Her death has brought up so much. I loved her deeply and I told her so about six months or more ago. We had been friends for nine years. She knew I found it scary to love. When i told her that not only did I love her but that I knew she loved me, I cried and she had to hold me, because even then we knew she had terminal cancer and that not long in the future I would lose her.
I strangely kept my pain and experience of accompanying my friend through the final stages of cancer, mostly out of my therapy. It felt very intimate and very close to my heart. Very much so. I often talked to my friend about my sweet psychologist and she loved to hear stories and anecdotes about him and our work together. It often made her laugh and she said it helped her work with the younger parts of herself.
Then just the day she died I revealed to my P that I had seen her for some hours the day before and that I did not want to lose her. At all. And then I cried and wept. I came home and got the call she had just died. I phoned my P and howled.
But in losing her I have had to face such loss. And loss is what I am facing in therapy, week in and week out. The loss of the loving cherishing mother and father who should have adored me and held me as precious. I have never had that and it has had me crying for weeks in sessions. I have admitted that I still want a person who will cherish me like that in my life and my P acknowedges that i have those longings. He hears them. I have talked openly but often sobbing, about how much that hurts. I have often asked him if he holds me in his heart. And he always says he does and he has for a long time. I know he cares about me but I keep testing it without realizing I am doing that. I often revert back to feeling there is no point in talking to him - which is how I felt as a child, there was no point trying to talk to my parents or anyone else, it never helped. My pain was a place of alone ness and isolation back then.
All these feelings are so intense. I feel courageous though too because as i go through the intense scary feeling of allowing myself to love and trust my dear friend, my P, my husband, my kids, I know that I could lose them and that will hurt like hell. As it is hurting now losing my friend too soon and too fast. But I am still glad I loved her. And I feel her love for me. And she knew, SHE KNEW how big a deal that was for me.
Because of the agony of the grief, my P has arranged to phone me each day this week and I feel held by that. He keeps nudging me towards talking about how I feel around not having parents who cared about me and I feel strangely exposed but safe, telling him and crying as I talk, about how that feels. As I talk to him like this, admitting that I love him for being there for me and for caring about me but am sometimes distraught that he will never care about me as a daughter, (he has a daughter of 13) i also take solace from the fact that he does feel like he is there for me in a very deep way and that he actually WILL be there for life as he has agreed I can indeed contact him when I need to when we end, for as long as we both shall live.
So I have him for life in that way. Which is a good feeling. [I am still determined to find myself a safe and loving surrogate father which my P knows, but that is a whole OTHER story]Losing my friend nearly tipped me over the edge, the pain has been horrific, I miss her so much I wish she had not died. I cannot bear some days, knowing that I shall not see her again. but I am glad, so glad, that I loved her deeply. We travelled to india together last year and we hung out so much together. We had some great times and she told me as she was dying that I was her true sister and that I was the sort of friend people long to have but don't often get.
She supported me through the awful termination by that inadequate misguided woman counsellor and she stuck by me as i went into the awful pain I have uncovered whilst working with this sweet P.So I am rambling, but it is my way of coping with today, the day of the funeral. I would rather love and experience the pain of loss than not love at all and in the love that I experience, i share and receive so much. From her, from my P and from my dear husband and children. I think my heart is raw today, but i am human. It is what it is like to be human.
I have had to take risks this last year, open my heart, feel the agony in there and let other people into the place that feels so raw. I have sometimes lost hope, I have often hit despair and I have had my husband, my dear friend and my sweet P haul me out, over and over again. I might have had a life where I had not known any of them. I have two of the three left. I shall always miss my dear friend. I shall always remember her love for me and how sweetly I loved her and cherished her and our friendship. I feel that she would be cheering me on as I dare to love and open up to the pain of my childhood losses and isolation with my sweetP. I know she considered me astonishingly courageous. I know that she would want me to make the best out of the life I have left.
She has made me appreciate those that I have got, those that i love who are still here.
