt like I belonged which was here, feeling wounded and hurt and alone, but not being capable of expressing it. So instead, I overreacted to a comment by UV and lashed out because what she said felt threatening to the forum to me because of where I was, not, I think, through any intention of hers to hurt anything. And I needed somewhere to place that anger. I'm sorry UV that you became the target of that. And then it felt like I really overreacted and made a big hairy ass of myself. So I apologized and no one responded. For what felt like an excruiatingly long 14 hours. Which isn't very long, but feels like an eternity when you feel like you've made a total ass of yourself. And then I heard from Liese, but never from UV (either because she thought it wasn't necessary or she was angry enough not to want to accept it. I have no idea and ultimately it's not really any of my business. UV, I'm not trying to put you on the spot, just trying to explain how I felt.) And no one else said anything, (except Jane. Thank you more than I can say.) more than likely because they didn't feel it was their place. But I was not in a good place, and it felt like the last straw of abandonment. (Again, I really have to say that this was my stuff, NOT anything that anyone actually did. I didn't say anything, how could anyone know I was even upset?)

And it all came flooding back, what it had felt like to be utterly abandoned and isolated. To have no one to turn to, no one to depend on, no one who could see me, let alone care when they did. I knew I was feeling really small because I so desperately didn't want to be seen, but so longed for someone to notice and come after me. But I'm an adult and have to speak up. And then I realized I was waiting for my T to notice how bad I was and come after me, a sure sign I was feeling really small. (I mentioned the irrational part right?) I was really angry at my T. Screaming in my head at him kind of angry. I was actually struggling with hating him (as we can only hate those we really love). How dare he tell me I was no longer alone, when obviously I was? How stupid had I been to ever believe it could really be different? How real could the relationship be, when he just let me walk away? It kept flipping from him letting me go out of care for me and wanting me to have a full life, to him being withholding and cruel and not caring (the perfect description of my father). I could even hear him in my head explaining the truth and I was telling him to shut the f--- up. I was not finding myself real pleasant to be around.

So I ended up emailing my T really late on Monday night (actually Tuesday morning because I couldn't sleep and got up to email him because the pain actually got worse than my wanting to be alone). I wrote an email Tolstoy would have envied for length. I heard back from him midday that he had been out of the office in the morning but would respond more fully later. He sent an amazing email in which he accepted all my feelings and made it exceedingly clear he would be there and that I was free to call or come in. He also recognized the deep loss I was mourning and that he knew he represented what I didn't and couldn't have. All of which reminded me of why I love him so and that the past was the past.

All of which really helped. Because so much of the intensity of my feelings is that the line between who he really is here and now and what he represents that I can't have can get very blurry. So, as always, he made it clear that my feelings, as acutely uncomfortable as I was with them, were perfectly ok with him. Which creates the space I can mourn in.

So I have been grieving. I thought I was done grieving this, I am frustrated to still be feeling this. I keep crying but can't seem to find the bottom. Several people have been working really hard at not letting me hide and I was on the phone talking about how I felt and what came out in a very little voice was that little girl I carry inside me asking "I don't get to keep him?" I got so much from my T that I had never had, acceptance and care and protection and understanding and encouragement and attunement, and most importantly, an experience of home, which I thought beyond all hope. Having all that held out the promise (to my long carried hope, not from any intention on his part) of finally having all those needs met. But it wasn't enough. What I had in therapy wasn't enough, nor would it be if I had a relationship outside of therapy. I'm enough of a grown up to know that he wouldn't look quite so alluring if we were fighting over the dishes and bills. So I am left with the loss. I don't know, it may be that I couldn't actually get to these feelings until I could really see there was no hope left. So I think what I'm doing is necessary grieving; I don't feel a need to go back and do more work (although I am keeping an eye on my functioning, if it gets too impaired I know my T is there to help me through the grief). But it hurts.

And I was hurting myself even more by keeping myself away from people who I know care about me. I'm sorry I haven't been responding to anyone, it hasn't felt like I've had anything to respond with. And then I show up to ask for more help.... but I'm trying to hang onto what I would say to someone else who was saying this. I do NOT want to be seen right now but it feels important to be seen. So there it is.